KING GEORGE THE FIFTH.
England was at peace; but it was the lurid peace before the storm. All
men knew that the days were hurrying on toward an outbreak. In what
shape it should come no one knew, and the mystery deepened the sensation
of expectancy and dread.
It had been publicly spoken, in the street, the press, and even in
Parliament, that the Royalists were conspiring for a revolution; and
this certainty had sunk deep into the hearts of the people. Their
silence was ominous; the Royalists looked upon it as favorable.
But there were Englishmen who knew their countrymen better, and who
foreboded darkly, though without fear, of the end; and among these was
Richard Lincoln. His heart beat with the popular pulsation, and he knew
that there could be but one outcome to such a blind and reckless
enterprise.
Mary Lincoln alone perceived how deep was the trouble in her father's
soul as those surcharged hours went reeling past. Deep beyond even his
trouble was her own, for though she had not confessed it even to
herself, every hope of her life was bound up in the destinies of the
Royalist conspiracy.
On the afternoon of November 23d there was an early adjournment of
Parliament, and her father came home more depressed than she had ever
seen him. Her heart grew cold in the unusual silence.
Mary waited for her father to speak, but the evening wore on, and he had
only tried to lead her to every-day subjects.
"Father," she said at last, "there is depressing news. What has
happened? Will you not tell me?"
"Yes, there is sad news, dear--gloomy news for some. Those madmen will
attempt a revolution by civil war within the next twenty-four hours."
"It is known?"
"Yes, it is all known--and all prepared for."
Mary's face changed as if a white light had fallen on it; her pitiful
excitement was evident in the quivering lips and restless hands. She
would have cried out in her grief and pity had she been alone; but her
father's strength, so close to her, made her strong and patient.
"If it is known," she said, with forced calmness, "surely it will be
stopped without bloodshed? They will arrest those gentlemen before they
go too far."
Had her father looked into the eyes that spoke more than the lips he
might have read beyond the words. But his mind was preoccupied.
"Bloodshed might be avoided by their arrest," he said, sadly; "but the
evil would only be postponed, not eradicated. The conspirators have
entered the rapids: they will be allowed to go over the falls."
"Oh, father!" whispered Mary, standing beside him and holding his arm,
"can they not be warned?"
Richard Lincoln, startled from his own brooding by this astounding
question from his daughter, turned, almost sternly, to speak of the
righteous doom of traitors, but he did not say the words. At last he saw
what a less observant eye might have seen long before--the suffering and
fear in her eyes, and the lines which concealed anxiety had drawn on his
daughter's face. Without a word she came into his arms and lay upon his
breast and sobbed, and no word was needed that was not spoken in the
father's gentle hand on her dear head.
The hours of the afternoon went slowly by, and Richard Lincoln was glad
to look forward to an unusual evening as the best means of diverting
Mary's mind from the subject which filled it. At seven o'clock a great
public meeting was to be held in Cobden Square. The platform for the
speakers happened to be built beneath the windows of Mr. Windsor's city
house, and the hospitable American, who was to depart next morning for
his own country, had invited a large party to hear the speeches.
Mary was glad when her father told her that he wished her to go with
him, for Maggie Windsor was the only one who knew her secret. As she
drove with her father into the square in the evening, the place was
bright as mid-day with electric lights. The crowd was already gathering,
and the people were strangely silent.
At Mr. Windsor's there was a large party, and among the guests many of
those whom Mary had met at Ripon House.
It was almost a merry gathering. The genial American gentleman and his
charming daughter had conquered even the austerity of the Duchess of
Bayswater; and the Duke conversed with Mr. Sydney, swaying his gold
eyeglass on its string with gracious abandon.
Geoffrey Ripon and Featherstone, who were together, saw Mr. Lincoln and
Mary as soon as they entered.
"Geoffrey," said Featherstone, in a bantering whisper, "behold our
deadly enemy. Do you dare to speak to him?"
"I should rather not," answered Geoffrey, "but I suppose we must.
Heavens! How pale his daughter is!"
"Come, Ripon. Mr. Lincoln sees us. Here goes to shake hands with the man
whom we must send to prison to-morrow--if he don't send us."
Geoffrey Ripon felt more like a truant schoolboy approaching a severe
master than he cared to confess even to himself, as he moved through the
crowded room toward Richard Lincoln. But when they met there was nothing
in the manner of either to indicate any unusual feeling.
