landlord rubbed his hands across his bewildered eyes. He then sat down
suddenly, or rather fell, into his chair at the side of the hearth.
[Illustration:
CHAPTER
IX
_The man in
Bed_]
When the king came softly into the chamber, the stricken man lay
pale in his pillows, asleep. The sufferer, now that the grave crisis
of his malady was past--it having come to its head on the night the
bullet was taken from his body--looked fairer and more youthful than
ever. He hardly appeared more than a boy. As he lay in his present
unconsciousness, much of the petulance had gone out of his countenance;
there was a tender and even sweet expression round his lips; and in
many ways his face was far better to look upon than on the sad night of
his arrival at the inn.
“Harry,” said his wife, in an eager tone, “open your eyes and look at
his Majesty; the King hath come to see you.”
The sufferer, however, was too deeply asleep to be aroused by the soft
tones of the woman.
“Do not disturb him, I pray,” said Charles. “I would not do him the
least disservice for the world, not even to the robbing him of five
minutes of his precious sleep. We Stuarts owe too much to him and his
ever to take wantonly from one of his name that which we can never
give back again. His grandfather, his father, and himself, have they
not given their all--their lands, their blood, nay, their lives--for
our poor father’s cause and our own? I know not what fidelity it is in
a family that they should from generation to generation, from father
to son, lavish their possessions on unfortunate people who can never
hope, in any adequate degree, to requite them.”
Charles, as he spoke, seemed to warm slowly into a rhapsody of
sentiment. Tears even sprang out of his eyes, his lips quivered,
and for the moment he appeared wholly overcome by an emotion of
inexpressible regret and tenderness. In the bearer of that name it
seemed an exquisitely natural manifestation. The woman, whose life
had been passed in the shadow of his ineffably lamentable history,
felt herself to be succumbing to this outburst from the lips of the
most unfortunate Prince since the world began. The dire circumstances
in which this unhappy young King was lying; his voice; his bearing;
the mean disguise to which he must have recourse because the hand of
every man was against him--all this, in conjunction with the outburst
of feeling he now displayed, was too much for the feminine witness of
it. Every night she prayed for his safety; in her dreams she saw his
face; to her he was the one hero of romance, the most exquisitely noble
and tender figure in the whole woman’s world of the ideal. He was the
prince out of the fairybook; and when she saw him thus with the tears
in his eyes, and a divine tremor in his tones, her heart overflowed.
She looked at the King; she looked at him to bestow upon him the mute
consolation of her tender heart. The tears were in her own eyes too;
her own lips quivered. The King, half-smiling through the tears that
were still coursing down his cheeks, bent towards her as if overcome by
such an infinite compassion. The look of sad thanks he gave her seemed
to send all the blood wild in her brain; the King’s eyes seemed to set
her soul on fire. She was not conscious that he had gathered her in his
arms, and that her breast was drawn against his own; indeed, of only
one thing had she consciousness, and that with the vague excitement of
the senses a dream or a delirium induces. It was, that the King’s lips
were pressed in a fierce madness against her own.
With a little cry, she thrust him from her and burst out of his arms.
Involuntarily her frightened eyes fell on the sleeper in the bed.
He slept no more. He lay with his eyes riveted on the King, who had
his back towards him. He lay as weak and helpless as a child from the
effects of his malady; but his hands were clenched on the coverlet, his
white cheeks gleamed, his eyes blazed. He strove impotently to rise
from his pillows, but fell back upon them gasping for breath.
The distinct sounds of his struggle were heard by the King. He desisted
from his absorbing occupation, and turned round to discover their cause.
“Ha! Farnham,” he said, coolly, “so you are awake at last. I have heard
of that little affair of the bullet. I must, indeed, rejoice with
you that you have struggled so valiantly against its effects; I am
overjoyed, my dear Farnham, to find you so far recovered.”
The unhappy husband could not repress his fury. Again he strove to rise
from his bed, and again he fell back, this time with a sob of anguish,
upon his pillows. The King’s smile grew more serene.
“There--there, my dear Farnham,” said the even, gracious tones of
Charles; “be wary, I pray you. Be discreet. I am sure you are not yet
strong enough to leave your bed to greet me; I beg you not to think
of doing so. Why, man, my lady tells me ’tis a miracle that thou art
alive.”
The poor husband was unable to speak; rage and his weakness rendered
him inarticulate.
