It seemed an unspeakable smallness in a man of such high place in the
State, whose hand had tied and untied myriad knots of political and
court intrigue, that he should stoop to a game which any pettifogging
hanger-on might play-and reap scorn in the playing. By insidious arts,
Leicester had in his day turned the Queen’s mind to his own will; had
foiled the diplomacy of the Spaniard, the German and the Gaul; had by
subterranean means checkmated the designs of the Medici; had traced his
way through plot and counter-plot, hated by most, loved by none save,
maybe, his Royal mistress to whom he was now more a custom than a
cherished friend. Year upon year he had built up his influence. None had
championed him save himself, and even from the consequences of rashness
and folly he had risen to a still higher place in the kingdom. But such
as Leicester are ever at last a sacrifice to the laborious means by
which they achieve their greatest ends-means contemptible and small.
To the great intriguers every little detail, every commonplace
insignificance is used--and must be used by them alone--to further their
dark causes. They cannot trust their projects to brave lieutenants, to
faithful subordinates. They cannot say, “Here is the end; this is the
work to be done; upon your shoulders be the burden!” They must “stoop to
conquer.” Every miserable detail becomes of moment, until by-and-by the
art of intrigue and conspiracy begins to lose proportion in their minds.
The detail has ever been so important, conspiracy so much second nature,
that they must needs be intriguing and conspiring when the occasion is
trifling and the end negligible.
To all intriguers life has lost romance; there is no poem left in
nature; no ideal, personal, public or national, detains them in its
wholesome influence; no great purpose allures them; they have no
causes for which to die--save themselves. They are so honeycombed with
insincerity and the vice of thought, that by-and-by all colours are as
one, all pathways the same; because, whichever hue of light breaks upon
their world they see it through the grey-cloaked mist of falsehood; and
whether the path be good or bad they would still walk in it crookedly.
How many men and women Leicester had tracked or lured to their doom;
over how many men and women he had stepped to his place of power,
history speaks not carefully; but the traces of his deeds run through a
thousand archives, and they suggest plentiful sacrifices to a subverted
character.
Favourite of a Queen, he must now stoop to set a trap for the ruin of
as simple a soul as ever stepped upon the soil of England; and his dark
purposes had not even the excuse of necessity on the one hand, of love
or passion on the other. An insane jealousy of the place the girl had
won in the consideration of the Queen, of her lover who, he thought, had
won a still higher place in the same influence, was his only motive
for action at first. His cruelty was not redeemed even by the sensuous
interest the girl might arouse in a reckless nature by her beauty and
her charm.
So the great Leicester--the Gipsy, as the dead Sussex had called
him--lay in wait in Greenwich Park for Angele to pass, like some orchard
thief in the blossoming trees. Knowing the path by which she would
come to her father’s cottage from the palace, he had placed himself
accordingly. He had thought he might have to wait long or come often for
the perfect opportunity; but it seemed as if Fate played his game for
him, and that once again the fruit he would pluck should fall into his
palm. Bright-eyed, and elated from a long talk with the Duke’s Daughter,
who had given her a message from the Queen, Angele had abstractedly
taken the wrong path in the wood. Leicester saw that it would lead her
into the maze some distance off. Making a detour, he met her at the
moment she discovered her mistake. The light from the royal word
her friend had brought was still in her face; but it was crossed by
perplexity now.
He stood still as though astonished at seeing her, a smile upon his
face. So perfectly did he play his part that she thought the meeting
accidental; and though in her heart she had a fear of the man and knew
how bitter an enemy he was of Michel’s, his urbane power, his skilful
diplomacy of courtesy had its way. These complicated lives, instinct
with contradiction, have the interest of forbidden knowledge. The dark
experiences of life leave their mark and give such natures that touch
of mystery which allures even those who have high instincts and true
feelings, as one peeps over a hidden depth and wonders what lies beyond
the dark. So Angele, suddenly arrested, was caught by the sense of
mystery in the man, by the fascination of finesse, of dark power; and
it was womanlike that all on an instant she should dream of the soul of
goodness in things evil.
