While Colonel Everard retreated in high indignation from the little
refection, which Sir Henry Lee had in his good-humour offered, and
withdrawn under the circumstances of provocation which we have
detailed, the good old knight, scarce recovered from his fit of
passion, partook of it with his daughter and guest, and shortly after,
recollecting some silvan task, (for, though to little efficient
purpose, he still regularly attended to his duties as Ranger,) he
called Bevis, and went out, leaving the two young people together.
“Now,” said the amorous Prince to himself, “that Alice is left without
her lion, it remains to see whether she is herself of a tigress breed.—
So, Sir Bevis has left his charge,” he said loud; “I thought the
knights of old, those stern guardians of which he is so fit a
representative, were more rigorous in maintaining a vigilant guard.”
“Bevis,” said Alice, “knows that his attendance on me is totally
needless; and, moreover, he has other duties to perform, which every
true knight prefers to dangling the whole morning by a lady’s sleeve.”
“You speak treason against all true affection,” said the gallant; “a
lady’s lightest wish should to a true knight be more binding than aught
excepting the summons of his sovereign. I wish, Mistress Alice, you
would but intimate your slightest desire to me, and you should see how
I have practised obedience.”
“You never brought me word what o’clock it was this morning,” replied
the young lady, “and there I sate questioning of the wings of Time,
when I should have remembered that gentlemen’s gallantry can be quite
as fugitive as Time himself. How do you know what your disobedience may
have cost me and others? Pudding and pasty may have been burned to a
cinder, for, sir, I practise the old domestic rule of visiting the
kitchen; or I may have missed prayers, or I may have been too late for
an appointment, simply by the negligence of Master Louis Kerneguy
failing to let me know the hour of the day.”
“O,” replied Kerneguy, “I am one of those lovers who cannot endure
absence—I must be eternally at the feet of my fair enemy—such, I think,
is the title with which romances teach us to grace the fair and cruel
to whom we devote our hearts and lives.—Speak for me, good lute,” he
added, taking up the instrument, “and show whether I know not my duty.”
He sung, but with more taste than execution, the air of a French
rondelai, to which some of the wits or sonnetteers, in his gay and
roving train, had adapted English verses.
An hour with thee!—When earliest day
Dapples with gold the eastern grey,
Oh, what, can frame my mind to bear
The toil and turmoil, cark and care.
New griefs, which coming hours unfold,
And sad remembrance of the old?—
One hour with thee!
One hour with thee!—When burning June
Waves his red flag at pitch of noon;
What shall repay the faithful swain,
His labour on the sultry plain,
And more than cave or sheltering bough,
Cool feverish blood, and throbbing brow?—
One hour with thee!
One hour with thee!—When sun is set,
O, what can teach me to forget
The thankless labours of the day;
The hopes, the wishes, flung away:
The increasing wants, and lessening gains,
The master’s pride, who scorns my pains?—
One hour with thee!
“Truly, there is another verse,” said the songster; “but I sing it not
to you, Mistress Alice, because some of the prudes of the court liked
it not.” “I thank you, Master Louis,” answered the young lady, “both
for your discretion in singing what has given me pleasure, and in
forbearing what might offend me. Though a country girl, I pretend to be
so far of the court mode, as to receive nothing which does not pass
current among the better class there.”
“I would,” answered Louis, “that you were so well confirmed in their
creed, as to let all pass with you, to which court ladies would give
currency.”
“And what would be the consequence?” said Alice, with perfect
composure.
“In that case,” said Louis, embarrassed like a general who finds that
his preparations for attack do not seem to strike either fear or
confusion into the enemy—“in that case you would forgive me, fair
Alice, if I spoke to you in a warmer language than that of mere
gallantry—if I told you how much my heart was interested in what you
consider as idle jesting—if I seriously owned it was in your power to
make me the happiest or the most miserable of human beings.”
“Master Kerneguy,” said Alice, with the same unshaken nonchalance, “let
us understand each other. I am little acquainted with high-bred
manners, and I am unwilling, I tell you plainly, to be accounted a
silly country girl, who, either from ignorance or conceit, is startled
at every word of gallantry addressed to her by a young man, who, for
the present, has nothing better to do than coin and circulate such
false compliments. But I must not let this fear of seeming rustic and
awkwardly timorous carry me too far; and being ignorant of the exact
limits, I will take care to stop within them.”
“I trust, madam,” said Kerneguy, “that however severely you may be
disposed to judge of me, your justice will not punish me too severely
for an offence, of which your charms are alone the occasion?”