Mary Lincoln stood near a window, from which she looked over the still
silent but now dense crowd in the square. While she mentally contrasted
the two scenes, that within with that without, she turned her head with
the consciousness of being observed, and met the quiet eyes of Sir John
Dacre, who bowed without a smile.
Mary's strong impulse was to warn him of his danger, at any cost to
herself, and she had taken a step toward him, when she was intercepted
by Mrs. Oswald Carey. The Beauty was splendidly dressed, and a deep
excitement blazed in her eyes.
"We have kept places for you, Miss Windsor and I," said she, with gay
kindliness. "Is your father going to speak to-night?"
"I think not," answered Mary, her old aversion for Mrs. Carey doubled on
the instant.
"Then we shall take him too. Shall we go and find him?"
Dacre was still standing by the window, and Mary Lincoln, thinking to
bring him to her, asked him if the meeting had opened.
"Not yet," he said, from his corner; "but they are crowding the platform
with speakers."
He would have gone to Miss Lincoln, whose earnest nature, as well as her
beautiful face, had impressed the single-minded Royalist perhaps more
deeply than anything outside the King's own cause. But he did not move,
because of his dislike for Mrs. Oswald Carey, founded somewhat on an
instinctive doubt of her honesty.
Mrs. Oswald Carey, glancing from Mary's face to Dacre's, quietly
resolved to keep these two from coming together that evening if she
could prevent it. She now urged Mary to take her to her father while she
"delivered Miss Windsor's message," a word adopted on the moment; and
Mary had to go with her.
Meanwhile the meeting in the square had opened, and the voices of the
speakers were clearly heard in the drawing-room. It would have been a
scene of singularly oppressive character even to a heedless observer;
but its unexpressed and perhaps unconscious purport was deeply read by
many of those who listened from the balcony and parlors of Mr. Windsor's
house.
Now and then came from the vast field of faces in the square a rumbling
roar that swelled and died like thunder; and then came the single voice
of a speaker, stretched like a thin wire, joining roar to roar. All
through the proceedings there was never a laugh from the multitude.
"Listen!" cried Colonel Featherstone from the balcony, late in the
night; "here is a dramatic fellow."
The man then addressing the crowd was one who had from his first
sentence moved his audience to an extraordinary degree--one of those
magnetic voices of the people which flames the word that is smouldering
in every heart. He had used no cloak for his meaning, like the other
speakers; but boldly attacked the Legitimists, the Monarchy, the titles
and the privileges of the aristocracy.
"These are things of the past, and not of the future!" sounded from the
deep voice. "The England of to-morrow shall have no aristocracy but her
wisest and her best, shall have no hereditary rights but the equal right
of every Englishman!"
Here followed the thunderous approval of the multitude.
"Listen!" again cried Featherstone from his advanced place on the
balcony. "Listen!"
"Will that crime be attempted?" cried the electric voice of the orator.
"Yes! I believe it will be attempted." Then there was a low murmur among
the mass, and a changing of feet that made an ominous, scuffling sound.
"What then? Then it will be every man's duty to strike down the enemies
of the people--to destroy them, so that we and our children shall not be
destroyed. We do not appeal to the sword, but the sword is ours, and we
can use it terribly. Their blood be upon their own heads who dare to lay
their hands on the charter of the people's rights!"
In the wave of tremendous applause that followed these words Mary
Lincoln looked at Dacre, who had turned from the window. His face,
always severe, was now set in fierce sternness. Again she was on the
point of going to him to speak the warning that was burning her heart,
but she saw Dacre suddenly draw himself up proudly, as if he had been
challenged. She followed his look and saw her father meet Dacre's glance
as sword meets sword.
Every line in Richard Lincoln, from bent brow to clenched hand, seemed
filled with the meaning of the orator's ominous words.
The two men, standing almost within arm's reach, looked for one earnest
moment into each other's eyes and hearts. What might have followed, who
can say, had not the engagement been broken from without. Mary Lincoln
passed between them, and laying her hand on her father's arm spoke to
him, asking to be taken home. The father's eyes fell to the troubled
face, and without speaking he went with his daughter.
Mary and her father were hardly missed out of the bright party; but one
face became smoother when they had departed--the Beauty's. The gloom of
the public meeting brought out the brilliant elements of the gathering
with rare effect.