Thus in life we are often surprised out of long years of prejudice, and
even of dislike and suspicion, by some fortuitous incident, which might
have chanced to two who had every impulse towards each other, not such
antagonisms as lay between Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and this
Huguenot refugee. She had every cue to hate hum. Each moment of her life
in England had been beset with peril because of him-peril to the man she
loved, therefore peril to herself. And yet, so various is the nature of
woman, that, while steering straitly by one star, she levies upon the
light of other stars. Faithful and sincere, yet loving power, curious
and adventurous, she must needs, without intention, without purpose,
stray into perilous paths.
As Leicester stepped suddenly into Angele’s gaze, she was only, as
it were, conscious of a presence in itself alluring by virtue of the
history surrounding it. She was surprised out of an instinctive dislike,
and the cue she had to loathe him was for the moment lost.
Unconsciously, unintentionally, she smiled at him now, then, realising,
retreated, shrinking from him, her face averted. Man or woman had found
in Leicester the delicate and intrepid gamester, exquisite in the choice
of detail, masterful in the breadth of method. And now, as though his
whole future depended on this interview, he brought to bear a life-long
skill to influence her. He had determined to set the Queen against her.
He did not know--not even he--that she had saved the Queen’s life on
that auspicious May Day when Harry Lee had fought the white knight
Michel de la Foret and halved the honours of the lists with him. If
he had but known that the Queen had hid from him this fact--this vital
thing touching herself and England, he would have viewed his future
with a vaster distrust. But there could be no surer sign of Elizabeth’s
growing coldness and intended breach than that she had hid from him the
dreadful incident of the poisoned glove, and the swift execution of the
would-be murderer, and had made Cecil her only confidant. But he did
know that Elizabeth herself had commanded Michel de la Foret to the
lists; and his mad jealousy impelled him to resort to a satanic cunning
towards these two fugitives, who seemed to have mounted within a few
short days as far as had he in thrice as many years to a high place in
the regard of the Majesty of England.
To disgrace them both; to sow distrust of the girl in the Queen’s mind;
to make her seem the opposite of what she was; to drop in her own mind
suspicion of her lover; to drive her to some rash act, some challenge
of the Queen herself--that was his plan. He knew how little Elizabeth’s
imperious spirit would brook any challenge from this fearless girl
concerning De la Foret. But to convince her that the Queen favoured
Michel in some shadowed sense, that De la Foret was privy to a dark
compact--so deep a plot was all worthy of a larger end. He had well
inspired the Court of France through its ambassador to urge the Medici
to press actively and bitterly for De la Foret’s return to France and
to the beheading sword that waited for him; and his task had been made
light by international difficulties, which made the heart of Elizabeth’s
foreign policy friendship with France and an alliance against Philip
of Spain. She had, therefore, opened up, even in the past few days,
negotiations once again for the long-talked-of marriage with the Duke
of Anjou, the brother of the King, son of the Medici. State policy was
involved, and, if De la Foret might be a counter, the pledge of exchange
in the game, as it were, the path would once more be clear.
He well believed that Elizabeth’s notice of De la Foret was but a fancy
that would pass, as a hundred times before such fancies had come and
gone; but against that brighter prospect there lay the fact that never
before had she shown himself such indifference. In the past she had
raged against him, she had imprisoned him; she had driven him from
her presence in her anger, but always her paroxysms of rage had been
succeeded by paroxysms of tenderness. Now he saw a colder light in the
sky, a greyer horizon met his eye. So at every corner of the compass he
played for the breaking of the spell.
Yet as he now bowed low before Angele there seemed to show in his face
a very candour of surprise, of pleasure, joined to a something friendly
and protective in his glance and manner. His voice insinuated that
bygones should be bygones; it suggested that she had misunderstood him.
It pleaded against the injustice of her prejudice.
“So far from home!” he said with a smile.
“More miles from home,” she replied, thinking of never-returning days in
France, “than I shall ever count again.”
