the feelings which your fancied injuries have put into your heart, I
tell you that I did what I could to liberate you, and received from
the keeper a promise that you should be allowed to escape. After that
a certain letter addressed to you was discovered and fell into the
hands of the king--a matter in which I had no part. As to your
confinement and non-communication with your friends, that was at his
majesty's command after he had seen the letter, as he will most
certainly confirm to you. I say this for my own sake, not that I care
what you may say or think."
This offer of confirmation by the king made it all sound like the
truth, so much will even a little truth leaven a great lie; and part
of Brandon's sails came down against the mast. The whole statement
surprised him, and, most of all, the intercepted letter. What letter
could it have been? It was puzzling, and yet he dared not ask.
As the duke was about to walk away, Brandon stopped him: "One moment,
your grace; I am willing to admit what you have said, for I am not now
prepared to contradict it; but there is yet another matter we have to
settle. You attacked me on horseback, and tried to murder me in order
to abduct two ladies that night over in Billingsgate. That you cannot
deny. I watched you follow the ladies from Bridewell to Grouche's, and
saw your face when your mask fell off during the mêleé as plainly as I
see it now. If other proof is wanting, there is that sprained knee
upon which your horse fell, causing you to limp even yet. I am sure
now that my lord will meet me like a man; or would he prefer that I
should go to the king and tell him and the world the whole shameful
story? I have concealed it heretofore, thinking it my personal right
and privilege to settle with you."
Buckingham turned a shade paler as he replied: "I do not meet such as
you on the field of honor, and have no fear of your slander injuring
me."
He felt secure in the thought that the girls did not know who had
attacked them, and could not corroborate Brandon in his accusation, or
Mary, surely, never would have appealed to him for help.
I was with Brandon--at a little distance, that is--when this occurred,
and after Buckingham had left, we went to find the girls in the
forest. We knew they would be looking for us, although they would
pretend surprise when they saw us. We soon met them, and the very
leaves of the trees gave a soft, contented rustle in response to
Mary's low, mellow laugh of joy.
After perhaps half an hour, we encountered Buckingham with his
lawyer-knight, Johnson. They had evidently walked out to this quiet
path to consult about the situation. As they approached, Mary spoke to
the duke with a vicious sparkle in her eyes.
"My Lord Buckingham, this shall cost you your head; remember my words
when you are on the scaffold, just when your neck fits into the hollow
of the block."
He stopped, with an evident desire to explain, but Mary pointed down
the path and said: "Go, or I will have Master Brandon spit you on his
sword. Two to one would be easy odds compared with the four to one you
put against him in Billingsgate. Go!" And the battle was over, the foe
never having struck a blow. It hurt me that Mary should speak of the
odds being two to one against Brandon when I was at hand. It is true I
was not very large, but I could have taken care of a lawyer.
Now it was that the lawyer-knight earned his bread by his wits, for it
was he, I know, who instigated the next move--a master stroke in its
way, and one which proved a checkmate to us. It was this: the duke
went at once to the king, and, in a tone of injured innocence, told
him of the charge made by Brandon with Mary's evident approval, and
demanded redress for the slander. Thus it seemed that the strength of
our position was about to be turned against us. Brandon was at once
summoned and promptly appeared before the king, only too anxious to
confront the duke. As to the confinement of Brandon and his secret
trial, the king did not care to hear; that was a matter of no
consequence to him; the important question was, did Buckingham attack
the princess?
Brandon told the whole straight story, exactly as it was, which
Buckingham as promptly denied, and offered to prove by his almoner
that he was at his devotions on the night and at the hour of the
attack. So here was a conflict of evidence which called for new
witnesses, and Henry asked Brandon if the girls had seen and
recognized the duke. To this question, of course, he was compelled to
answer no, and the whole accusation, after all, rested upon Brandon's
word, against which, on the other hand, was the evidence of the Duke
of Buckingham and his convenient almoner.
All this disclosed to the full poor Mary's anxiety to help Brandon,
and the duke having adroitly let out the fact that he had just met the
princess with Brandon at a certain secluded spot in the forest,
Henry's suspicion of her partiality received new force, and he began
to look upon the unfortunate Brandon as a partial cause, at least, of
Mary's aversion to the French marriage.