“Hear me out, sir, if you please,” resumed Alice. “I have listened to
you when you spoke _en berger_—nay, my complaisance has been so great,
as to answer you _en bergère_—for I do not think any thing except
ridicule can come of dialogues between Lindor and Jeanneton; and the
principal fault of the style is its extreme and tiresome silliness and
affectation. But when you begin to kneel, offer to take my hand, and
speak with a more serious tone, I must remind you of our real
characters. I am the daughter of Sir Henry Lee, sir; you are, or
profess to be, Master Louis Kerneguy, my brother’s page, and a fugitive
for shelter under my father’s roof, who incurs danger by the harbour he
affords you, and whose household, therefore, ought not to be disturbed
by your unpleasing importunities.”
“I would to Heaven, fair Alice,” said the King, “that your objections
to the suit which I am urging, not in jest, but most seriously, as that
on which my happiness depends, rested only on the low and precarious
station of Louis Kerneguy!—Alice, thou hast the soul of thy family, and
must needs love honour. I am no more the needy Scottish page, whom I
have, for my own purposes, personated, than I am the awkward lout,
whose manners I adopted on the first night of our acquaintance. This
hand, poor as I seem, can confer a coronet.”
“Keep it,” said Alice, “for some more ambitious damsel, my lord,—for
such I conclude is your title, if this romance be true,—I would not
accept your hand, could you confer a duchy.”
“In one sense, lovely Alice, you have neither overrated my power nor my
affection. It is your King—it is Charles Stewart who speaks to you!—he
can confer duchies, and if beauty can merit them, it is that of Alice
Lee. Nay, nay—rise—do not kneel—it is for your sovereign to kneel to
thee, Alice, to whom he is a thousand times more devoted than the
wanderer Louis dared venture to profess himself. My Alice has, I know,
been trained up in those principles of love and obedience to her
sovereign, that she cannot, in conscience or in mercy, inflict on him
such a wound as would be implied in the rejection of his suit.”
In spite of all Charles’s attempts to prevent her, Alice had persevered
in kneeling on one knee, until she had touched with her lip the hand
with which he attempted to raise her. But this salutation ended, she
stood upright, with her arms folded on her bosom—her looks humble, but
composed, keen, and watchful, and so possessed of herself, so little
flattered by the communication which the King had supposed would have
been overpowering, that he scarce knew in what terms next to urge his
solicitation.
“Thou art silent—thou art silent,” he said, “my pretty Alice. Has the
King no more influence with thee than the poor Scottish page?”
“In one sense, every influence,” said Alice; “for he commands my best
thoughts, my best wishes, my earnest prayers, my devoted loyalty,
which, as the men of the House of Lee have been ever ready to testify
with the sword, so are the women bound to seal, if necessary, with
their blood. But beyond the duties of a true and devoted subject, the
King is even less to Alice Lee than poor Louis Kerneguy. The Page could
have tendered an honourable union—the Monarch can but offer a
contaminated coronet.”
“You mistake, Alice—you mistake,” said the King, eagerly. “Sit down and
let me speak to you—sit down—What is’t you fear?”
“I fear nothing, my liege,” answered Alice. “What _can_ I fear from the
King of Britain—I, the daughter of his loyal subject, and under my
father’s roof? But I remember the distance betwixt us; and though I
might trifle and jest with mine equal, to my King I must only appear in
the dutiful posture of a subject, unless where his safety may seem to
require that I do not acknowledge his dignity.”
Charles, though young, being no novice in such scenes, was surprised to
encounter resistance of a kind which had not been opposed to him in
similar pursuits, even in cases where he had been unsuccessful. There
was neither anger, nor injured pride, nor disorder, nor disdain, real
or affected, in the manners and conduct of Alice. She stood, as it
seemed, calmly prepared to argue on the subject, which is generally
decided by passion—showed no inclination to escape from the apartment,
but appeared determined to hear with patience the suit of the
lover—while her countenance and manner intimated that she had this
complaisance only in deference to the commands of the King.
“She is ambitious,” thought Charles; “it is by dazzling her love of
glory, not by mere passionate entreaties, that I must hope to be
successful.—I pray you be seated, my fair Alice,” he said; “the lover
entreats—the King commands you.”
“The King,” said Alice, “may permit the relaxation of the ceremonies
due to royalty, but he cannot abrogate the subject’s duty, even by
express command. I stand here while it is your Majesty’s pleasure to
address—a patient listener, as in duty bound.”
“Know then, simple girl,” said the King, “that in accepting my
proffered affection and protection, you break through no law either of
virtue or morality. Those who are born to royalty are deprived of many
of the comforts of private life—chiefly that which is, perhaps, the
dearest and most precious, the power of choosing their own mates for
life. Their formal weddings are guided upon principles of political
expedience only, and those to whom they are wedded are frequently, in
temper, person, and disposition, the most unlikely to make them happy.