“But no, methinks the palace is within a whisper,” he responded.
“Lord Leicester knows well I am a prisoner; that I no longer abide in
the palace,” she answered.
He laughed lightly. “An imprisonment in a Queen’s friendship. I bethink
me, it is three hours since I saw you go to the palace. It is a few
worthless seconds since you have got your freedom.”
She nettled at his tone. “Lord Leicester takes great interest in my
unimportant goings and comings. I cannot think it is because I go and
come.”
He chose to misunderstand her meaning. Drawing closer he bent over her
shoulder. “Since your arrival here, my only diary is the tally of your
coming and going.” Suddenly, as though by an impulse of great frankness,
he added in a low tone:
“And is it strange that I should follow you--that I should worship grace
and virtue? Men call me this and that. You have no doubt been filled
with dark tales of my misdeeds. Has there been one in the Court, even
one, who, living by my bounty or my patronage, has said one good word
of me? And why? For long years the Queen, who, maybe, might have been
better counselled, chose me for her friend, adviser--because I was true
to her. I have lived for the Queen, and living for her have lived for
England. Could I keep--I ask you, could I keep myself blameless in the
midst of flattery, intrigue, and conspiracy? I admit that I have
played with fiery weapons in my day; and must needs still do so. The
incorruptible cannot exist in the corrupted air of this Court. You have
come here with the light of innocence and truth about you. At first I
could scarce believe that such goodness lived, hardly understood it. The
light half-blinded and embarrassed; but, at last, I saw! You of all this
Court have made me see what sort of life I might have lived. You have
made me dream the dreams of youth and high unsullied purpose once again.
Was it strange that in the dark pathways of the Court I watched your
footsteps come and go, carrying radiance with you? No--Leicester has
learned how sombre, sinister, has been his past, by a presence which
is the soul of beauty, of virtue, and of happy truth. Lady, my heart is
yours. I worship you.”
Overborne for the moment by the eager, searching eloquence of his words,
she had listened bewildered to him. Now she turned upon him with panting
breath and said:
“My lord, my lord, I will hear no more. You know I love Monsieur de
la Foret, for whose sake I am here in England--for whose sake I still
remain.”
“‘Tis a labour of love but ill requited,” he answered with suggestion in
his tone.
“What mean you, my lord?” she asked sharply, a kind of blind agony in
her voice; for she felt his meaning, and though she did not believe him,
and knew in her soul he slandered, there was a sting, for slander ever
scorches where it touches.
“Can you not see?” he said. “May Day--why did the Queen command him to
the lists? Why does she keep him here-in the palace? Why, against
the will of France, her ally, does she refuse to send him forth? Why,
unheeding the laughter of the Court, does she favour this unimportant
stranger, brave though he be? Why should she smile upon him?... Can you
not see, sweet lady?”
“You know well why the Queen detains him here,” she answered calmly now.
“In the Queen’s understanding with France, exiles who preach the
faith are free from extradition. You heard what the Queen required of
him--that on Trinity Day he should preach before her, and upon this
preaching should depend his safety.”
“Indeed, so her Majesty said with great humour,” replied Leicester. “So
indeed she said; but when we hide our faces a thin veil suffices. The
man is a soldier--a soldier born. Why should he turn priest now? I pray
you, think again. He was quick of wit; the Queen’s meaning was clear to
him; he rose with seeming innocence to the fly, and she landed him at
the first toss. But what is forward bodes no good to you, dear star of
heaven. I have known the Queen for half a lifetime. She has wild whims
and dangerous fancies, fills her hours of leisure with experiences--an
artist is the Queen. She means no good to you.”
She had made as if to leave him, though her eyes searched in vain for
the path which she should take; but she now broke in impatiently:
“Poor, unnoted though I am, the Queen of England is my friend,” she
answered. “What evil could she wish me? From me she has naught to fear.
I am not an atom in her world. Did she but lift her finger I am done.
But she knows that, humble though I be, I would serve her to my last
breath; because I know, my Lord Leicester, how many there are who serve
her foully, faithlessly; and there should be those by her who would
serve her singly.”