The King continued to smile upon him with a gracious insouciance that
maddened more than it soothed.
“There, there, my dear Farnham,” he said, “do not attempt to converse.
I am sure you are far too weak as yet to regale us with your talk. Do
not try, I pray you. I am sure madam will entertain us admirably in the
meantime.”
It may have been that the unhappy young man discerned an underlying
irony in the King’s words which, superadded to the burning sense of
humiliation he had already suffered at his hands, turned his blood to
fire; for at least the King’s smooth sarcasm spurred him at last to
find his tongue.
“Sire,” he said, weakly, “methinks my family merits some little
consideration at your hands. They have served you long and faithfully,
and your father also. I beg you, Sire, to forgive my mentioning their
trifling claims upon your gratitude, but I would crave a boon.”
“You have but to put a name upon it, dear Farnham,” said the
magnanimous Prince. “No one can be more deeply conscious of the
services your family hath rendered ours than we are. Madam will tell
you that that was the very theme upon our lips as you lay asleep. We
pray you to mention this boon, dear Farnham.”
“It is, Sire,” said the unhappy husband, “that one of us two does not
leave this chamber alive. Madam, I must ask you to have the goodness
to assist me to rise. Sire, I crave that you may honour me by choosing
your weapon. See, there is a case of pistols on the chair beside the
bed.”
The King shrugged his shoulders.
“I protest, my dear Farnham,” he said, laughingly, “that the boon you
ask is a little peculiar.”
The man in the bed struggled with his difficult breath. At all times a
hot, impetuous youth, his malady had given him less control of himself
than ever. Thus his overmastering anger had caused him to pursue a
course which a soberer or an older man would not have dared to suggest.
“May I beg you, Sire,” he said, “not to encumber our conversation with
things that are irrelevant and unnecessary. Are the long and faithful
services rendered by my family to yours enough to enable you to grant
me the privilege of falling by your hand, or, if fortune is so tender
to me, of you falling by mine? I am sure, Sire, you will be the first
to admit, after what hath passed so recently, that the same roof should
not be asked to undertake the responsibility of harbouring us both.”
“Do you persist in this, my dear Farnham?” asked the King. He was
astonished at the boldness of the young man, but his thoughts were
veiled by his gracious air.
“I do, Sire,” said the husband, “as far as a subject may persist with
his sovereign.”
“I have no choice other than to grant it then,” said the King.
“Sire, you overwhelm me,” said the husband, fervently. “Madam, I must
ask you to assist me from my couch. My wretched limbs are as paper.”
“As implacable a foe as thou art a friend,” said the King. “It is,
however, the only reparation we can make you.”
The unfortunate woman showed a veritable reluctance to do the behests
of her lord. She looked at the King and she looked at the man in the
bed with a terrified bewilderment. On the face of the one was the
eternal frank smile of audacious indifference. The countenance of the
other was entirely merged in his eyes. They blazed. The woman faltered;
she trembled; she hung back.
“Madam,” said the man in the bed, imperiously, “do you not hear me?”
“Madam,” said Charles, laughing a little, “we must ask you to do the
bidding of my lord. Prop up the dear fellow somehow, and give him his
choice of weapons. We have injured him unwittingly; but it shall never
be said of Charles Stuart that he denied a reparation to friend or
enemy.”
The woman, however, was far from acceding to the behests of her husband
or her King.
The cold terror that possessed her was dispelled by the necessity for
action. In some vague way she felt it was her right to come between
them. She felt dimly that she was the source of this quarrel.
“Sire,” she said, “may I crave a boon of you also?”
“We pray you to do so,” said Charles.
“Let me beseech you to leave this chamber, Sire, now--instantly.”
“To do that,” said the King, “we must break our promise to my lord. And
is not a promise of such a nature the most sacred compact that can be
made? But, madam, let us crave a similar boon of you. We would have
you quit this chamber, too.”
“I cannot quit it, Sire,” she said, firmly.
“Not until thou hast got me from my bed and set me on my legs,” her
husband said, weakly. “Then, Patsy woman, thou must do as the King bids
thee. Come, now, I am about to rise. Give me your shoulder.”
The wife stirred not a finger, although the man in the bed, gasping
for breath and the purple veins swelling in his forehead, contrived to
raise himself on his two hands. But he could get no further; he fell
back in distress upon his pillows.
