LAWRENCE SLEEPS ON IT.
"Now, Friend What-d'ye-call-'em, are you going to accept his
majesty's polite invitation? or d'ye mean to stand staring all day
like a stuck pig, at your brother-porker's pate here?"
The dig in the ribs accompanying these words, which were rendered
bewilderingly indistinct by reason of the quantity of the toothsome
edibles he referred to, filling the speaker's mouth, materially
assisted Lee to catch something of their signification; and he
started from the reverie into which he had fallen. "Your majesty--"
he began, looking round with dazed, uneasy eyes, and staggering
forward a pace or two.
"Ha! ha! ha! That's excellent!" broke out a laughing chorus. "Your
majesty! Hear the fellow! Are his wits clean gone? I' faith, he
looks something like it! Majesty forsooth! There's none of it here,
friend; unless we're to be having you for a change. Come, Master
Up-in-the-clouds, out with you! Was ever such insolence! Out with
you! D'ye hear?"
It was the most doubtful question in the world whether he did. If
so, it was, at all events, without a spark of comprehending; and
Lawrence Lee continued to lie back, pale and more than half
senseless, in the king's chair, whither he had staggered forward as
he had uttered those last words, and with a twist and a reel, sunk
among its crimson cushions.
"Nay," said another of the crowd of lackeys; "leave him alone. Let
him bide a minute. I saw 'twas a comin' over him before the king had
done speakin' to him. He went on gettin' whiter and whiter. Come,
man, drink a drop o' this;" and he took a tall ruby-red Venice goblet
of wine from the table and placed it to the young man's lips. "So;
that's brave!" he went on in kindly tones, as Lawrence drank a little
of the wine and roused up. "Finish it, man, and have another atop
o't. One leg o' mutton drives down another. Oh! eh! but we don't
take noes here. Drink, I tell 'ee;" and refilling the goblet, the
well-meaning fellow forced Lawrence to drain it again, in spite of
his efforts at resistance.
[Sidenote: Where is the King?]
"Where's the king?--the king?" said Lawrence as consciousness all
broke in upon him, and he sat up. "I must speak to him. I haven't
told him half--"
"Then t'must wait!" cried another lackey, "for the king's gone."
"Gone!"
"Ay; ever so far by now. He wasn't going to stop here all day
listening to your wild-goose tales, I doubt. He's half-way across
the heath by now, and all the lot after him."
"But the queen!"
"Ay; her too. Didn't you see them all go? Where had your eyes got
to?"
"Gone a wool-gathering along of his wits!" laughed another.
And while their shouts of boisterous laughter made the old walls echo
again, Lawrence pressed the palms of his hands on the top of his
aching head and made an effort to recall all that had passed, and to
solve the puzzle of the strange condition in which he found himself.
Possibly the fact of neither food nor drink having passed his lips
since a hasty meal snatched at the Nether Hall early dinner of the
previous day, was accountable for much of it. Neither can
long-fasting men ride a score and a half of miles and retain their
wits in good working order; and strong wine, if it be a temporary
remedy, is scarcely one to be recommended, as these noisy court
lackeys seemed bent on doing. And when he refused the dainty food
they hospitably pressed upon him with the savageness only those who
have lost all desire for eating, from too long going without it, can
ever be guilty of, they forced more wine upon him, challenging him
with a toast he neither dared nor willed to refuse.
[Sidenote: A loyal toast.]
"The king! the king!" they cried, filling all round for themselves,
and brimming the goblet in his hand. "Come, Master Stranger, we must
see what metal you're made of. Drink a bumper to the king's majesty,
and no heeltaps. Here's confusion to all crop-eared knaves."
"Ay, ay!" shouted Lee, starting to his feet, and waving the goblet
high over his head. "Confusion to all crop-eared knaves. And now a
toast. A toast!"
"Silence! Oh, yes; oh, yes! Listen!" shrieked the noisy crew.
"Fill high. His majesty the chairman proposes a toast."
"The queen. God bless her!" cried Lee, putting the glass to his lips
and draining it to the last drop.
"Ho! ho! Ha! ha! Queen? Which queen?" cried the roysterers.
"Which queen?--"
"Queen Ruth, to be sure!" shouted one, hooking his arm into
Lawrence's as Lee rose from the chair. "She of the Rye House, you
blockheads. Queen Ruth!"
[Sidenote: Lawrence escapes.]