His eyes half closed, he beat his toe upon the ground. He frowned, as
though he had no wish to hurt her by words which he yet must speak. With
calculated thought he faltered.
“Yet do you not think it strange,” he said at last, “that Monsieur de la
Foret should be within the palace ever, and that you should be banished
from the palace? Have you never seen the fly and the spider in the web?
Do you not know that they who have the power to bless or ban, to give
joy or withhold it, appear to give when they mean to withhold? God bless
us all--how has your innocence involved your judgment!”
She suddenly flushed to the eyes. “I have wit enough,” she said acidly,
“to feel that truth which life’s experience may not have taught me.
It is neither age nor evil that teaches one to judge ‘twixt black and
white. God gives the true divination to human hearts that need.”
It was a contest in which Leicester revelled--simplicity and
single-mindedness against the multifarious and double-tongued. He had
made many efforts in his time to conquer argument and prejudice. When
he chose, none could be more insinuating or turn the flank of a proper
argument by more adroit suggestion. He used his power now.
“You think she means well by you? You think that she, who has a thousand
ladies of a kingdom at her call, of the best and most beautiful--and
even,” his voice softened, “though you are more beautiful than all, that
beauty would soften her towards you? When was it Elizabeth loved beauty?
When was it that her heart warmed towards those who would love or wed?
Did she not imprison me, even in these palace grounds, for one whole
year because I sought to marry? Has she not a hundred times sent from
her presence women with faces like flowers because they were in contrast
to her own? Do you see love blossoming at this Court? God’s Son! but
she would keep us all like babes in Eden an’ she could, unmated and
unloved.”
He drew quickly to her and leant over her, whispering down her shoulder.
“Do you think there is any reason why all at once she should change her
mind and cherish lovers?”
She looked up at him fearlessly and firmly.
“In truth, I do. My Lord Leicester, you have lived in the circle of
her good pleasure, near to her noble Majesty, as you say, for half a
lifetime. Have you not found a reason why now or any time she should
cherish love and lovers? Ah, no, you have seen her face, you have heard
her voice, but you have not known her heart!”
“Ah, opportunity lacked,” he said in irony and with a reminiscent
smile. “I have been busy with State affairs, I have not sat on cushions,
listening to royal fingers on the virginals. Still, I ask you, do you
think there is a reason why from her height she should stoop down to
rescue you or give you any joy? Wherefore should the Queen do aught to
serve you? Wherefore should she save your lover?”
It was on Angele’s lips to answer, “Because I saved her life on May
Day.” It was on her lips to tell of the poisoned glove, but she only
smiled, and said:
“But, yes, I think, my lord, there is a reason, and in that reason I
have faith.”
Leicester saw how firmly she was fixed in her idea, how rooted was her
trust in the Queen’s intentions towards her; and he guessed there was
something hidden which gave her such supreme confidence.
“If she means to save him, why does she not save him now? Why not end
the business in a day--not stretch it over these long mid-summer weeks?”
“I do not think it strange,” she answered. “He is a political prisoner.
Messages must come and go between England and France. Besides, who
calleth for haste? Is it I who have most at stake? It is not the first
time I have been at Court, my lord. In these high places things are
orderly,”--a touch of sarcasm came into her tone,--“life is not a mighty
rushing wind, save to those whom vexing passion drives to hasty deeds.”
She made to move on once more, but paused, still not certain of her way.
“Permit me to show you,” he said with a laugh and a gesture towards a
path. “Not that--this is the shorter. I will take you to a turning which
leads straight to your durance--and another which leads elsewhere.”
She could not say no, because she had, in very truth, lost her way, and
she might wander far and be in danger. Also, she had no fear of him.
