UNCLE ALGERNON'S LAST STORY.
Some hours after my incursion into the Palace of Hampton Court, I was
wandering about under the chestnut-trees in Bushy Park. I had been
loitering there all that hot summer afternoon, watching from a
distance the brightly-dressed group that had emerged from the Palace
grounds, and crossed over the grass towards the piece of water at the
south side of the park. I knew that it was Queen Mary and her ladies
taking their usual afternoon stroll; and though I did not venture so
near as to see their faces, there was a certain silver-grey gown and
carnation-coloured petticoat which I recognised directly, and which I
gazed upon with intense interest. They hovered about by the
water-side for a while, and then strolled back again over the grass,
and re-entered the great iron gates which separated the Palace
gardens from the park. I watched them intently until they were out
of sight; and then, turning away, wandered through the trees once
more, until I came to the water's edge where they had been standing.
There I stood, staring absently down at the bright blue sky, dotted
with soft flakes of cloud, like pink shells, which lay reflected in
the water beneath me. I was thinking of the curious stolen interview
with my wife, which I had so long set my heart upon obtaining, and
which, after all, had been so short, hurried, and unsatisfactory.
Not that I had been disappointed in her--no, indeed, far from it!
Oliver's description had in some degree prepared me for her unusual
beauty. I remembered, too, how Sir Harry used to prophesy that she
would some day be a lovely woman; and the first glance told me that
his prophecy had been a true one. Among all the many lovely faces
that I had seen at the Hague, at St. Germains, even at the Court of
Louis XIV. himself, not one was there which I thought so beautiful as
hers. Besides the clearly cut features, the sparkling, mischievous
hazel eyes, and brilliant yet delicate complexion, there was a
peculiar expression, arch, bright, and what the French would call
_malin_, and yet at the same time very sweet and thoughtful--a look
which I had never seen in any other face but that of my friend
Oliver. No, it was not that I was disappointed in Frances, but that
I wanted to have seen more of her--to have found out what her real
wishes were, and whether they went with those of her father or of her
brother. That question was a very difficult one to answer; for she
had spoken but little, and the anxiety which she had shown on account
of my peril, and the tears that rose in her eyes as she listened to
my story, were doubtless simply because I was the friend of her
favourite brother. How could I expect her to feel anything like
cordiality towards a husband whom she had seen but once in her life,
and that for a single day, more than eleven years ago? a husband,
too, without home or fortune, who was living with a sword over his
head, and to be rid of whom was well known to be the heart's desire
of her father? I stood pondering these things on the water's brink
till the sun had set; and when I roused myself at last, I was quite
amazed to find that the statue of Diana on the fountain in the middle
of the water had become only a dusky outline against the sky, and the
wreaths of rose-coloured cloud had turned into one heavy leaden bank
upon the horizon. It was clearly time to turn my steps towards
Kingston, where I had been lodging for the last few days.
'So I sauntered leisurely towards the nearest gate of the park. A
dark figure was moving about under a clump of chestnut-trees close at
hand; but, as I came near, it vanished suddenly, and I passed on,
thinking that it was most likely a startled deer. But just as I was
turning out of the gate, there was a stealthy footstep behind me, and
I paused to look back. One moment more and a hand was laid upon my
shoulder, and I heard the fatal words:
'"You are arrested in the King's name."
'My hand was on my sword in an instant, but I had not time to draw
it. Several more figures had already rushed through the gateway. My
arms were held down, my sword unfastened, and I was dragged out of
Bushy Park a prisoner.
'I need not say how bitter and desponding were the thoughts that
filled my mind that night during our dark voyage up the Thames, on
our way to the Tower. In a few hours I was about to pass through the
Traitor's Gate; and I knew well, when I considered my case soberly,
how very slender was my chance of leaving the Tower again, except for
the scaffold. There was only one person in England who might perhaps
speak a word in my behalf; and even if for her brother's sake she
should take the trouble to speak it, was it likely that her petition
would be of any use? Would not her father throw all his power into
the opposite scale? Besides, I felt that my offences against King
William were far too great and too notorious to be forgiven. My fate
was sealed, and through my own desperate rashness.