From group to group flashed Mrs. Carey, and her lips and eyes were less
eloquent than the clinging touch of her arm, which was almost a caress,
as she left or tried to leave her impression of sympathy and admiration
on one after another of the Royalists.
Two men she avoided, instinctively and deliberately--Geoffrey Ripon and
Sir John Dacre. Calculating, cool, unprincipled as she was, she feared
to meet the eyes of these two men, whose very lives she had undermined
and sold.
It was eleven o'clock and most of the ladies had gone, when the
beautiful woman, attended by Featherstone, drew her soft cloak round
her in her carriage and gave her hand, without a glove, to be kissed by
the big colonel, bending in the doorway.
"Your driver knows where to go?" asked Featherstone, closing the door.
"Oh, yes; straight home," answered Mrs. Carey, smiling; "good-night."
She lived in a quiet street on the south side of Regent's Park, and
thither she went. But when she reached Oxford Street she rang the
carriage bell and changed her course.
"Drive to Clapham Common," she said, curtly, "and as fast as you can."
It was a dark night, with a drizzling rain, and as the cab rattled along
the empty streets she lay back with closed eyes, evidently thinking of
no unpleasant things. It was over five miles to her destination, and
more than once on her way her thoughts brought a smile to her lips, and
once even an exultant laugh.
On the Battersea side of Clapham Common, in one of those immense old
brick houses built in the time of Queen Victoria, with trees and lawns
and lodges, lived a man whose name was known in every stock exchange and
money market in the world--Benjamin Bugbee, the banker.
From his devotion to the House of Hanover, in its glorious and its
gloomy fortunes, and from his intimate business relations with the royal
family, Bugbee had received the romantic title of "The King's Banker," a
name by which he was recognized even in other countries.
Bugbee was a small, bald-headed, narrow-chinned old man, with an air of
preternatural solemnity. From boyhood up, through all the stages of
life, he had been noted for the mysterious sobriety of demeanor which
now marked him as an angular, slow-moving, silent and unpleasant old
man.
The devotion of Bugbee to the House of Hanover was clear enough; but the
springs of it were quite unseen until some years later, when they were
laid bare by a rigid Parliamentary inquiry. The astonishing truth was
that this silent and insignificant old man, since the year of the King's
banishment, had controlled with absolute power one of the greatest, if
not the greatest, private fortunes ever accumulated in any country--that
of the royal exile, who was known to his devoted followers as King
George the Fifth.
It is true that the poverty of George, in his residence in the United
States, was of world-wide notoriety. The shifts of the "Court" in Boston
for very existence, and the extraordinary measures adopted from time to
time by royalty to make both ends meet were a scandal in the ears of
kings and courtiers everywhere.
Nevertheless, George was one of the richest men in the world--or at
least he had been while on the throne, and he would be again should he
ever become the reigning monarch of England. The enormous wealth which
had begun to accumulate in Victoria's frugal reign had grown like a
rolling snowball for over a hundred years. For the latter half century
the royal investors had, wisely enough, avoided all national bonds
except those of the two old republics, France and America; but in the
great cities of the earth, and notably in those that stood the least
chance of bombardment or earthquake, the heir of the Hanoverian line was
one of the largest owners of real property.
George's royal grandfather was a generous and almost extravagant
monarch; but his enormous private wealth was sufficient even for so
luxurious a prince. The inheritance which had made his reign stable and
pleasant he secured for his son, strictly stipulating that it was to be
enjoyed by him or his heir while reigning as monarch of England.
Fatal words these of King Edward's will, for they secured the lifelong
poverty of the grandson whose welfare he had at heart. During the few
years of George's reign the royal coffers overflowed with gold. Bugbee,
the King's banker, was exhaustless as an ocean of wealth.
But the revolution that banished the King and his noblemen, among them
those who had been executors with Bugbee of King Edward's will, left the
solemn little banker absolute master of the royal fortune--until George
or his heir came back to reign as King of England.
For twenty years Mr. Bugbee had been in possession, or rather dominion.
The poverty of the royal exile in America was well known to him; but to
the demands and petitions of George and his "Court" he turned a deaf
ear. His conscience, he answered, would not allow him to touch one penny
of the treasure, which could only be legally drawn by a reigning King of
England.