Henry grew angry and ordered Brandon to leave the court, with the
sullen remark that it was only his services to the Princess Mary that
saved him from a day with papers on the pillory.
This was not by any means what Brandon had expected. There seemed to
be a fatality for him about everything connected with that unfortunate
trip to Grouche's. He had done his duty, and this was his recompense.
Virtue is sometimes a pitiful reward for itself, notwithstanding much
wisdom to the contrary.
Henry was by no means sure that his suspicions concerning Mary's heart
were correct, and in all he had heard he had not one substantial fact
upon which to base conviction. He had not seen her with Brandon since
their avowal, or he would have had a fact in every look, the truth in
every motion, a demonstration in every glance. She seemed powerless
even to attempt concealment. In Brandon's handsome manliness and
evident superiority, the king thought he saw a very clear possibility
for Mary to love, and where there is such a possibility for a girl,
she usually fails to fulfill expectations. I suppose there are more
wrong guesses as to the sort of man a given woman will fall in love
with than on any other subject of equal importance in the whole range
of human surmising. It did not, however, strike the king that way, and
he, in common with most other sons of Adam, supposing that he knew all
about it, marked Brandon as a very possible and troublesome personage.
For once in the history of the world a man had hit upon the truth in
this obscure matter, although he had no idea how correct he was.
Now, all this brought Brandon into the deep shadow of the royal frown,
and, like many another man, he sank his fortune in the fathomless
depths of a woman's heart, and thought himself rich in doing it.
_CHAPTER XIV_
_In the Siren Country_
With the king, admiration stood for affection, a mistake frequently
made by people not given to self-analysis, and in a day or two a
reaction set in toward Brandon which inspired a desire to make some
amends for his harsh treatment. This he could not do to any great
extent, on Buckingham's account; at least, not until the London loan
was in his coffers, but the fact that Brandon was going to New Spain
so soon and would be out of the way, both of Mary's eyes and Mary's
marriage, stimulated that rare flower in Henry's heart, a good
resolve, and Brandon was offered his old quarters with me until such
time as he should sail for New Spain.
He had never abandoned this plan, and now that matters had taken this
turn with Mary and the king, his resolution was stronger than ever, in
that the scheme held two recommendations and a possibility.
The recommendations were, first, it would take him away from Mary,
with whom--when out of the inspiring influence of her buoyant
hopefulness--he knew marriage to be utterly impossible; and second,
admitting and facing that impossibility, he might find at least
partial relief from his heartache in the stirring events and
adventures of that faraway land of monsters, dragons, savages and
gold. The possibility lay in the gold, and a very faintly burning
flame of hope held out the still more faintly glimmering chance that
fortune, finding him there almost alone, might, for lack of another
lover, smile upon him by way of squaring accounts. She might lead him
to a cavern of gold, and gold would do anything; even, perhaps,
purchase so priceless a treasure as a certain princess of the blood
royal. He did not, however, dwell much on this possibility, but kept
the delightful hope well neutralized with a constantly present sense
of its improbability, in order to save the pain of a long fall when
disappointment should come.
Brandon at once accepted the king's offer of lodging in the palace,
for now that he felt sure of himself in the matter of New Spain, and
his separation from Mary, he longed to see as much as possible of her
before the light went out forever, even though it were playing with
death itself to do so.
Poor fellow, his suffering was so acute during this period that it
affected me like a contagion.
It did not make a mope of him, but came in spasms that almost drove
him wild. He would at times pace the room and cry out: "Jesu!
Caskoden, what shall I do? She will be the wife of the French king,
and I shall sit in the wilderness and try every moment to imagine what
she is doing and thinking. I shall find the bearing of Paris, and
look in her direction until my brain melts in my effort to see her,
and then I shall wander in the woods, a suffering imbecile, feeding on
roots and nuts. Would to God one of us might die. If it were not
selfish, I should wish I might be the one."
I said nothing in answer to these outbursts, as I had no consolation
to offer.