'There was an end now of the meeting in Queen Mary's Bower, which I
had forced Frances, half against her will, to promise me. I wondered
when she would hear of my arrest. For one moment the doubt crossed
my mind whether she might not already know it--whether it could
indeed be possible that she had betrayed the secret of my visit to
the Queen. But no, I knew that it could not be so. Was she not
Oliver's sister? Had she not Oliver's truthful eyes, and frank,
honest smile? Far more likely that my pretty little acquaintance of
St. James's Fair, the lively, sparkling Lady Beatrice, had been
babbling to some of her companions of the matter--perhaps to the
Queen herself. Or, after all, might not the discovery have been made
most easily through the page who had admitted me into the Palace? or
that old Lady Derby, who so very nearly caught me in Frances' room?
Her suspicions might have been roused, and then doubtless she would
soon manage to come to the bottom of the whole story. But Frances
had not betrayed me; or, if she had, it was involuntarily, not
through treachery. I could have staked my life upon that. No; I had
no right to blame any one but myself. I had been madly reckless, and
I must abide by the consequences.
'Ten days had gone by, and I knew what the price of that morning's
recklessness was to be.
'My trial was over, and my dark foreboding was coming to pass. Three
more days I was to spend in the Tower, and then I was to die upon the
scaffold. Not a word had I heard of Frances since the night that I
was taken prisoner; but her father had been in court on the day of my
trial, and the same night I had received a letter from him, in which
he offered to use all his interest with the Government to gain my
pardon, but upon one condition. I must give him my promise to agree
that my marriage with his daughter should be dissolved. We were now
both of age, and at liberty to break it off by mutual consent. His
reasons for wishing this, he said, were of course clear enough to me;
and he doubted not that I should agree without hesitation to take a
course which was plainly the best for his daughter's interests, and
the only one which gave me a hope of escape. But Sir Bernard said
nothing of his daughter's wishes on the subject. If Frances really
was as anxious as himself to dissolve the marriage, surely he would
have laid as much stress as possible upon that argument. Perhaps he
meant her to have no voice in the matter; or did he take it for
granted that her wishes were the same as her father's? I rather
wondered that Sir Bernard should have chosen to interfere at all with
my fortunes. I was sentenced to death, and if I died, his daughter,
whether she was my wife or not, would of course be free.
'When the sentence was pronounced, I had not felt for a moment the
slightest expectation that a pardon was to be procured on any terms,
and had made up my mind to meet my fate as became a soldier. Still,
it seemed very hard to die so early--harder now, I fancied, than it
would have been a month ago. Yet if my only hope of life was to give
up all claim to be Frances Dalrymple's husband!---- No; I could not
bear to think of being released from my engagement merely to save my
own head from the scaffold. Honour and pride alike forbade that. So
I wrote in answer to Sir Bernard's proposal, that if my wife could
truthfully say that it was her own unbiassed wish that the marriage
should be broken off, I was ready to give my consent; but upon that
condition alone. I did not allude to the hopes he had held out of
using his interest with the Government on my behalf, nor did I say
anything of Oliver's friendship with me; for somehow I shrank from
the least approach to what I considered the ignominy of pleading for
my life. But when the letter was despatched, and day after day
passed on without a word of news having reached my ears concerning my
wife or any of her family, I must own that I felt intensely sick at
heart. I had been in peril of death over and over again, but never
before had it seemed so close and so real as now. Pain and death are
not so fearful when one only looks forward to them vaguely, as
possible at any time. It is knowing the exact moment--feeling that
it will inevitably come, and cannot be put off by any human power
whatever--this is the ordeal which is hard to pass through with
unfaltering courage.
'I stood at the window of my prison, gazing out on the river below.
