THE ARREST
IN spite of Alice’s warning, in spite of the deadly peril that
surrounded him, Clancarty lingered at his wife’s side. It was hard to
say farewell, hard to leave her, and though her heart was filled with
misgivings and anxieties, Lady Betty could not urge him to go; indeed,
she clung to him, weeping at the thought of a parting that involved
such perils and hardships for him and such sorrow for her. Moreover,
there was much to talk of and to plan. They did not mean to be
separated long; she was to go with him to the Continent or to Ireland,
and there were a thousand details to arrange, a thousand hopes and
fears to strengthen or allay—and they were lovers, and when did lovers
ever learn to watch the tedious hand of time?
The ball at Lord Bridgewater’s was forgotten, Spencer was forgotten,
all the world, in fact, while Betty—lovely with happiness, glowing
and smiling in her splendid gown—thought of no one but her husband,
and desired no admiration but his.
“Ah, my darling,” he whispered, looking down at her as her face lay
against his breast, “can you give up all this?” he touched her lace and
jewels, “and this?” he pointed at the luxurious room, “and all you have
and are—to follow a poor exile into poverty and obscurity?”
She smiled divinely.
“To follow my beloved even to the ends of the earth,” she said, “‘for
better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, until death do us
part,’” she murmured tenderly.
“Amen!” he said, and laid his face against her soft hair, moved—how
deeply she could not know; her utter trust, her fondness touched him
to the heart. This splendid woman, with every gift of nature and of
fortune, willing to renounce all for him—he held her close and his
eyes dimmed.
“Ah,” he said, “’tis worth living, dear heart, for your sake! When I
thought you scorned my poverty and would rather be the wife of Savile
than mine, I cared not if I died—but now! Ah, Betty, you could make a
dungeon paradise.”
“Nay,” she replied, “it shall not be a dungeon, but a home, my husband,
somewhere—even where these quarrelling kings cannot disturb our
paradise. Faith, my politics grow strangely mixed,” she added, with a
smile.
“Love knows no politics,” he answered, smiling too, “you and I shall
not quarrel over our principles, sweetheart.”
As he spoke, the door was thrown open and Alice ran into the room with
a ghastly face.
“Oh, my lady,” she cried, “there’s something wrong—I hear strange
voices below, there are men upon the stairs! My lord must hide.”
Betty sprang to her feet.
“Quick!” she cried, “Donough, there is the other door!”
“’Tis useless,” cried Alice; “they come from both sides—I saw them!”
“Then I will hide you!” Betty cried wildly, catching her husband’s arm.
For an instant he hesitated; he, too, heard the heavy feet in the
gallery, then he shook his head.
“No, Betty, dear,” he said, “I cannot be hunted like a rat in a hole; I
must face them like a man, like your husband.”
She uttered a little cry of despair and clung to him, while Alice wrung
her hands.
“Oh, the window, my lord!” she cried, “there is a balcony!”
“Too late, my girl,” Lord Clancarty replied calmly, the light flashing
in his gray eyes, his head erect; “no, no, I’ve never let an enemy see
my back—I can’t learn to run now.”
Betty looked up at him and caught her breath; here was a man after
her own heart. She felt his hand go to his sword and she, too, looked
toward the door. They had not even thought of barring it, but it would
have been useless, for it was thrown wide open by a sheriff’s deputy,
who was followed by a guard of stout yeomen from the Tower.
“Is Donough Macarthy, Earl of Clancarty, here?” demanded the sheriff,
fixing his eyes on the earl as he stood there, with his wife clinging
to him.
“I am Clancarty,” he replied proudly. Resistance would have been worse
than useless, and he only pressed his dear Betty closer to his heart;
he knew that separation was inevitable.
“I have a warrant to seize the body of the Earl of Clancarty and carry
him to the Tower, on the charge of high treason,” said the officer,
producing the parchment and reading the warrant aloud in the king’s
name.
“I do not acknowledge the authority of the Prince of Orange,” said
Clancarty calmly, “but I must submit to superior numbers,” he added,
with a scornful glance at the six stout yeomen who had filed into the
room and stood gaping at Lady Clancarty. “You have arrested me in the
apartments of my wife. I came to London solely to see the Countess of
Clancarty, but I will go with you without further protest.”
The officer bowed to Lady Clancarty.
“I am reluctant to part you, my lord,” he said grimly, “but we have no
time to lose; my orders are explicit.”
“You might find a better office, sir,” said Lady Betty, withering
him with a look, and then breaking down when her husband kissed her
farewell.
“Have comfort, dear heart,” he whispered, though he knew the case was
desperate; “bear up for my sake—now!”