We had two or three of our little meetings of four, dangerous as they
were, at which Mary, feeling that each time she saw Brandon might be
the last, would sit and look at him with glowing eyes that in turn
softened and burned as he spoke. She did not talk much, but devoted
all her time and energies to looking with her whole soul. Never before
or since was there a girl so much in love. A young girl thoroughly in
love is the most beautiful object on earth--beautiful even in
ugliness. Imagine, then, what it made of Mary!
Growing partly, perhaps, out of his unattainability--for he was as far
out of her reach as she out of his--she had long since begun to
worship him. She had learned to know him so well, and his valiant
defense of her in Billingsgate, together with his noble self-sacrifice
in refusing to compromise her in order to save himself, had presented
him to her in so noble a light that she had come to look up to him as
her superior. Her surrender had been complete, and she found in it a
joy far exceeding that of any victory or triumph she could imagine.
I could not for the life of me tell what would be the outcome of it
all. Mary was one woman in ten thousand, so full was she of feminine
force and will--a force which we men pretend to despise, but to which
in the end we always succumb.
Like most women, the princess was not much given to analysis; and, I
think, secretly felt that this matter of so great moment to her would,
as everything else always had, eventually turn itself to her desire.
She could not see the way, but, to her mind, there could be no doubt
about it; fate was her friend; always had been, and surely always
would be.
With Brandon it was different; experience as to how the ardently hoped
for usually turns out to be the sadly regretted, together with a
thorough face-to-face analysis of the situation, showed him the truth,
all too clearly, and he longed for the day when he should go, as a
sufferer longs for the surgeon's knife that is to relieve him of an
aching limb. The hopelessness of the outlook had for the time
destroyed nearly all of his combativeness, and had softened his nature
almost to apathetic weakness. It would do no good to struggle in a
boundless, fathomless sea; so he was ready to sink and was going to
New Spain to hope no more.
Mary did not see what was to prevent the separation, but this did not
trouble her as much as one would suppose, and she was content to let
events take their own way, hoping and believing that in the end it
would be hers. Events, however, continued in this wrong course so
long and persistently that at last the truth dawned upon her and she
began to doubt; and as time flew on and matters evinced a disposition
to grow worse instead of better, she gradually, like the sundial in
the moonlight, awakened to the fact that there was something wrong; a
cog loose somewhere in the complicated machinery of fate--the fate
which had always been her tried, trusted and obedient servant.
The trouble began in earnest with the discovery of our meetings in
Lady Mary's parlor. There was nothing at all unusual in the fact that
small companies of young folk frequently spent their evenings with
her, but we knew well enough that the unusual element in our parties
was their exceeding smallness. A company of eight or ten young persons
was well enough, although it, of course, created jealousy on the part
of those who were left out; but four--two of each sex--made a
difference in kind, however much we might insist it was only in
degree; and this we soon learned was the king's opinion.
You may be sure there was many a jealous person about the court ready
to carry tales, and that it was impossible long to keep our meetings
secret among such a host as then lived in Greenwich palace.
One day the queen summoned Jane and put her to the question. Now, Jane
thought the truth was made only to be told, a fallacy into which many
good people have fallen, to their utter destruction; since the truth,
like every other good thing, may be abused.
Well! Jane told it all in a moment, and Catherine was so horrified
that she was like to faint. She went with her hair-lifting horror to
the king, and poured into his ears a tale of imprudence and debauchery
well calculated to start his righteous, virtue-prompted indignation
into a threatening flame.
Mary, Jane, Brandon and myself were at once summoned to the presence
of both their majesties and soundly reprimanded. Three of us were
ordered to leave the court before we could speak a word in
self-defense, and Jane had enough of her favorite truth for once.