Steeled to danger in the past, she was not timid; but, more than all,
the game of words between them had had its fascination. The man himself,
by virtue of what he was, had his fascination also. The thing inherent
in all her sex, to peep over the hedge, to skirt dangerous fires
lightly, to feel the warmth distantly and not be scorched--that was
in her, too; and she lived according to her race and the long
predisposition of the ages. Most women like her--as good as she--have
peeped and stretched out hands to the alluring fire and come safely
through, wiser and no better. But many, too, bewildered and confused
by what they see--as light from a mirror flashed into the eye half
blinds--have peeped over the hedge and, miscalculating their power
of self-control, have entered in, and returned no more into the quiet
garden of unstraying love.
Leicester quickly put on an air of gravity. “I warn you that danger lies
before you. If you cross the Queen--and you will cross the Queen
when you know the truth, as I know it--you will pay a heavy price for
refusing Leicester as your friend.”
She made a protesting motion and seemed about to speak, but suddenly,
with a passionate gesture, Leicester added: “Let them go their way.
Monsieur de la Foret will be tossed aside before another winter comes.
Do you think he can abide here in the midst of plot and intrigue, and
hated by the people of the Court? He is doomed. But more, he is unworthy
of you; while I can serve you well, and I can love you well.” She shrank
away from him. “No, do not turn from me, for in very truth, Leicester’s
heart has been pierced by the inevitable arrow. You think I mean you
evil?”
He paused with a sudden impulse continued: “No! no! And if there be a
saving grace in marriage, marriage it shall be, if you will but hear me.
You shall be my wife--Leicester’s wife. As I have mounted to power so
I will hold power with you--with you, the brightest spirit that ever
England saw. Worthy of a kingdom with you beside me, I shall win to
greater, happier days; and at Kenilworth, where kings and queens have
lodged, you shall be ruler. We will leave this Court until Elizabeth,
betrayed by those who know not how to serve her, shall send for me
again. Here--the power behind the throne--you and I will sway this realm
through the aging, sentimental Queen. Listen, and look at me in the
eyes--I speak the truth, you read my heart. You think I hated you and
hated De la Foret. By all the gods, it’s true I hated him, because I saw
that he would come between me and the Queen. A man must have one great
passion. Life itself must be a passion. Power was my passion--power,
not the Queen. You have broken all that down. I yield it all to you--for
your sake and my own. I would steal from life yet before my sun goes to
its setting a few years of truth and honesty and clear design. At
heart I am a patriot--a loyal Englishman. Your cause--the cause of
Protestantism--did I not fight for it at Rochelle? Have I not ever urged
the Queen to spend her revenue for your cause, to send her captains and
her men to fight for it?”
She raised her head in interest, and her lips murmured: “Yes, yes, I
know you did that.”
He saw his advantage and pursued it. “See, I will be honest with
you--honest, at last, as I have wished in vain to be, for honesty was
misunderstood. It is not so with you--you understand. Dear, light of
womanhood, I speak the truth now. I have been evil in my day I admit
it--evil because I was in the midst of evil. I betrayed because I was
betrayed; I slew, else I should have been slain. We have had dark days
in England, privy conspiracy and rebellion; and I have had to thread my
way through dreadful courses by a thousand blind paths. Would it be
no joy to you if I, through your influence, recast my life--remade
my policy, renewed my youth--pursuing principle where I have pursued
opportunity? Angele, come to Kenilworth with me. Leave De la Foret to
his fate. The way to happiness is with me. Will you come?”
He had made his great effort. As he spoke he almost himself believed
that he told the truth. Under the spell of his own emotional power
it seemed as though he meant to marry her, as though he could find
happiness in the union. He had almost persuaded himself to be what he
would have her to believe he might be.
Under the warmth and convincing force of his words her pulses had beat
faster, her heart had throbbed in her throat, her eyes had glistened;
but not with that light which they had shed for Michel de la Foret.
How different was this man’s wooing--its impetuous, audacious, tender
violence, with that quiet, powerful, almost sacred gravity of
her Camisard lover! It is this difference--the weighty, emotional
difference--between a desperate passion and a pure love which has ever
been so powerful in twisting the destinies of a moiety of the world to
misery, who otherwise would have stayed contented, inconspicuous and
good. Angele would have been more than human if she had not felt the
spell of the ablest intriguer, of the most fascinating diplomatist of
his day.