But she clung to him in a passion of grief, begging to go with him to
the Tower until it wrung his heart anew to leave her. Even the soldiers
glanced away in grim silence, and she was half unconscious when
Clancarty unclasped her hands from his neck and laid her in Alice’s
arms.
“Care for her, Alice,” he said, in a tone of deep but restrained
emotion, “guard her tenderly, do not leave her in this hour of
trial—for they will tear me from her! My poor darling—my poor wife!”
He lingered to kiss her again, to push the soft hair back from her
forehead, and it was only a final order from the sheriff that took him
from her side.
The guards had escorted him out at last, or rather he had walked
out proudly with them, though his heart was aching for her. They
were already at the lower door when Lady Clancarty, recovering
consciousness, sprang up to come face to face with Spencer. Then the
truth flashed upon her and she stood before him with a terrible face.
“You—you betrayed him!” she cried, “you sent those men here to drag
him away!”
Lord Spencer took it as a compliment.
“I did,” he said piously; “I delivered the traitor to his fate; I would
do it were he my own flesh and blood. No sacrifice is too great for
truth and justice.”
“You hypocrite!” cried Lady Betty passionately; “you have broken your
sister’s heart for the sake of your pride—your politics! You have
murdered my husband—my husband!” she wrung her hands in agony.
“I have done my duty,” he replied coldly.
“Your duty?” she cried bitterly; “was it then your duty to betray your
sister’s husband? To force an officer and his guard into your sister’s
rooms—to trample on her tenderest feelings—to mortify and crush
her? Duty!” she repeated scornfully, “then may no man henceforth do
his duty! Such virtue is more vile than vice—such courage worse than
cowardice! How dare you face me or look at me? An injured woman! I mark
your white face, sir, and I marvel at its pallor; it should burn with
shame.”
Spencer ground his teeth in anger. “You saucy minx,” he said, “how
dared you have that man here?”
“How dared I?” she repeated, “how dared I have my husband with me? Whom
should I have with me if not my husband?”
She paused for breath; her bosom rose and fell, she put her hands to
her throat as if she choked. It was a moment before she could speak.
“What have you done?” she went on passionately, her slender figure
towering, her eyes on fire; “you have torn him from my arms, you
have sent him to his death, but you cannot tear him from my heart!
While that beats, while the blood runs through these veins, I will
love him—love him! And he is my husband—my husband, do you hear,
you coward? I bear his name, I am his, his flesh and blood, his very
own—you cannot separate us! Even if you kill him, our souls are one;
you cannot part them any more than you can rend the sky asunder! I am
not your sister—I am Clancarty’s wife.”
“Shame on you, madam,” said Spencer bitterly, his face like ashes, gray
and white; “shame on you to declare yourself so passionately enamoured
of a Jacobite—a reprobate—a—”
“Of my husband,” she said, and her low voice cut like a lash.
“Your husband,” he mocked; “are you sure that he is your lawful
husband? A sneaking rogue who crept to your room by a back-stair—who
would not face your family like a man of honor!”
“What insult more have you for me?” she cried; “’tis you who dared not
face him; you crept behind him like a coward, you—you Judas!”
She caught her breath, her hands at her throat again.
“Sit down, madam,” said his lordship coldly; “your fury suffocates you.
It will not avail,” he laughed, “to set the rogue free!”
She looked at him strangely.
“Are you human?” she asked, “are you like other men?—or some
monster, some abortive creature, cast upon the earth to wreck the
lives of others? How could any woman marry you? I think you are not
human—though we are of the same mother!”
Spencer laughed bitterly.
“Quite human, Elizabeth,” he said sneering, “as human as my termagant
sister—as the rogue they are carrying now to the Tower, where, I
trust, he’ll rest well—and safe.”
She recoiled half way across the room and stared at him wildly, as if
her very senses were bewildered.
“To the Tower?” she repeated, like a child who had a lesson by rote,
“the great gloomy Tower yonder?”
“Would you have preferred Newgate?” my lord asked maliciously,
beginning to find some joy in a situation that had not been without
humiliation.
“They carry my husband to the Tower!” Lady Betty cried wildly, clasping
her hands to her bosom as if to still the tumult there, “and I stand
here talking to the Judas who betrayed him! Go hang yourself, my
lord,—surely you cannot want to live,” she went on, mad with her
despair; “let me see your face no more. The very air you breathe
poisons me. Never, never shall the same roof shelter us again! I go,
sir, your sister no longer, but the beggar’s wife. I go to share his
fate, to starve with him, to die for him or with him! But to see you no
more forever and forever!”
She rushed past him, sweeping her skirts aside that they might not so
much as touch him, and ran wildly out of the room.
Fleeing through the long galleries and down the stairs, in her splendid
dress, and heedless of the gaping servants and of the bitter cold she
went out, bareheaded, into the night.