Escape was utterly out of the question. My exploit two years ago,
when I triumphantly bore off my friend Will Delamere from the Tower,
was too well remembered to leave the remotest chance for me of
repeating that feat on my own account! Besides, I had no
fellow-conspirator outside the walls. Will could never have done it
alone. Oh, if Oliver did but know of my danger! Not that he could
really have done anything to help me, but I should at least have had
one friend to stand by me during these last few days of my life. But
Oliver would hear nothing of my fate till all was over. This trouble
must be gone through unflinchingly, without one soul who cared about
me to say a word of sympathy or comfort. I was still gazing
abstractedly at the river, absorbed in these melancholy thoughts,
when footsteps outside the door and the well-known jangle of keys
aroused me. I looked round, rather expecting to see the chaplain,
who had promised to pay me a visit in the course of the day. It was
not the chaplain, however, who stood before me, when, after sundry
clicking of locks and grating of bolts, the heavy door was pushed
open at last. The two figures upon whom I gazed, with dazzled,
astonished eyes, were those of Oliver and Frances Dalrymple. For a
moment I stood overwhelmed and speechless with surprise, and Frances
also was silent. Her face was half concealed by her hood, and her
hand was trembling on her brother's arm.
'"Algernon," cried Oliver, grasping my hand eagerly, "who would have
thought of our next meeting being here?"
'"Who indeed?" I gasped out, still in a trance of bewilderment. "In
sooth, Oliver, I little thought of our ever meeting again at all;
but----" I paused and glanced at the graceful little figure clinging
to his side.
'"Come, Fan, speak to him. Tell him the good news yourself," urged
Oliver, looking down at her with a half smile, and trying to draw her
nearer to me. "Nay, child, he shall not hear a word from me. You
have the best right to tell it; and he will welcome it more from his
wife's lips than----"
'"Oliver, how can you be so cruel?" she burst out impetuously. "He
shall not be kept in this suspense. My Lord Desmond, you are saved.
The King has granted you a pardon, and you are free to leave the
Tower whenever it pleases you."
'A tumult of mixed feelings came rushing over me when I looked into
her sweet, eager face. She had left her brother's arm, and stood
before me with a beautiful crimson flush on her cheeks, and her dark
eyes glistening with tears, as they had done on that morning of our
last, meeting in the Palace.
'"Saved! and on Sir Bernard's conditions?" I stammered out, hardly
knowing what I said, while a cold pang of doubt and fear shot across
me. But I did not need Oliver's emphatic "No, no; Sir Bernard has
naught to do with it. 'Tis Fan who has managed all;" for Frances'
reproachful eyes had answered my question, and before her brother had
done speaking, her hands were clasped in mine, and the promise so
lightly spoken in those childish days at Horsemandown was solemnly
repeated now. Frances and I were husband and wife, until death us
should part.
* * * * * * * * * *
'A few weeks after, my wife and I were sailing out of the mouth of
the Thames, on board a vessel bound for Altona, and Frances, for the
first time in her life looked out upon the sea. It was with very
wistful eyes that she watched the shores of England growing fainter
and fainter to her sight, for she had never left them before; and now
she was an exile's wife, and might possibly wander over half the
countries of Europe before she saw her native land again. The pardon
which she had striven so hard to obtain had not been granted without
the proviso that her husband should leave the country at once, and
for ever; and without hesitation she had agreed to leave her own home
and kindred and to share the future--which to her had once looked so
brilliant--with a man whose prospects were already sufficiently
blighted, but which without her would be hopelessly dreary indeed.
'Sir Bernard was very loth to let her go; but as the marriage could
only have been annulled by our mutual consent, he had no choice but
to be reconciled to it. He and I parted good friends; and he showed
far more affection for his daughter, and sorrow at bidding her
farewell, than I had ever believed him capable of feeling. But
perhaps the hardest matter to both of us was the saying good-bye to
Oliver, who, on his unexpected return from Holland high in the King's
favour, had done a great deal towards overcoming his father's dislike
to our marriage. Very many years passed by before we saw his face
again.
'It was not until late in Queen Anne's reign that the sentence of my
banishment was reversed, and my forfeited estates restored.
'Need I say that the first days of our return to England were spent
with Sir Oliver Dalrymple, now the master of Horsemandown, where
Frances and I smiled over the remembrance of our first meeting, and
knelt together once more in the little parish church which had been
the scene of our wedding so very long ago?'
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