In the early years of the King's exile, Bugbee had sent considerable
sums to his royal master, which he alleged were from his own purse; but
though he had since continued these, the annual amount had been reduced
to a beggarly allowance.
Still the old banker was the most trusted agent of the Royalists; and
weak George himself regarded with a vague respect, almost like fear, the
inflexible integrity which controlled the conscience of this most
devoted subject.
Mrs. Oswald Carey did not hear the city clocks, which "clashed and
hammered" the midnight hour, as her cab rolled up the tree-lined avenue
of the pretentious house of "The King's Banker."
The driver rang the bell; and as the door almost instantly opened, Mrs.
Carey, from the cab, saw several men in the wide hall, some sitting and
others standing, like men in waiting.
A tall flunkey took the card, closed the door, and Mrs. Oswald Carey had
to wait in the cab a full minute. Then the door opened, and down the
wide steps of the porch hobbled Mr. Bugbee, with gouty, tender feet, the
top of his bald head shining under the lamp.
"I had almost given you up," was his greeting; and as he helped the
Beauty from the cab there was an unquestionable welcome in his gratified
smile. That they had met before, and intimately, was evident in the
manner of the reception. The truth was that Mrs. Oswald Carey and her
husband were old connections of the banker, the husband through monetary
difficulties and the wife through complications of her own, in which old
Bugbee had, for some reason or other, assisted her more than once. She
knew that her husband was in the old man's power, but she never
pretended to know it. On his side, old Bugbee was a foresighted worker.
For years past he had seen that the day of the King's return would come,
and for that day he meant to be prepared in more ways than one. In his
cunning old brain he had some plan laid away in which he had provided a
part for this beautiful and utterly unprincipled woman.
"Am I too late?" asked Mrs. Oswald Carey.
"Only too late for supper," was the dry answer of the old banker, but
the tone was pleasant.
Through the hall, where those in waiting stood respectfully as she
passed, the banker led her to a small, luxuriously furnished parlor on
the ground floor. As she threw aside her wraps and sank into a soft
chair, old Bugbee opened the door of an inner room, and turned to her:
"These are your apartments," said he.
The Beauty looked around, but said nothing, only nodding her head.
"You are very tired?" questioned old Bugbee.
"No; not very. But I should like some supper--and a glass of wine."
Mr. Bugbee touched a bell and gave an order.
"It is almost midnight?" she asked.
"It is after twelve--ten minutes. The morning of the great day has
come."
And the old banker looked into the eyes of the young Beauty, and almost
smiled in response to her low, derisive laugh.
"He came to-day, then?" she asked.
"Yesterday," corrected Mr. Bugbee; "at noon, he landed from my
steam-yacht, in the very heart of London. So much for the international
police."
"Do they know?" said Mrs. Oswald Carey. "Does Sir John Dacre know?"
"Sir John Dacre helped the King into his carriage when he landed. He
knows that he is here, and expects to meet him at Aldershot to-morrow."
While pretending to move and speak as if quite at ease, Mr. Bugbee was
obviously nervous and unsettled. Mrs. Carey observed this, but without
appearing to do so.
"Where is your husband?" Mr. Bugbee asked quietly, with his face turned
from Mrs. Carey, whose side view he had before him in a low mirror. He
saw her move in her chair, and slowly look him all over, and then glance
down as if considering her answer.
"He is on the Continent--at Nice, I think."
She had dined with him that day, but did not know that from the dinner
Oswald Carey had come straight to Mr. Bugbee's house to keep an
appointment with the wily "King's Banker," who wished to know how the
Beauty had spent the day, and whom she had seen.
"What a liar she is!" muttered old Bugbee, but he smiled at himself in
the mirror, as if approving his superior astuteness.
"Then there is no danger of his making a noise about your absence from
home to-night. Some husbands would be alarmed, and might apply to the
police."
Mrs. Carey looked up to see if Bugbee were serious; and then she laughed
heartily and rather loudly, while he held up his hands with an alarmed
expression.
"Hush!" and the frown of the old man was something to remember. "They
observe as much formality as if he were in Windsor Palace."
"Well--he will be there to-day, will he not?" and Mrs. Carey looked
innocently at the banker.
He came closer and bent his broad, bare poll to her as he spoke:
"No! He will never see Windsor again."
"But the Royalists--will they not raise the King's flag to-day?" Still
the guileless surprise in her face, which had its effect on old Bugbee.