The sound of her name steadied Lee's senses like the working of a
charm. He straightened himself to his full height, and striking out
right and left, sent the troublesome fellows stumbling and tripping
pell-mell among the chairs and tables. Then with a parting fling of
his empty glass at the one who had dared to make a jest of the dear
name, he rushed from the room--on, on--by the now entirely deserted
ante-chambers, headlong down the grand staircase, through pitch dark
interminable passages, until he found himself standing spent and
breathless in the open air, the cloudless blue sky above him, and his
feet ankle-deep in a miry lane.
[Sidenote: The King's garden.]
The place seemed to form a sort of thoroughfare to the back premises
of the palace, whose walls skirted its length on one side, while the
other was bounded by a tall privet-hedge. Between the ragged twigs
he could discern the broad flat stretch of country beyond. On the
left, some fifty yards off, stood the timbered plaster fronts of a
row of street cottages, and a few paces to his right a high narrow
iron gateway, flanked by a couple of moss-grown stone pillars
surmounted respectively by the royal lion and unicorn. Through this
gate's filigreed iron-work, at the end of a somewhat broad, gravel,
yew-bordered path, Lee could see a podgy marble Cupid spouting water
through a hunting-horn into a basin. Lured by the gentle plash of
the water, he approached the gate and attempted to push it open.
With a faint screech, as if of surprise at being disturbed, it
yielded, and undeterred by its stone guardians, whose jaws seemed
indeed to grin less in defiance of his intrusion, than in wonder and
derision at his fancy for exploring the deserted place, Lee entered,
and strolled towards the fountain. On its broad edge he seated
himself, to the great confusion of the gold and silver fish moving
about its weedy depths, and found that it formed the centre of a
fair-sized garden, the path by which he had come being one of four,
radiating off at equal distances between grass-plots, towards the
lofty red brick boundary walls, gay now with the snowy blossom of
espaliered fruit-trees.
Here and there white stone gods and goddesses gleamed amidst the dark
yew paths, and would have seemed to render the silence of the place
still more intense, had it not been broken by the voices of the
myriad insect creatures footing it merrily among the parterres, and
the darting butterflies, while stout old bumble-bees hummed
cogitatively as they gathered in their wealth, as if they were
mentally reckoning the probable sum total of its returns; and all to
the music of Sir Cuckoo, who had a vast deal to promise of the good
time coming.
[Sidenote: A reverie.]
Well, well; and Lawrence Lee, rising from his seat on the fountain's
brink, and strolling listlessly onward by the nearest path, heaved a
prolonged and heart-vexed sigh, making all the while not too
flattering comparisons between these careless denizens of the king's
pleasaunce--the bees, of course, simply proving his case by their
exceptional prudence--who troubled their feather-brains not one doit
about to-morrow's storms, which were as likely as not--more likely
than not, indeed, to fall; as you might see if you would but spare
half an eye towards the south-eastward horizon--and the king himself.
As to the idiotic, selfish, frivolous lot about him, they were
beneath contempt, Lawrence considered. To compare them with the
butterflies and gnats would be an insult--to the insects.
This stage of his meditations brought him so near to the foot of a
flight of rustic wooden steps that he tripped upon the lowermost one;
and looking upward, as he recovered his balance, he saw that they
wound up to some height, terminating at the entrance of a pavilion of
octagon shape, built into the angle of the wall, and partly
overhanging the road running beneath. For sheer lack of something
better to wile away his enforced leisure--for to see the king again,
by hook or by crook, Lawrence was determined--he ascended the steps,
and found himself in a small eight-sided chamber. Its walls were
studded with morsels of spar, bright-coloured shells, and bits of
looking-glass disposed in various and eye-fatiguing geometrical
devices, sparkling like Hassan's cave in the rays of sun, now beating
fiercely through the two windows. One of these looked upon the road,
the other, commanding a view of the rear of the palace, admitted
light into the place; but in accordance with the rule of such
pleasure-houses, no air, since they were "not made to open."
[Sidenote: The summer house.]
Nevertheless, a cool breeze rustled in through the doorless entrance;
and Lawrence, wearied out, and still dizzy with the fumes of the wine
which had been forced upon him, sank upon the part of the bench
running round the wall which was nearest the inner window, and fell
to a listless contemplation of the scene before him.
Ugly, or altogether unpicturesque it assuredly could not be called;
but incongruous and disorderly it was, with its queer irregular mass
of wall and roof, new and old, time stained and brand new, all flung
together without apparent rhyme or reason, as if they might settle
down as they could.