Society has commiseration, therefore, towards us, and binds our
unwilling and often unhappy wedlocks with chains of a lighter and more
easy character than those which fetter other men, whose marriage ties,
as more voluntarily assumed, ought, in proportion, to be more strictly
binding. And therefore, ever since the time that old Henry built these
walls, priests and prelates, as well as nobles and statesmen, have been
accustomed to see a fair Rosamond rule the heart of an affectionate
monarch, and console him for the few hours of constraint and state
which he must bestow upon some angry and jealous Eleanor. To such a
connection the world attaches no blame; they rush to the festival to
admire the beauty of the lovely Esther, while the imperious Vashti is
left to queen it in solitude; they throng the palace to ask her
protection, whose influence is more in the state an hundred times than
that of the proud consort; her offspring rank with the nobles of the
land, and vindicate by their courage, like the celebrated Longsword,
Earl of Salisbury, their descent from royalty and from love. From such
connections our richest ranks of nobles are recruited; and the mother
lives, in the greatness of her posterity honoured and blest, as she
died lamented and wept in the arms of love and friendship.”
“Did Rosamond so die, my lord?” said Alice. “Our records say she was
poisoned by the injured Queen—poisoned, without time allowed to call to
God for the pardon of her many faults. Did her memory so live? I have
heard that, when the Bishop purified the church at Godstowe, her
monument was broken open by his orders, and her bones thrown out into
unconsecrated ground.”
“Those were rude old days, sweet Alice,” answered Charles; “queens are
not now so jealous, nor bishops so rigorous. And know, besides, that in
the lands to which I would lead the loveliest of her sex, other laws
obtain, which remove from such ties even the slightest show of scandal.
There is a mode of matrimony, which, fulfilling all the rites of the
Church, leaves no stain on the conscience; yet investing the bride with
none of the privileges peculiar to her husband’s condition, infringes
not upon the duties which the King owes to his subjects. So that Alice
Lee may, in all respects, become the real and lawful wife of Charles
Stewart, except that their private union gives her no title to be Queen
of England.”
“My ambition,” said Alice, “will be sufficiently gratified to see
Charles king, without aiming to share either his dignity in public, or
his wealth and regal luxury in private.”
“I understand thee, Alice,” said the King, hurt but not displeased.
“You ridicule me, being a fugitive, for speaking like a king. It is a
habit, I admit, which I have learned, and of which even misfortune
cannot cure me. But my case is not so desperate as you may suppose. My
friends are still many in these kingdoms; my allies abroad are bound,
by regard to their own interest, to espouse my cause. I have hopes
given me from Spain, from France, and from other nations; and I have
confidence that my father’s blood has not been poured forth in vain,
nor is doomed to dry up without due vengeance. My trust is in Him from
whom princes derive their title, and, think what thou wilt of my
present condition, I have perfect confidence that I shall one day sit
on the throne of England.”
“May God grant it!” said Alice; “and that he _may_ grant it, noble
Prince, deign to consider—whether you now pursue a conduct likely to
conciliate his favour. Think of the course you recommend to a
motherless maiden, who has no better defence against your sophistry,
than what a sense of morality, together with the natural feeling of
female dignity inspires. Whether the death of her father, which would
be the consequence of her imprudence;—whether the despair of her
brother, whose life has been so often in peril to save that of your
Majesty;— whether the dishonour of the roof which has sheltered you,
will read well in your annals, or are events likely to propitiate God,
whose controversy with your House has been but too visible, or recover
the affections of the people of England, in whose eyes such actions are
an abomination, I leave to your own royal mind to consider.”
Charles paused, struck with a turn to the conversation which placed his
own interests more in collision with the gratification of his present
passion than he had supposed.
“If your Majesty,” said Alice, curtsying deeply, “has no farther
commands for my attendance, may I be permitted to withdraw?”
“Stay yet a little, strange and impracticable girl,” said the King;
“and answer me but one question:—Is it the lowness of my present
fortunes that makes my suit contemptible?”
“I have nothing to conceal, my liege,” she said, “and my answer shall
be as plain and direct as the question you have asked. If I could have
been moved to an act of ignominious, insane, and ungrateful folly, it
could only arise from my being blinded by that passion, which I believe
is pleaded as an excuse for folly and for crime much more often than it
has a real existence. I must, in short, have been in love, as it is
called—and that might have been—with my equal, but surely never with my
sovereign, whether such only in title, or in possession of his
kingdom.”
“Yet loyalty was ever the pride, almost the ruling passion, of your
family, Alice,” said the King.
“And could I reconcile that loyalty,” said Alice, “with indulging my
sovereign, by permitting him to prosecute a suit dishonourable to
himself as to me? Ought I, as a faithful subject, to join him in a
folly, which might throw yet another stumbling-block in the path to his
restoration, and could only serve to diminish his security, even if he
were seated upon his throne?”