"Yes; they will strike to-day at Aldershot--and they will be defeated."
"How do you know? Have they not plenty of men?"
"Men? Men are only in the way. They have no money."
"And the King? Will he be taken?"
"He will not be there," and Mr. Bugbee drew close to the Beauty again.
"Where will he be?" she asked.
"Here--with you! You will save him by detaining him."
She sat still, and looked at him with a steady stare. She knew quite
well what purpose the old banker had in mind, and what she had come
there for. But she meant to play her own game, not Bugbee's.
Her own game was to get the old King under her own influence, whether he
went to reign in Windsor or to rust in America. She knew his character
well, and she had little doubt of her power if she could only get the
reins. From that position she knew enough, too, to overcome all scruples
of conscience in the King's conscientious banker.
Bugbee was playing against two possible results--the success of the King
or his death. Either was ruin for him. Investigation would follow,
whether George were a king or a corpse. So long as he remained in exile
the Republicans would never attempt to confiscate the private fortune of
the banished monarch; while, on the other hand, the royal exile would
not venture to appeal to the courts against his banker, thereby exposing
his enormous wealth to the cupidity of the Republicans.
"You have gone too far," said Mrs. Carey, steadily looking at the
banker; "I shall do nothing of the kind. My reputation--"
"Shall be quite safe--your husband being at Nice," and old Bugbee's was
the guileless face now.
"Humph!"
"No one else will miss you for two days."
"Ah! for two days. And then?"
"Then you go home; you have been visiting your American friends, or any
other friends out of London."
"Yes; that is all very well," Mrs. Carey said quietly. "And he--the
King?"
"He will return to America at once, leaving this house in two days, when
all is quiet, to go on board the steam-yacht which brought him over."
Mrs. Carey said nothing more for nearly a minute.
"Where is that yacht now?" she asked at length.
"In London;" and the old banker dovetailed his fingers and stood with a
smile as if ready for all questions.
"And for my services--my assistance in this game of yours--"
"Pardon me," interrupted Bugbee, sententiously, "it is not a game of
mine. It is my plan to save the King from certain destruction."
"Well, whatever it is," said Mrs. Oswald Carey, impatiently, "for my
part of it I shall have--what?"
"Ten thousand pounds," answered old Bugbee, dropping the words slowly.
"When?"
"When the King is safe--when he is gone. In two days' time."
"That will not do!" and there was a ring of purpose in the Beauty's
voice that made the old banker's heart beat quicker, and made him keenly
attentive. She repeated: "That will not do! He may not go to America, or
he may not remain here. He may be captured, or he may be killed. He may
go to Aldershot to-morrow, despite all your plans. You know he intends
to go. But I--I shall have risked everything, whether you win or lose,
and at your bidding. Oh, no, my dear Mr. Bugbee, it will not do at all."
"What do you want, then?" asked the old man.
"I want the money now, and I want just double the sum you have named."
"You cannot have--"
"Then I shall go home;" and Mrs. Carey rose and began to arrange her
cloak, but keeping her eyes on old Bugbee's face. Both were playing for
the same stake, though only one knew it. Mrs. Carey read the old
banker's purpose, but Bugbee had no idea that she had any outlook beyond
the purchase money--twenty instead of ten thousand pounds. He was
secretly not displeased at the demand, which seemed an indication of her
sincerity.
"You shall have the money," he said, having pretended to consider. "I
shall write a check now."
"I want the money; I do not want a check." And she remained standing.
Old Bugbee smiled as he went out. In a few minutes he returned, and
finding her still prepared to go, took the cloak from her, and placed in
her hand twenty crisp Bank of England notes.
The entrance of the tall flunkey prevented Mrs. Carey from speaking her
pleasure, but she looked it at the banker.
"You are wanted, sir," said the erect flunkey.
Old Bugbee hurriedly left the room, and as soon as the door had closed,
Mrs. Oswald Carey ran to a large mirror, where she smiled at herself,
and concealed her treasure in her dress.
Then she went into the rooms which the old banker had said were hers;
and some minutes later, when the banker returned and she came toward
him, he smiled approval at the few supreme touches that had made her
beauty positively radiant. Her dress was cut low and square, and a soft
gauze of exquisite texture covered her bosom. This had been concealed
throughout the evening by a skilful arrangement of rich lace. There was
a single red rose in her hair.
