THE QUEEN-MOTHER.
"Disdaine no whit, O lady deere,
But pity now thy servant here."
For a while they sat in silence looking into the fire. Indeed it was
hard for the Queen-mother to know how to begin. Let it be said at once
frankly, she and Turbo had loved each other. It was long ago now, and
far away--in fair Castile,--when he was the brilliant and accomplished
young secretary of her father. He was no mere clerk, but a youth of
noble family, an aspirant to the great offices of the state, who had
taken the post to learn the business of administration.
Thus there was no reason why he should not openly show his adoration for
his chief's beautiful daughter, or why she should seek to hide her love
for him. Daily they met, and daily his passion grew. He loved her with
all the ardour of which his hot Spanish blood was capable, so that it
maddened him to see how cold and calm was her northern heart, loving as
it was, beside the fever that consumed him.
Yet he was happy in the knowledge of her love, and all went well till
one night her father entertained an officer to whom he had taken a
liking. He was a man of brilliant wit, but known as a greedy duellist.
Yet Margaret was amused, and laughed and talked gaily with him till he
departed. Turbo accompanied him to a tavern hard by for a parting cup.
The place was full of gentlemen, many of whom the officer knew. They
fell to talking, then to boasting, till in an evil hour the man vaunted
his new conquest, and let fall a little light word with Margaret's name.
In a moment he had the lie and a stinging blow on the mouth from Turbo's
glove.
All efforts of the young secretary's friends to save him from his
quixotic folly were in vain. He would listen to no explanation. He would
receive no apology. The least he could do, it seemed to him, to show
himself worthy of his treasured love, was to chastise the man who had
breathed ever so faintly on his mistress's name.
They fought on horseback, with pistols and swords. It was all the
youth's friends could do in order to equalise the chances. Yet the
affair was little better than murder. The first shot hit Turbo in the
knee, the second tore across his lips. Half choking with blood he fell
on with his sword; but no sooner were they engaged than a fearful gash
across the face blinded him. In the agony of the moment he checked his
rearing horse sharply, and the frantic animal fell over on the top of
him.
For months he lay in the hospital almost between life and death. Every
day came flowers and a little loving note from Margaret, overflowing
with pity and gratitude. It made him bear his terrible suffering with a
gay heart to see how much his courage had won him. His chief came
constantly to his bedside, and spoke to him as a son-in-law; but ere he
was fully recovered, and clear of the pestilential air of the hospital,
he was taken with the small-pox. Another terrible period of waiting and
suffering ensued, and by the time he was able to leave the hospital,
Margaret and her father had sailed for the Canaries.
Without a moment's delay he followed them, and at length the longed-for
moment was to come, when he should hold his love in his arms once more.
She burst into the room with a glad cry when they told her he was come,
but no sooner did she set eyes on his mangled form than she stopped
transfixed with horror, and with a terrible scream fell to the ground.
The shock threw her into a dangerous illness, and when she recovered
nothing more was said of a marriage. Turbo accepted his fate, but with a
bitterness that poisoned his whole nature. His love was no less than
before, and it was only by the nursing of a bitter contempt for its
object, and all the daughters of Eve, that he could make his life
endurable.
And yet he could not tear himself from her side. The months went by, and
still he remained at his old post, and when Margaret left to become
Queen of Oneiria, he accepted the place which Kophetua XII.--the present
king's father--offered him out of admiration for his abilities, and pity
for his miserable story.
When the young prince was born, so great was the esteem in which Turbo
was held, that he was appointed his governor; and as soon as the boy was
old enough to be out of the nurse's hands, Turbo began to win a
surprising influence over him. So great was the affection that grew up
between the ill-assorted pair, that when the king died it was found that
Turbo was named guardian in the will, and it was from this post that he
had been elevated to the chancellorship as soon as the boy came of age.
With such a pricking memory in her mind it is not to be wondered at that
the poor Queen sat looking long into the fire before she spoke;
especially as all her own, and, what was more, all her son's happiness
seemed to hang on the result of the interview.
"Do you mean to thwart me again, Chancellor?" she said at last abruptly.