Before he spoke of marriage the thrill--the unconvincing thrill though
it was--of a perilous temptation was upon her; but the very thing most
meant to move her only made her shudder; for in her heart of hearts
she knew that he was ineradicably false. To be married to one
constitutionally untrue would be more terrible a fate for her than to be
linked to him in a lighter, more dissoluble a bond. So do the greatest
tricksters of this world overdo their part, so play the wrong card when
every past experience suggests it is the card to play. He knew by the
silence that followed his words, and the slow, steady look she gave him,
that she was not won nor on the way to the winning.
“My lord,” she said at last, and with a courage which steadied her
affrighted and perturbed innocence, “you are eloquent, you are fruitful
of flattery, of those things which have, I doubt not, served you well
in your day. But, if you see your way to a better life, it were well you
should choose one of nobler mould than I. I am not made for sacrifice,
to play the missioner and snatch brands from the burning. I have enough
to do to keep my own feet in the ribbon-path of right. You must
look elsewhere for that guardian influence which is to make of you a
paragon.”
“No, no,” he answered sharply, “you think the game not worth the
candle--you doubt me and what I can do for you; my sincerity, my power
you doubt.”
“Indeed, yes, I doubt both,” she answered gravely, “for you would have
me believe that I have power to lead you. With how small a mind you
credit me! You think, too, that you sway this kingdom; but I know that
you stand upon a cliff’s edge, and that the earth is fraying ‘neath your
tread. You dare to think that you have power to drag down with you the
man who honours me with--”
“With his love, you’d say. Yet he will leave you fretting out your soul
until the sharp-edged truth cuts your heart in twain. Have you no pride?
I care not what you say of me--say your worst, and I will not resent it,
for I will still prove that your way lies with me.”
She gave a bitter sigh, and touched her forehead with trembling fingers.
“If words could prove it, I had been convinced but now, for they are
well devised, and they have music too; but such a music, my lord, as
would drown the truth in the soul of a woman. Your words allure, but you
have learned the art of words. You yourself--oh, my lord, you who have
tasted all the pleasures of this world, could you then have the heart to
steal from one who has so little that little which gives her happiness?”
“You know not what can make you happy--I can teach you that. By God’s
Son! but you have wit and intellect and are a match for a prince, not
for a cast off Camisard. I shall ere long be Lord--Lieutenant of these
Isles-of England and Ireland. Come to my nest. We will fly far--ah, your
eye brightens, your heart leaps to mine--I feel it now, I--”
“Oh, have done, have done,” she passionately broke in; “I would rather
die, be torn upon the rack, burnt at the stake, than put my hand in
yours! And you do not wish it--you speak but to destroy, not to cherish.
While you speak to me I see all those”--she made a gesture as though to
put something from her “all those to whom you have spoken as you have
done to me. I hear the myriad falsehoods you have told--one whelming
confusion. I feel the blindness which has crept upon them--those poor
women--as you have sown the air with the dust of the passion which you
call love. Oh, you never knew what love meant, my lord! I doubt if, when
you lay in your mother’s arms, you turned to her with love. You never
did one kindly act for love, no generous thought was ever born in you by
love. Sir, I know it as though it were written in a book; your life has
been one long calculation--your sympathy or kindness a calculated thing.
Good-nature, emotion you may have had, but never the divine thing by
which the world is saved. Were there but one little place where that
Eden flower might bloom within your heart, you could not seek to ruin
that love which lives in mine and fills it, conquering all the lesser
part of me. I never knew of how much love I was capable until I heard
you speak today. Out of your life’s experience, out of all that you
have learned of women good and evil, you--for a selfish, miserable
purpose--would put the gyves upon my wrists, make me a pawn in your dark
game; a pawn which you would lose without a thought as the game went on.