“You are much too weak to quit your couch, my dear Farnham,” said
Charles. “Even if you could be got upon your legs, you would never be
able to keep them. But I think we can contrive it otherwise. We must
support you in your present place. Madam will lend her aid, I trust.”
The woman, however, would not heed the words of the King. She hung
back, convulsed with terror. Charles, laughing a little still,
prepared to do the office himself. He took young Lord Farnham in his
arms, lifted him up among the sheets into a sitting posture, and made
a wall of his pillows to keep him in it. The lad’s skin seemed to
burn the arms of his monarch like a live coal; his whole frame shook
and quivered; he was racked with a hectic weakness he was striving
to control. The King, having at last fixed him deftly thus, turned
triumphantly towards the lady.
“Confess, madam,” he said, “that you would not think, to look at us,
that we had such a cunning in attendance on the sick. And now we must
ask you to leave us for a minute. Only for a minute, madam; we will not
deny you longer, we do promise you.”
“No, Sire,” she answered, firmly, “I cannot go; I will not go. Harry,
art thou mad?”
“I think I am,” said the young man, sitting up among the pillows, in a
voice so small and querulous it sounded like a child’s. “I think I am.”
“I will not stand by and see a murder done,” said the woman, with a
sudden resolution. “Sire, my poor lad is unhinged; he is not sane. I
beseech you not to heed him.”
“Sane or mad,” said the King, “whenever our family can make a requital
to his in the smallest particular, Charles Stuart shall not withhold
it. The man hath set his heart upon it; he shall have all that he
desires.”
“Nay, Sire, he shall not,” said the woman, defiantly.
In her capacity of faithful subject and hero-worshipper, the unhappy
lady would have submitted to her tongue being torn out rather than such
words should have been uttered by it to her Prince. But as a mother,
a wife, and a woman, there was no other course than to utter them.
Besides, the King was a young man, too. In a sense she felt that her
riper years made her the mentor of both these headstrong youths. She
seized the case of pistols lying on the settle beside the bed. Her
fingers closed upon them convulsively.
“Madam, I must ask you to give them to us,” said the King.
“Never!” said the woman.
The King shrugged his shoulders and put his brows up whimsically.
“Vous êtes difficile,” he said. “Celui qui force une femme contre
son gré ne viendra jamais à bout. Now, madam, if I make my tone very
winning, very coaxing, wilt thou not give them to me? Come, my dearest
lady.”
The King held out his hand to take them with a pretty air.
“Never!” said the lady. Her fingers grasped them tighter than before.
“Patsy,” said the man in the pillows, in his weak voice, “do not be a
fool.”
The King exchanged his look of slightly humorous deprecation for a mock
severity.
“Madam, the King commands you,” he said.
“I will not!” said the lady; she stamped her imperious foot. She was as
pale as death. Her teeth were clenched. Her chin and mouth were as hard
as the King’s eyes.
“Are you stark mad, woman?” said the petulant voice from the pillows.
“The King commands you; give them up to him at once. Give them up to
the King at once, d’ye hear, or ’fore God! I will make you.”
“Never, Harry!” said his wife.
Her lord struggled to get out of his bed, as if himself to wrest them
from her hands. But he was powerless to move. He flopped and wriggled
about in a piteous manner, like a live fish in the sand. The King
laughed.
“Hush! my dear lad,” he said, “lie quiet. Never grow peremptory with
a woman, never force her. Believe us, it is but a waste of energy. Be
easy with ’em, my good Farnham, be easy with ’em. However, I think we
will call for the landlord.”
The King opened the door of the chamber, and called down the stairs for
Gamaliel Hooker. Within a minute the landlord came fussing and puffing
upwards, his rosy gills inflamed by exertion, and an execrable humility
oozing out of his face. The change in his demeanour from an hour before
was so entirely ludicrous, that Charles clapped his hands to his ribs
when he saw him, and laughed till a stitch came into his side.
“There never was so unctuous a rogue in the world before,” said the
King. “What a double-chinned, great paunched, incomparable old knave
of an innkeeper it is to be sure! Pray do not crawl like a worm, my
good Boniface, an it chafes your belly. Stand upon your legs, good
fellow; your appearance is become too beastly, now you writhe upon the
ground. Your congees offend me, Boniface; they offend me. They are
altogether too gross for a man of my nice instinct. But a truce to our
pleasantries; my lord Farnham is in a highly serious mood. Landlord, do
you go into your filthy stable, and rummage about in Will Jackson’s bed
of straw. You will find a leathern case concealed there. Bring it to me
as speedily as may be.”