It was some time before Lawrence was able to distinguish, amid such
countless odd holes and corners, the door by which he had found his
way into the open air; and longer still before, carrying his eye to
the upper story, he discovered the row of little bull's-eye casements
which lighted the corridor conducting to the king's apartments. That
it ran to the rear of the palace he had some hazy sort of notion;
since through one of those casements he had caught a glimpse of
waving green beechen boughs, and had guessed at the possibility of a
garden beyond, while not a single tree shaded the street front of the
palace.
[Sidenote: A long nap.]
The last straw, eastern wiseacres say, breaks the camel's back; and
it is possible that his toilsome little ascent to the pavilion, and
the burning sunbeams pouring in through the glass on Lawrence's head
bore their share in producing the drowsy sensations stealing so
rapidly upon him, that all the scene before him dissolved as he
looked, into one confusing haze. "'Tis like a dream," he murmured to
himself, pressing the palms of both his hands on his throbbing
temples, in a desperate effort to shake off their oppression. "A
murrain on those rascals for drenching me with that stuff till I feel
as if I was spinning in an Epping Fair merry-go-round. Like a
dream--a bad dream"--and his head drooping lower and lower upon his
arms outspread upon the broad window-seat, rested a dead weight there
at last, and he fell asleep.
Heavily as one of the Seven Sleepers he slept on. Ten, eleven,
mid-day came and went; and still, as afternoon lengthened, and the
shadows grew deep upon the grass, he stirred only to sink back again
into the unrefreshing sleep of utter fatigue and exhaustion. Sultry
as midsummer the sunbeams poured into the airless chamber, till its
walls seemed sheeted in parti-coloured flame, which grew but the more
dazzling as the time of parting drew on, and the gray evening mists
began to spread over the low-lying fields.
[Sidenote: A sudden waking.]
High aloft in the greenish blue sky the young May moon rose and
mingled her mild beams with the fiery westward glow, and still he
slept on; but restlessly now, and muttering hurried but inarticulate
words, as if he was dreaming uneasy dreams. How much longer he would
have drowsed the precious hours away, it is hard to guess, had it not
been for a sudden and deafening blare of French horns and all kinds
of music, mingled with shouts of gay laughter and voices which broke
just beneath the window, sending Lee to his feet with a start and a
cry of terror. "Fire! Fire!" he shouted, staggering to the middle
of the floor and gazing in wild distraction round the pavilion, while
he gasped for breath in its stifling atmosphere. Could it be that he
was dreaming still? Strange ugly visions of--Nay, now, but see what
things are dreams! and what is it after all but the setting-sun
blaze? And as Lee stumbled tremblingly back against the trellised
doorway, greedily drinking in the cool evening air, his senses dawned
upon him.
"Ay, ay," he said to himself, with a faint smile of amusement at his
own fancies, as he stretched his neck over the wall, just in time to
obtain a glimpse of the brilliant cavalcade turning the street corner
in a cloud of white dust, and caught the shouts of the little crowd
collected to see the king pass. "Come back, has he? Yes, yes, God
save him, with all my heart and soul--God save the king! But the
question is, you see, good people. The question is--" and then
Lawrence Lee came to a dead pause, and fell into a deep reverie.
"How was he to be saved?" pondered on the young man, his brows
knitting painfully. This happy-go-lucky Charles, who suspected no
foul play, because he would persist in judging others by himself,
despite all his harsh experiences, and thought no one capable of
taking so much trouble as to contrive it. This good-natured
gentleman, whose manner of speaking, far more than the words he
spoke, had won Lawrence Lee's heart, as they were apt to win all who
approached him. How--so the young man now asked himself, could he
ever have been brought to nurse one traitorous thought towards him?
Ay, now indeed he understood, as never he had before, his mother's
glowing look, when with the proud tears glistening star-bright in her
eyes, she would say: "Thy father died for his king, lad."
[Sidenote: What is to be done?]
The last shout sank to silence. The birds' song ceased. The last
ray of the sunset glory faded, and only the plash of the fountain
broke the silence, and still Lawrence Lee stood leaning against the
ivied wall so motionless, and his face showing so white and fixed in
the dazzling moonlight, that he might have been taken for one of the
garden's statues; but at last, as eight o'clock struck in the town
belfries, and far-off village church towers chimed it back, he
stirred, and slowly descended the little rustic steps.
[Sidenote: A deep resolve.]
"Rest thee well, father," he murmured, reverently folding his hands
as he went. "The world may blame me, and say what it lists. The
king shall be saved, though my life should answer for it.
Father--only let heaven count me worthy to be called thy son."
And so across the garden, and through the gate, still standing half
open as he had left it, he passed on into the street.