"You are to present a petition," old Bugbee said, as if giving
instructions. "Have you thought of it?"
"Trust me," she said, smilingly. "I am ready."
Leaning on the arm of the King's banker, Mrs. Carey ascended the wide
stairs and on the first floor entered a small parlor. Through an open
door she saw, in a great room beyond, three men, two of whom were bowing
obsequiously, as if taking their leave.
The third person was the King.
Mrs. Oswald Carey smiled inwardly as she took in the points of this
extraordinary figure, which was so like, yet so absurdly unlike, the
prints with which all the world was familiar.
King George the Fifth was dressed in a splendid court suit, his breast
blazing with orders, and his coat and waistcoat literally covered with
gold embroidery. He was a short, heavy man, about fifty years of age,
with a large, oval head, made still more large and oval by a great
double chin, and by the soft fatness of his cheeks. His hair had been
red, but was almost gray, and he was bald on top. He was closely shaven,
showing a heavy, sensual mouth, out of all proportion to a small and
rather fine nose. But his eyes gave the expression, or want of
expression, to his face; they were set very far apart, and they were
small, round and prominent, with white eyelashes.
Had his legs been proportionate to his body he would have been a large
man; but they were very short. As he stood, in laced coat, breeches and
buckled shoes, he was laughably like a figure on a playing-card--the
figure in profile.
When the two men had backed out, the banker led Mrs. Carey into the
presence. Then both intruders bowed reverentially. The King had sat down
and he remained seated, paying not the least heed to the courtesies, but
closely regarding the lady, whose extraordinary attractions had struck
him at first sight.
Mrs. Carey advanced timidly and sank kneeling at his feet; and still the
royal eye graciously scanned the beautiful petitioner. Once she raised
her face to speak, but meeting the gaze of the King her suffused eyes
sank again.
"She is quite overcome, Bugbee," said the King in a husky voice, as odd
as his appearance.
"The sight of her King has overpowered her, your Majesty," answered old
Bugbee, in a low tone of solemn awe.
"Come now," said George, encouragingly, and he touched the soft chin in
raising her face: "Speak! What may we do for so fair a subject?"
"Oh, my King!" exclaimed the Beauty, clasping her hands, "I come with
words only for your own ear."
An unquestionable frown shadowed Bugbee's face at the audacity of the
woman. George's little eyes rested on the face of the speaker, as if he
had not comprehended. The old banker remained standing in his place.
"I am bound, your Majesty, only to speak my message to you alone." She
was so evidently excited and her pleading was so eloquent that the King
was at once deeply interested.
George had raised her by taking her hand, and now he looked vaguely from
her to old Bugbee.
"It is a message. You said a petition," said the King, dubiously, to his
banker.
"Your Majesty, I thought--"
"Leave us, Bugbee," interrupted George, with a wave of his hand, not
looking at the banker. "Let us hear this fair messenger."
Old Bugbee bowed and backed till he reached the door, hardly knowing
whether to be pleased or indignant. He ought to have made the woman
explain her plan to him before she entered the King's presence. Now he
must wait, while she was free to act as she chose.
When the door closed on the banker Mrs. Carey's whole manner changed.
She drew near the King and excitedly laid her hand on his arm.
"Oh, your Majesty! I have come to save you! You are betrayed!"
"Betrayed!" repeated George, trying to grasp the idea, while his little
eyes were quite expressionless.
"Betrayed!" sobbed Mrs. Carey, "and all is lost except your Majesty's
life and liberty."
"How do you know this? Why does not he know?" and the alarmed George
nodded at the door.
"I do not know, your Majesty. I only know that I know it, and that I
have come here to save you at the risk of my life; but what is my life
to the precious life of my King?"
"Betrayed!" repeated George, as if the meaning of the word were slowly
coming to him out of a fog. "But to-morrow--to-day--my men will proclaim
the restoration."
"Oh, my King! to-morrow--"
"To-morrow I shall be King!" re-echoed George, while his glance wandered
round the room, as if seeking to escape from the bore of excitement.
"Betrayed! No, no; my men--"
"Your men, Sire, to-night will be dead or in prison," said Mrs. Carey,
with increased firmness, reading the puerile nature and seeing the value
of emphasis.
"I am to join my gentlemen at Aldershot at noon," muttered the King.