“At this rate,” said Charles, discontentedly, “I had better have
retained my character of the page, than assumed that of a sovereign,
which it seems is still more irreconcilable with my wishes.”
“My candour shall go still farther,” said Alice. “I could have felt as
little for Louis Kerneguy as for the heir of Britain; for such love as
I have to bestow, (and it is not such as I read of in romance, or hear
poured forth in song,) has been already conferred on another object.
This gives your Majesty pain—I am sorry for it—but the wholesomest
medicines are often bitter.”
“Yes,” answered the King, with some asperity, “and physicians are
reasonable enough to expect their patients to swallow them, as if they
were honeycomb. It is true, then, that whispered tale of the cousin
Colonel, and the daughter of the loyal Lee has set her heart upon a
rebellious fanatic?”
“My love was given ere I knew what these words fanatic and rebel meant.
I recalled it not, for I am satisfied, that amidst the great
distractions which divide the kingdom, the person to whom you allude
has chosen his part, erroneously, perhaps, but conscientiously—he,
therefore, has still the highest place in my affection and esteem. More
he cannot have, and will not ask, until some happy turn shall reconcile
these public differences, and my father be once more reconciled to him.
Devoutly do I pray that such an event may occur by your Majesty’s
speedy and unanimous restoration!”
“You have found out a reason,” said the King, pettishly, “to make me
detest the thought of such a change—nor have you, Alice, any sincere
interest to pray for it. On the contrary, do you not see that your
lover, walking side by side with Cromwell, may, or rather must, share
his power? nay, if Lambert does not anticipate him, he may trip up
Oliver’s heels, and reign in his stead. And think you not he will find
means to overcome the pride of the loyal Lees, and achieve an union,
for which things are better prepared than that which Cromwell is said
to meditate betwixt one of his brats and the no less loyal heir of
Fauconberg?”
“Your Majesty,” said Alice, “has found a way at length to avenge
yourself—if what I have said deserves vengeance.”
“I could point out a yet shorter road to your union,” said Charles,
without minding her distress, or perhaps enjoying the pleasure of
retaliation. “Suppose that you sent your Colonel word that there was
one Charles Stewart here, who had come to disturb the Saints in their
peaceful government, which they had acquired by prayer and preaching,
pike and gun,—and suppose he had the art to bring down a half-score of
troopers, quite enough, as times go, to decide the fate of this heir of
royalty—think you not the possession of such a prize as this might
obtain from the Rumpers, or from Cromwell, such a reward as might
overcome your father’s objections to a roundhead’s alliance, and place
the fair Alice and her cousin Colonel in full possession of their
wishes?”
“My liege,” said Alice, her cheeks glowing, and her eyes sparkling—for
she too had her share of the hereditary temperament of her family,—
“this passes my patience. I have heard, without expressing anger, the
most ignominious persuasions addressed to myself, and I have vindicated
myself for refusing to be the paramour of a fugitive Prince, as if I
had been excusing myself from accepting a share of an actual crown. But
do you think I can hear all who are dear to me slandered without
emotion or reply? I will not, sir; and were you seated with all the
terrors of your father’s Star-chamber around you, you should hear me
defend the absent and the innocent. Of my father I will say nothing,
but that if he is now without wealth—without state, almost without a
sheltering home and needful food—it is because he spent all in the
service of the King. He needed not to commit any act of treachery or
villany to obtain wealth— he had an ample competence in his own
possessions. For Markham Everard— he knows no such thing as
selfishness—he would not, for broad England, had she the treasures of
Peru in her bosom, and a paradise on her surface, do a deed that would
disgrace his own name, or injure the feelings of another—Kings, my
liege, may take a lesson from him. My liege, for the present I take my
leave.”
“Alice, Alice—stay!” exclaimed the King. “She is gone.—This must be
virtue—real, disinterested, overawing virtue—or there is no such thing
on earth. Yet Wilmot and Villiers will not believe a word of it, but
add the tale to the other wonders of Woodstock. ’Tis a rare wench! and
I profess, to use the Colonel’s obtestation, that I know not whether to
forgive and be friends with her, or study a dire revenge. If it were
not for that accursed cousin—that puritan Colonel—I could forgive every
thing else to so noble a wench. But a roundheaded rebel preferred to
me—the preference avowed to my face, and justified with the assertion,
that a king might take a lesson from him—it is gall and wormwood. If
the old man had not come up this morning as he did, the King should
have taken or given a lesson, and a severe one. It was a mad rencontre
to venture upon with my rank and responsibility—and yet this wench has
made me so angry with her, and so envious of him, that if an
opportunity offered, I should scarce be able to forbear him.—Ha! whom
have we here?”
The interjection at the conclusion of this royal soliloquy, was
occasioned by the unexpected entrance of another personage of the
drama.