"I trust I have never willingly thwarted your majesty in anything," he
answered.
"Nay, I cry a truce on courtly fictions," said the Queen, a little
impatiently. "Let us be frank for once."
"As your majesty pleases," answered the Chancellor, without the least
unbending.
"To-morrow the Marquis de Tricotrin will arrive with his daughter. You
know?" began the unhappy Queen.
"I have heard so unofficially."
"And you know why she is coming?"
"I have permitted myself to hazard a guess."
"Then what do you mean to do?"
"Like your majesty, my duty, modified by circumstances."
"What do you mean?"
"Merely that as heretofore I shall advise his majesty on the whole
circumstances of the case, if and when I am consulted."
"Chancellor," cried the Queen impatiently, "I have urged you to be
frank. To what end is all this? I have come a long way to you, will you
not make one step to meet me? Well," she continued, as the Chancellor
made no reply, "I at least can be open. I ask you, do you mean to make
my son refuse again?"
"Really your majesty flatters me. The King will use his own discretion."
"No, he will use yours. Do you think I do not know why it is that girl
after girl has come hither in vain. In every way they were fitted to be
his queen, and he refused even to be kind to one. It was you that made
him do it. He gives not a thought to me. It is you that are all in all
to him. His whole soul is but a little bit of yours. You have absorbed
him, you have taken him all from me."
"I assure your majesty," said the Chancellor imperturbably, "we do not
ever discuss the subject together. It is entirely his own inclination
that guides him."
"You say that," said the Queen, with increasing agitation. "You say
that, and if it is true it is worse than I thought. You have taught him,
like yourself, to hate women. That is why he speaks of them as he does.
But still you can undo your work. If not for my sake or for his, at
least for the country's you should administer the antidote. If you have
poisoned, it is you alone who can cure. See the pass we have come to.
What will happen if he is not married this year? He will lose his
kingdom; but that is a little thing to what I am losing. Cannot you
understand what it is for me to see the ruin of my one son's life, to
see his soul starving for want of a woman's love, to long unsatisfied to
see his great nature ripened with a husband's and a father's joys, to
hold his children on my knee, and know once more the holiest love a
woman ever feels? Think, think what you do, and hold your hand before it
is too late. You cannot be all stone. If you have one tender spot left
give him back to me. Turbo, in the name of our old love, give him back
to me!"
She leaned forward towards him, her hands outstretched with a pleading
gesture that was inexpressibly touching and tender. But Turbo remained
immovable, save that his snarl grew more cruel. It was more than she
could bear. She felt her eyes filling with tears, and she bowed her head
in her hands. There was a silence between them for a minute, and then
Turbo's cold voice spoke unchanged.
"By what right," said he, "do you conjure me by our old love? You, who
threw me away like a soiled glove."
"I have no right," she murmured, without looking up. "It was a great
sin, and none can know how I have suffered for it. But the crime was not
his. At least you may have mercy on him."
"And what right have you," he continued as coldly as ever, "to crave
mercy for him? Did you show any to me? What is he to you that I was not
a thousandfold? When did he ever love you more than his dogs? and I have
burned for you like a fire! What devotion has he ever shown you? and I
crawled to you like a slave! What has he ever sacrificed for you? and I
gave more than my life for a little piece of your honour. How will you
find reward for me, if to him you would give so much?"
"You know not," she answered piteously, "you cannot know, what he is to
me. All you say is true, yet God has made him more to me than all the
world. Turbo, he is my son, my only child, and you will not understand."
"Nor will you understand what I have felt," answered Turbo. "Yet I will
tell you, Gretchen; try and conceive it. Think what I was when I crawled
hither in your train to be a thing of loathing to every woman in the
Court, and all because I had been too jealous of your honour. Think what
a sweet reward of chivalry it was to lick up the crumbs you threw me to
ease your tormenting conscience. I know what it cost you to invite me
here. I know how you detested the sight of me. You did it as a penance,
and I saw you saying, as you shuddered by me, 'God will forgive my sin,
because I cast my broken meats to this Lazarus, and suffer my dogs to
lick his sores.'"