The landlord backed out of the chamber, his body still bent double, so
that the tip of his nose appeared to rest on his belly.
“Pah!” said the King; “I declare I must open the window. I wonder why
every species of crawling reptile leaves a nauseous oily savour behind
it.”
To the woman it seemed an incredibly short time ere the landlord
was back again with the leathern case; to the man in the bed, an
incredibly long one. To the King himself, it had no period. He was too
indifferent; indeed, he was absorbed in noticing how adorable the woman
looked now the defiance was in her eyes. In his opinion, she looked the
better for that charming attribute.
As the unhappy lady had feared, the leathern case of the King’s
was proved to contain a pair of pistols. With an inimitable air of
courtesy, he offered them both to the man propped on the pillows.
“My dear Farnham,” he said, “I can assure you that they are both
equally excellent. But take your choice.”
“This, Sire,” said Lord Farnham.
By now he had got that petulant voice of his under admirable control.
“You are too undone to prime it, Farnham,” said the King, graciously.
“Pray allow me to do it for you.”
Lord Farnham thanked him humbly.
The King charged the pistol deftly but deliberately. Perfectly calm,
nonchalant, smiling as ever, he began to hum a rather loose ballad
under his breath. Having primed Lord Farnham’s and placed it tenderly
in his grasp, he primed the other for himself, with precisely the same
carefulness of hand and the same carelessness of demeanour.
“Farnham,” said the King, “in these somewhat peculiar circumstances I
must ask you to take the first shot.”
“Sire, you are the King,” said Lord Farnham. “No subject can take
precedence of the King.”
“Unless the King requests him. But there is really no established
mode of procedure, my dear Farnham. I believe this occasion to be
unique--unique in the annals of the world. I cannot recall a parallel
of any subject being granted such a privilege by his monarch.”
“Sire,” said Lord Farnham, impetuous boy as he was, “I am sensible that
your noble, your unexampled magnanimity hath conferred such an honour
on me and mine as was never conferred upon a house before. Sire, I am
overcome by it, believe me.”
The young man’s face showed how deeply sensible he was of the King’s
singular generosity. He had lost control of its muscles. It twitched
as one of rare sensibility may sometimes do under the stress of
a ravishing piece of music. The King, on his part, was young and
impetuous too. He knew it, and he was aware that he had granted a
request that, had either of them been older or more sober blooded, it
would have been impossible to prefer, let alone to concede.
“My dear Farnham,” he said, having for the first time a sense of the
vast responsibilities his kingship implied, “we have given to you,
I hope you understand, that which we could not possibly have given
to another. It is in consideration, my dear Farnham, of the long and
honourable services of your house to mine. We must insist that you fire
first. If we create a precedent in the history of the world, we must
name all the conditions of it.”
Lord Farnham bowed his head in assent. He could not trust himself
to speak. For the first time he fully realised how terrible the
circumstances were. The King stood opposite his pillows at the foot of
the bed. His arms were folded with the same inimitable nonchalance as
ever. There was the same slightly humorous indifference in his eyes,
the same whimsical deprecation about his mouth. It was as if the whole
affair amused him a little, and bored him a little too.
The implacable husband, hardly daring to look at Charles, raised the
pistol in his trembling fingers. As he did so, his wife stepped in
front of the King.
“Harry,” she said, “thou art surely mad; thou art overwrought a little
with thy weakness. The fever is not yet out of thy blood. Lie down,
mine own, and get thee to sleep again.”
Farnham regarded her with the ingenuous naïveté of a child. For the
first time a look of irresolution crept into his wilful eyes. Suddenly
he allowed the pistol to slip from his fingers on to the coverlet.
“You are right, Patsy woman,” he said, with a groan. “I can’t do it; my
God! I can’t do it.”
The woman ran forward and flung herself into his arms.
[Illustration:
CHAPTER
X
_Le Roi s’amuse_]
Again the King adopted his favourite trick of clapping his hands to his
ribs, and shouting his laughter.
“Too absurd, too absurd!” he said. “I protest, Farnham, you make
me laugh. You can’t do it, hey? You can’t shoot your King. My dear
Farnham, do you really hold that to be so remarkable? Confess, now,
did you ever seriously for a moment think you could?”
