‘I watched her in the morning hour,
So pure and fresh and fair;
A blossom bursting into flower
To gladden all the air.
‘I marked her shedding sweets around
Beneath the noontide ray;
The glory of the garden ground,
And the pride of the summer’s day.
‘But long before that daylight’s close
The southern blast awoke,
And crushed and tore the queenly rose
Beneath its pelting stroke.
‘Alas! her petals strew the bower;
Yet mangled tho’ she lie,
The fragrance of the perished flower
Floats upward to the sky.’
So the Maries were disposed of at last. The roses were unbound from the
chaplet and set free. Two of the flowers bloomed happy and beautiful
on the manly breasts in which they had not spared on occasion to drive
their thorns; one clung obstinately to the person of her Queen; and
one, perhaps not the least fragrant and fair of the posy, drooped in a
cloister, and so withered untimely away.
Mary Hamilton went peacefully to her rest. Mary Seton vowed eternal
constancy to her Sovereign, and wished for nothing better than to live
and die a maiden in the Queen’s service. Mary Beton took her loyal
soldier at last, and made him amends, doubtless, for the pains he had
inflicted during his probation. Randolph, a little disgusted and a
good deal amused, drank a posset to the health of the newly-wedded
pair, and even addressed a neatly-turned compliment to the bride, which
met with a colder reception that its ingenuity deserved; but then the
diplomatist consoled himself by reflecting that a continuance of his
attentions to ‘worthy Mistress Beton,’ as he called her, would be a sad
waste of time when she ceased to furnish him with the intelligence he
required; and as for marrying her himself, why that of course was out
of the question. Ambition is a bride who brooks no rival, and, in good
truth, her worshippers cannot have too few ties connecting them with
their kind, for they must turn their hands to strange jobs on occasion.
Altogether he was well satisfied to see her so comfortably disposed;
for Randolph, as has already been stated, was a good-natured man.
Having got over all their differences before marriage, Walter Maxwell
and his Mary quarrelled but little after that welcome event. Tried, as
their affection had been, in the fire, and proved through so many years
of anxiety, sorrow, and estrangement, it would have been unreasonable
to doubt it, and madness indeed to hazard such a treasure for the sake
of a light word or a moment’s discontent. So they went on caring for
each other as fondly, though not so uncomfortably, as before. Neither
of them were people to make much demonstration of their feelings, but a
calm happiness of repose to which it had long been a stranger seemed to
have settled on the husband’s brow, and the love-light still shown soft
and lambent in the wife’s blue eyes when they turned upon the man she
had trusted so long and so feared to lose at last.
Their time, too, was fully occupied. Plenty to do at home; troubles
and strife and stirring news day by day abroad; constant anxiety
for the beloved mistress, whom they were still prepared to serve
with zealous loyalty; and no small share of ill-will to sustain from
the many disaffected and intriguing, who were never quiet for a day
throughout the length and breadth of the land. Nevertheless, of all the
Maries, perhaps Walter Maxwell’s bride flourished the happiest and the
best-cared for of the blooming cluster.
But what of the Queen of the Roses, the Mary of Maries, the noblest
princess in Europe, the loveliest woman in the world? Alas for the
fairest flower in the garden! rain or shine, storm or calm, there was
to be no domestic peace, no permanent repose for her. The man who
should have tended and cherished her to the death, proved but a selfish
profligate, and left her to pine and languish, weary, sorrowing, and
alone. The man who would once have shed his heart’s blood freely to
shield her from the slightest injury, goaded into madness, ere long
snatched wildly at her beauty, soiling her petals with unknightly hand,
and dragging the beloved one with him ruthlessly and shamelessly to the
dust.
Yet still the stately flower bloomed on, fair and fragrant under the
pure air of heaven, fair and fragrant in the close confinement and the
darkened daylight of a prison-house.
But the storm was brewing the while low down in the southern sky; the
storm that was about to gather so dark and pitiless, to burst at last
in its fury over the Queen of the Roses, and lay that lovely head upon
the cold earth, beautiful and majestic even in the pale agony of death.
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON
End of Project Gutenberg's The Queen's Maries, by G. J. Whyte Melville