He paused a little, looking down on the crouching form without pity,
while she shrank and sobbed with her hands before her face.
"And whose silent voice was this?" he pursued. "It was my love that
spoke. It was she who once had met me with a blush of mantling delight;
it was she whose soft form I had clasped unresisting in my arms; it was
her heart that had beaten warm and fast against mine; it was her lips
that had drunk my kisses like sweet wine. You--you, who knew best how
my heart could feel, what think you was in it then? But I bore it all
uncomplaining, because I could not conceive of life away from you. I
bore it and waited for some solace to come."
"But why do you say all this?" the Queen broke in as he stopped again.
"What good can it do to gall your wounds and mine like this?"
"Listen, Gretchen. I will tell you all now you have driven me to begin.
I say I waited for a solace to come. It was weary, hopeless work, but
the solace came at last. I had won your husband's esteem. He believed
the fine sentiments I always had ready for his ear. I believed them once
myself. He did not see I was changed, and gave me his boy to make a man
of. Then I saw in my grasp a thing to sweeten the bitterness of my life.
I used to look at my charge, and see him beautiful as the daylight. I
knew he would grow up a man that women would look on and love
helplessly; and it was I--I, who was to make him worthy of their love!
Can you not see what sweet solace there was for me there? 'They shall
love him,' I said, 'they shall love him, but he shall never return their
love. I will show him what they are. He shall know from his childhood
what I learnt too late.' I swore they should never rejoice in the love
of such a man as I would make him. I pictured them longing for him and
eating their hearts. Was it not a gentle solace?"
"It was revenge!" she cried bitterly; "it was unmanly revenge!"
"Call it what you will," he continued; "perhaps you are right, I do not
pretend to be anything but what I am. Yet I had another motive for what
I did, and perhaps I am not wholly bad."
"No, no, Turbo," she said eagerly, as though his words gave her a hope
to clutch at. "God knows you are not that."
"And yet," he went on, without interruption, "I think I am as bad as a
man can be; perhaps a woman might be worse. You try to think as well of
me as you can. It is only natural. I owe you no thanks for it; for it
was you alone that made me what I am. It has been wisely said that no
one can act from a wholly bad motive. That is all I mean. I loved the
boy a little--as much indeed as I can love anything again--and perhaps I
thought to save him from what I had suffered. To love a woman was my
curse. Perhaps I strove a little to bless him with such a wisdom as
would save him from that. That is what I have done for your son,
Gretchen; and now, when I turn over the pages of my miserable life,
there is at least one pleasant chapter where I may linger."
She saw it was hopeless now, and rose to her feet. The one ray of light
was gone again, but before she dismissed him she longed to know one
thing. So she drew up her stately figure and faced him with the courage
of a woman who felt she was being punished beyond her crime. He was a
coward to her now.
"Is that all you have to say to me, Chancellor?" she said, looking
straight in his face.
"It was your majesty who sought the interview," he replied. "It can end
when you wish."
"Is there nothing you have kept back? Have you not one blow in reserve?"
He did not answer, so she went on, "I ask because you tell me that you
have taught my son to look on women as the basest creatures of God. I,
his mother, am the type in your eyes. Have you told him this too?"
"Does your majesty insist on an answer?"
"I insist on nothing. I am powerless to do so. I only thought you would
not be coward enough to add this new torment to my punishment."
"I am only what your majesty has made me."
"Then God help us both," she said, checking an angry outburst that was
on her lips. "You may retire."
Her attempt had failed. It was her first thought when he was gone, as
she sank into her chair again. She had failed, and only added to her
load the terrible uncertainty whether her son had been told of her
crime. Yet she knew she had gained something which she least expected to
find. Till now she had pitied her old lover, and that had prevented her
giving way to open hostility. She had stood in awe of him, too, but now
it seemed different. He was a pitiless and craven bully. Why should she
feel for him, who had no spark of sympathy for her? He was a thing to
despise and not to fear. So when they entered to announce the
supper-hour, she rose up calmly, knowing she had found a new courage for
the struggle before her.