“I did, Sire, and tried,” said Lord Farnham.
“What a pity you did not recognise your limitations sooner, Farnham,”
said the King. “Think of the pother you would have spared yourself.”
“True, Sire,” said Farnham.
“That you should ever have thought that you could have slain your
sovereign, my dear Farnham, is the most whimsical thing I ever heard in
my life.”
“Not altogether, Sire,” said the young man significantly. “Your Majesty
may recall instances of regicide.”
“You should have spared us that, Farnham,” said the King reproachfully.
An almost human emotion seemed for once to be in his eyes. They were
full of pain.
“I crave your forgiveness, Sire,” said the man in the bed. “I was a
little carried away.”
“As you say,” said Charles, “there have been instances of regicide. But
it is only the canaille who are guilty of that crime. I do not think
gentlemen are addicted to it.”
The young man sank back in his pillows. Observing both him and his wife
to be grievously overwrought by what had passed, the King withdrew from
the chamber to talk to the landlord below. He promised to return soon.
When the door had closed upon him, and his steps had died away on the
stairs, the unhappy young man whispered to the woman:
“My God, I fear I was stark mad!”
“Canst thou forgive me?” said the wife. “I, too, was mad. I did not
know what I did, or where I was. I did but know he was the King, the
most unfortunate King in all the world. I did but know he was hunted
for his life, like some poor wild animal. And when I saw his face, and
his eyes shone on me, I think I could have fallen dead in the agony of
seeing him. Yes, mine own, I, too, was mad.”
“Curse him!” said the husband. “I would have slain him had I had the
power. But when I looked into his face, even with the weapon in my
hands, all the little strength within my body suddenly ran out of it. I
could not slay him; he was the King.”
“Yes, the King,” said the wife, thrillingly. “Always the King--the most
unfortunate King in all the world.”
“There is something about him,” said the husband, wildly; “whether it
be his face, his name, his virtues, his vices, his father’s fate, or
his own lamentable history, I know not, but there is something about
him that even his bitterest enemies are unable to withstand. I was by
his rein in Worcester fight, and twice I saw the blow levelled that
was to deprive him forever of his kingdom, and twice it did not fall.
I can see the look in the eyes of one grim Roundhead even now, as he
stood with his pike poised within a foot of the King’s neck. And when,
striking, he saw it to be the King, he stayed his weapon in mid-air and
directed it upon another. I know not what quality it be within him.”
“It is because the name he bears,” the woman said, “is the noblest and
the most ill-fated name that ever a king did bear.”
“Curse him!” said the husband. “I learnt to hate him before to-day.”
A demon was in the young man’s heart. It was probably the fact that
his own life could ill-support a scrutiny which lent a poignance to
his jealousy; and is it not he the least without taint who is the
readiest to cast the stone? The consciousness embittering his spirit
that he was in no sense worthy of the woman who watched over him
so tenderly, caused him almost fiercely to resent the intrusion of
another within her thoughts. He feared the security of his own position
there. There is no form of this disease so acute as that which springs
from the sufferer’s knowledge of his own inferiority. The King was
nobler, handsomer, more alluring to the eyes of a woman than he. His
misfortunes and his station made him dreadful in the eyes of a jealous
man. He hated the King, not so much for what he had done, as for what
he had it in his power to do. It seemed to the young man in the depths
of his remorse that Charles had it in his power to bereave him of the
only thing in life he cared for.
“Patsy woman,” he said, miserably, “I begged you to let me perish of
that inflammation the other night. Oh, why did you not! It would have
been better for us all. You know I am not worthy of you; you know I
never can be worthy of you, weak fool as I am. It would have been more
merciful to let me perish. I should not then have been condemned to lie
here helpless in my bed and watch another steal away your love from me.
He is a King, I know; but I cannot bear it.”
The woman returned to the bedside and replaced her hand tenderly within
his own.
“Foolish child,” she said,--“foolish, jealous child! And yet mine is
the blame. I should have ordered my susceptibilities better. He was our
King, helpless and without a friend, driven from pillar to post, with
never a place of security in which to soothe his weariness. It was the
glamour of his unhappiness that overcame me. But, mine own, are you not
my king also?”
“You cannot have two,” said the young man. “I would have you choose
between us.”