Mary, however, came to our rescue with her coaxing eloquence and
potent, feminine logic, and soon convinced Henry that the queen, who
really counted for little with him, had made a mountain out of a very
small mole-hill. Thus the royal wrath was appeased to such an extent
that the order for expulsion was modified to a command that there be
no more quartette gatherings in Princess Mary's parlor. This leniency
was more easy for the princess to bring about, by reason of the fact
that she had not spoken to her brother since the day she went to see
him after Wolsey's visit, and had been so roughly driven off. At
first, upon her refusal to speak to him--after the Wolsey visit--Henry
was angry on account of what he called her insolence; but as she did
not seem to care for that, and as his anger did nothing toward
unsealing her lips, he pretended indifference. Still the same stubborn
silence was maintained. This soon began to amuse the king, and of late
he had been trying to be on friendly terms again with his sister
through a series of elephantine antics and bear-like pleasantries,
which were the most dismal failures--that is, in the way of bringing
about a reconciliation. They were more successful from a comical point
of view. So Henry was really glad for something that would loosen the
tongue usually so lively, and for an opportunity to gratify his sister
from whom he was demanding such a sacrifice, and for whom he expected
to receive no less a price than the help of Louis of France, the most
powerful king of Europe, to the imperial crown.
Thus our meetings were broken up, and Brandon knew his dream was over,
and that any effort to see the princess would probably result in
disaster for them both; for him certainly.
The king upon that same day told Mary of the intercepted letter sent
by her to Brandon at Newgate, and accused her of what he was pleased
to term an improper feeling for a low-born fellow.
Mary at once sent a full account of the communication in a letter to
Brandon, who read it with no small degree of ill comfort as the
harbinger of trouble.
"I had better leave here soon, or I may go without my head," he
remarked. "When that thought gets to working in the king's brain, he
will strike, and I--shall fall."
Letters began to come to our rooms from Mary, at first begging Brandon
to come to her, and then upbraiding him because of his coldness and
cowardice, and telling him that if he cared for her as she did for
him, he would see her, though he had to wade through fire and blood.
That was exactly where the trouble lay; it was not fire and blood
through which he would have to pass; they were small matters, mere
nothings that would really have added zest and interest to the
achievement. But the frowning laugh of the tyrant, who could bind him
hand and foot, and a vivid remembrance of the Newgate dungeon, with a
dangling noose or a hollowed-out block in the near background, were
matters that would have taken the adventurous tendency out of even the
cracked brain of chivalry itself. Brandon cared only to fight where
there was a possible victory or ransom, or a prospect of some sort, at
least, of achieving success. Bayard preferred a stone wall, and
thought to show his brains by beating them out against it, and in a
sense he could do it. * * * What a pity this senseless, stiff-kneed,
light-headed chivalry did not beat its brains out several centuries
before Bayard put such an absurd price upon himself.
So every phase of the question which his good sense presented told
Brandon, whose passion was as ardent though not so impatient as
Mary's, that it would be worse than foolhardy to try to see her. He,
however, had determined to see her once more before he left, but as it
could, in all probability, be only once, he was reserving the meeting
until the last, and had written Mary that it was their best and only
chance.
This brought to Mary a stinging realization of the fact that Brandon
was about to leave her and that she would lose him if something were
not done quickly. Now for Mary, after a life of gratified whims, to
lose the very thing she wanted most of all--that for which she would
willingly have given up every other desire her heart had ever
coined--was a thought hardly to be endured. She felt that the world
would surely collapse. It could not, would not, should not be.
Her vigorous young nerves were too strong to be benumbed by an
overwhelming agony, as is sometimes the case with those who are
fortunate enough to be weaker, so she had to suffer and endure. Life
itself, yes, life a thousand times, was slipping away from her. She
must be doing something or she would perish. Poor Mary! How a grand
soul like hers, full of faults and weakness, can suffer! What an
infinite disproportion between her susceptibility to pain and her
power to combat it! She had the maximum capacity for one and the
minimum strength for the other. No wonder it drove her almost
mad--that excruciating pang of love.
She could not endure inaction, so she did the worst thing possible.
She went alone, one afternoon, just before dusk, to see Brandon at our
rooms. I was not there when she first went in, but, having seen her on
the way, suspected something and followed, arriving two or three
minutes after her. I knew it was best that I should be present, and
was sure Brandon would wish it. When I entered they were holding each
other's hands, in silence. They had not yet found their tongues, so
full and crowded were their hearts. It was pathetic to see them,
especially the girl, who had not Brandon's hopelessness to deaden the
pain by partial resignation.