“If you must fight, my lord, if you must ruin Monsieur de la Foret and
a poor Huguenot girl, do it by greater means than this. You have power,
you say. Use it then; destroy us, if you will. Send us to the Medici:
bring us to the block, murder us--that were no new thing to Lord
Leicester. But do not stoop to treachery and falsehood to thrust us
down. Oh, you have made me see the depths of shame to-day! But yet,”
her voice suddenly changed, a note of plaintive force filled it--“I have
learned much this hour--more than I ever knew. Perhaps it is that we
come to knowledge only through fire and tears.” She smiled sadly. “I
suppose that sometime some day, this page of life would have scorched my
sight. Oh, my lord, what was there in me that you dared speak so to
me? Was there naught to have stayed your tongue and stemmed the tide in
which you would engulf me?” He had listened as in a dream at first. She
had read him as he might read himself, had revealed him with the certain
truth, as none other had done in all his days. He was silent for a long
moment, then raised his hand in protest.
“You have a strange idea of what makes offence and shame. I offered
you marriage,” he said complacently. “And when I come to think upon it,
after all that you have said, fair Huguenot, I see no cause for railing.
You call me this and that; to you I am a liar, a rogue, a cut-throat,
what you will; and yet, and yet, I will have my way--I will have my way
in the end.”
“You offered me marriage--and meant it not. Do I not know? Did you rely
so little on your compelling powers, my lord, that you must needs resort
to that bait? Do you think that you will have your way to-morrow if you
have failed to-day?”
With a quick change of tone and a cold, scornful laugh he rejoined: “Do
you intend to measure swords with me?”
“No, no, my lord,” she answered quietly; “what should one poor
unfriended girl do in contest with the Earl of Leicester? But yet, in
very truth, I have friends, and in my hour of greatest need I shall go
seeking.”
She was thinking of the Queen. He guessed her thought.
“You will not be so mad,” he said urbanely again. “Of what can you
complain to the Queen? Tut, tut, you must seek other friends than the
Majesty of England!”
“Then, my lord, I will,” she answered bravely. “I will seek the help of
such a Friend as fails not when all fails, even He who putteth down the
mighty from their seats and exalteth the humble.”
“Well, well, if I have not touched your heart,” he answered gallantly,
“I at least have touched your wit and intellect. Once more I offer you
alliance. Think well before you decline.”
He had no thought that he would succeed, but it was ever his way to
return to the charge. It had been the secret of his life’s success so
far. He had never taken a refusal. He had never believed that when man
or woman said no that no was meant; and, if it were meant, he still
believed that constant dropping would wear away the stone. He still held
that persistence was the greatest lever in the world, that unswerving
persistence was the master of opportunity.
They had now come to two paths in the park leading different ways.
“This road leads to Kenilworth, this to your prison,” he said with a
slow gesture, his eyes fixed upon hers. “I will go to my prison, then,”
she said, stepping forward, “and alone, by your leave.”
Leicester was a good sportsman. Though he had been beaten all along the
line, he hid his deep chagrin, choked down the rage that was in him.
Smiling, he bowed low.
“I will do myself the honour to visit your prison to-morrow,” he said.
“My father will welcome you, my lord,” she answered, and, gathering up
her skirt, ran down the pathway.
He stood unmoving, and watched her disappear. “But I shall have my way
with them both,” he said aloud.
The voice of a singer sounded in the green wood. Half consciously
Leicester listened. The words came shrilling through the trees:
“Oh, love, it is a lily flower,
(Sing, my captain, sing, my lady!)
The sword shall cleave it,
Life shall leave it
Who shall know the hour?
(Sing, my lady, still!)”
Presently the jingling of bells mingled with the song, then a figure in
motley burst upon him. It was the Queen’s fool.
“Brother, well met--most happily met!” he cried. “And why well met,
fool?” asked Leicester. “Prithee, my work grows heavy, brother. I seek
another fool for the yoke. Here are my bells for you. I will keep my
cap. And so we will work together, fool: you for the morning, I for
the afternoon, and the devil take the night-time! So God be with you,
Obligato!”
With a laugh he leaped into the undergrowth, and left Leicester standing
with the bells in his hand.