"No, no!" cried Mrs. Carey, and her beautiful hands clasped his arm
beseechingly. "Your Majesty will be lost if you attempt to go--all who
go there will be lost."
There was a depth in her voice at these words that carried conviction.
"Your Majesty must escape from England to-night!"
"Impossible!" cried George, with some dignity, but more irritation.
"Oh, listen to me, Sire!" she sobbed, "and do not despise my words
because I am only a weak woman."
Here the small eyes of the King rested on her again, and the royal hand
soothed her back to calmness by stroking her beautiful hair.
"Everything is known," she continued, "except that your Majesty has
landed. If that were known all were lost. President Bagshaw has
surrounded Aldershot with soldiers. There are twenty to one against the
Royalists."
"But the King's name will change them;" and as he spoke George seemed
really to believe his words. "When Colonel Arundel proclaims me King,
as Dacre says he will--"
"Oh, Sire! Sire!" sobbed Mrs. Carey, now really touched by the vivid
picture that appeared of her own treachery; "even that is known to the
President--and all the soldiers who are to kill Colonel Arundel have
already received his instructions!"
This precise and terrible statement staggered George, and a look of
simple alarm came into his eyes.
"Then what is to be done?" he cried, in a bewildered way.
"Your Majesty must escape this night--this hour. You are not safe one
moment in London; you know not who might betray you. The steam-yacht
which brought you to England lies ready this moment to receive you."
George tried to think; but he could not. He walked about nervously.
"Let us have Bugbee here!" he exclaimed, with a burst of relief.
"No! I implore your Majesty! Do not trust any one--even him. He may be
true as steel--I do not doubt it. If he be true he will not object to
your escape. But not knowing all, he may advise delay--and delay is
destruction."
"What shall I do, then? Tell me, tell me, child. What shall I do?"
There was a pitiful confession of weakness in the words and manner of
George as he spoke. He had come to a woman, unmanned, and set her mind
above his--had placed himself in her hands. And never were woman's hands
readier for such a gift. He felt their caressing care before she spoke;
already the renunciation was beginning to bear fruit for the weak one.
"You will call Mr. Bugbee here, Sire, in a few moments, and tell him
without a word of explanation that you are going on board the yacht
to-night."
"But it is so strange--"
"Kings have a right to strange fancies," she said smiling, but speaking
with a firm tone. "You will simply tell him, Sire, that you wish to go
directly to the yacht--now."
"Yes, I will do that," said George; and with royal brusqueness he said,
"call him here!"
"I will send him, Sire--for I am going now," and she spoke slowly and
sadly.
"You are going? No! You are not going until I am quite safe--until I
have gone on board the steamer." George's tone was deeply earnest, and
there was actually a kind of wail in his petition.
"I came to save my King; and now he is safe, my duty is done."
Still he urged his deliverer not to leave him till he had left the land;
and after much entreaty she consented to ride with the King to the
vessel, and thence to be driven to her home. It was half an hour later
when she descended to her parlor, and found Mr. Bugbee impatiently
awaiting her, as she had expected. With lightning words she explained
the situation, and bade Bugbee order his private carriage.
"But this false alarm will be known to-morrow," cried Bugbee, wrung with
wrath and perplexity. "He will learn that it is all a lie, and then--"
"There is no false alarm, man!" hissed the Beauty in the banker's ear.
"It is all true--every word!"
"How did you learn it? Who is your informant?"
"President Bagshaw. Is that sufficient?"
The old banker gazed on Mrs. Carey with a dazed look, which gradually
faded into one of intelligent admiration.
"I begin to understand," he said, slowly. "But why not have told me?"
"Because _I_ wanted to save the King this time," answered Mrs. Carey.
"You don't object, do you? I assure you it does not interfere with any
plan of yours."
Mr. Bugbee could not see that it did, nor, even if it did, could he see
how he could help it now. He had not gauged this woman rightly. She had
outwitted him, and he saw it.
"You will order the carriage at once, won't you?" said Mrs. Carey,
taking up her cloak.
"Yes, at once," and Bugbee rang the bell. "But he returns at once to
America?" he asked in a low voice.
"That is his purpose--and mine," said the Beauty.
In less than half an hour Bugbee departed in a fly in hot haste to
prepare the yacht for the royal guest; and some minutes later George the
Fifth handed Mrs. Oswald Carey into the banker's closed carriage, and
the pair were driven off to London.