Upon my entrance, she dropped his hands and turned quickly toward me
with a frightened look, but was reassured upon seeing who it was.
Brandon mechanically walked away from her and seated himself on a
stool. Mary, as mechanically, moved to his side and placed her hand on
his shoulder. Turning her face toward me, she said: "Sir Edwin, I know
you will forgive me when I tell you that we have a great deal to say
and wish to be alone."
I was about to go when Brandon stopped me.
"No, no; Caskoden, please stay; it would not do. It would be bad
enough, God knows, if the princess should be found here with both of
us; but, with me alone, I should be dead before morning. There is
danger enough as it is, for they will watch us."
Mary knew he was right, but she could not resist a vicious little
glance toward me, who was in no way to blame.
Presently we all moved into the window-way, where Brandon and Mary sat
upon the great cloak and I on a camp-stool in front of them,
completely filling up the little passage.
"I can bear this no longer," exclaimed Mary. "I will go to my brother
to-night and tell him all; I will tell him how I suffer, and that I
shall die if you are allowed to go away and leave me forever. He loves
me, and I can do anything with him when I try. I know I can obtain his
consent to our--our--marriage. He cannot know how I suffer, else he
would not treat me so. I will let him see--I will convince him. I have
in my mind everything I want to say and do. I will sit on his knee and
stroke his hair and kiss him." And she laughed softly as her spirit
revived in the breath of a growing hope. "Then I will tell him how
handsome he is, and how I hear the ladies sighing for him, and he will
come around all right by the third visit. Oh, I know how to do it; I
have done it so often. Never fear! I wish I had gone at it long ago."
Her enthusiastic fever of hope was really contagious, but Brandon,
whose life was at stake, had his wits quickened by the danger.
"Mary, would you like to see me a corpse before to-morrow noon?" he
asked.
"Why! of course not; why do you ask such a dreadful question?"
"Because, if you wish to make sure of it, do what you have just
said--go to the king and tell him all. I doubt if he could wait till
morning. I believe he would awaken me at midnight to put me to sleep
forever--at the end of a rope or on a block pillow."
"Oh! no! you are all wrong; I know what I can do with Henry."
"If that is the case, I say good-bye now, for I shall be out of
England, if possible, by midnight. You must promise me that you will
not only not go to the king at all about this matter, but that you
will guard your tongue, jealous of its slightest word, and remember
with every breath that on your prudence hangs my life, which, I know,
is dear to you. Do you promise? If you do not, I must fly; so you will
lose me one way or the other, if you tell the king; either by my
flight or by my death."
"I promise," said Mary, with drooping head; the embodiment of despair;
all life and hope having left her again.
After a few minutes her face brightened, and she asked Brandon what
ship he would sail in for New Spain, and whence.
"We sail in the Royal Hind, from Bristol," he replied.
"How many go out in her; and are there any women?"
"No! no!" he returned; "no woman could make the trip, and, besides, on
ships of that sort, half pirate, half merchant, they do not take
women. The sailors are superstitious about it and will not sail with
them. They say they bring bad luck--adverse winds, calms, storms,
blackness, monsters from the deep and victorious foes."
"The ignorant creatures!" cried Mary.
Brandon continued: "There will be a hundred men, if the captain can
induce so many to enlist."
"How does one procure passage?" inquired Mary.
"By enlisting with the captain, a man named Bradhurst, at Bristol,
where the ship is now lying. There is where I enlisted by letter. But
why do you ask?"
"Oh! I only wanted to know."
We talked awhile on various topics, but Mary always brought the
conversation back to the same subject, the Royal Hind and New Spain.
After asking many questions, she sat in silence for a time, and then
abruptly broke into one of my sentences--she was always interrupting
me as if I were a parrot.
"I have been thinking and have made up my mind what I will do, and you
shall not dissuade me. I will go to New Spain with you. That will be
glorious--far better than the humdrum life of sitting at home--and
will solve the whole question."
"But that would be impossible, Mary," said Brandon, into whose face
this new evidence of her regard had brought a brightening look;
"utterly impossible. To begin with, no woman could stand the voyage;
not even you, strong and vigorous as you are."