THOUGHTS
In the loneliness and silence of the Tower, the Duke of Wessex had had
enough leisure to think.
One fatal autumn afternoon, and what a change in the destinies of his
life! Yesterday he was the first gentleman in England, loved by many,
feared by a few, reverenced by all as the perfect embodiment of national
pride and national grandeur--almost a king.
And to-day?
But of himself, his own obvious fate, the shame and disgrace of his
present position, he thought very little. Ever an easy-going
philosopher, he had as yet kept the insouciance of the gamester who has
staked and lost and is content to retire from the board. One thing more,
remember! Life in those days was not the priceless treasure which later
civilization would have us believe it. There was a greater simplicity of
faith, a more childlike certitude in the great truths of futurity, which
we in our epoch are so ready to cavil at.
If nations and individuals committed excesses of unparalleled cruelty in
the name of their respective creeds, if men hated each other, tortured
each other, destroyed one another, it was because they misunderstood the
teachings of religion, and not because they ignored or disbelieved them.
The cruelties themselves are unjustifiable, the mind of
twentieth-century civilization can but gaze at them in mute horror,
history can but record and deplore. But the religion which prompted
them--for it was religion--was not the feeble, anaemic plaything of an
effete generation in search of new excitements; it was strong and
virile, alike in the atrocity of its crimes and the sublimity of its
virtues.
Thus with a man like Wessex. Life had been pleasant, of course, a bed of
roses worthy even of one of our modern sybarites, but to him only the
episode, which higher thoughts and Christian belief have ever suggested
that it should be.
Perhaps it would be too much to say that faith alone caused him to look
lightly upon this sudden, tragic ending of his brilliant career, but it
undoubtedly helped him to preserve that easy and unembittered frame of
mind of the philosopher, who, with life, loses that which hath but
little value.
And now indeed, what worth would life have for him? This is where
thoughts became bitter and cruel, not over death, not over disgrace, but
over the treachery of a woman and the flight of an illusion. What did it
all mean?
Sometimes now, when he sat looking straight before him at the cold grey
walls of his prison, he seemed to see that strange dual personality
mocking him with all the witchlike elusiveness which had mystified and
tortured him from the first.
His "Fanny"! that beautiful vision of innocent girlhood; arch,
coquettish, tender yet passionate, the clear depths of those blue eyes,
the purity of that radiant smile!
And then she! Ursula Glynde! with bare shoulder and breast, cheeks
flushed, but not with shame, eyes moist, yet not with tears, submitting
with feeble, hoarse protests to the masterful touch of an insolent
Spaniard, only to take revenge later with the elemental barbarity of the
street wench, too drunk to understand her crime.
Every fibre within him cried out that this was not the woman who had
plucked a marguerite petal by petal, and quivered with delight at sound
of the nightingale's voice among the willows; not the woman on whose
soft girlish cheeks he had loved to call forth, with an ardent gaze or a
bold word, a tender blush of rosy red, not the woman whom in one brief
second he had learnt to love, whom in one mad, heavenly moment he had
kissed.
Every sense in him clamoured for the belief that it had all been an ugly
dream, an autumn madness from which he would presently wake at her feet.
Every sense! yet his eyes had seen her! his ears had heard her respond
to her name, when uttered roughly by the man who seemed to be her
master.
The truth itself never once dawned upon him. The whole trick had been
managed with such devilish cunning, every piece in the intricate
mechanism of that intrigue had been so carefully adjusted, that it would
have required superhuman insight, or the cold, calculating mind of an
unemotional mathematician, to have hit upon its natural explanation.
Wessex possessed neither. He was just a man touched for the first time
in his life with the strongest passion of which human creatures are
capable. He loved a woman with all the ardour, all the unreasoning
instincts, all the sublime weakness and folly of which a loyal and
strong heart is capable. That woman had proved a liar and a wanton in
his sight.
He was forced to believe that; had he not seen her? Which of us hath
ever really grasped the fact that one human being may be fashioned line
for line, feature for feature, exactly like another? Yet such a thing
is. Nature hath every freak. Why not that one?
He thought of everything, of every solution, of every possibility.
Heaven help him! of every excuse, but never of that. That Nature, in one
of those wayward moods in which no one would dare deny that she at
times indulges, had fashioned a kitchen wench as a lifelike replica of
one of the most beautiful women in England--that one simple,
indisputable, easily verified fact, never once entered his tortured
mind.
She was mad! yes!--irresponsible for her own actions, yes!--wilfully
wanton! no! a thousand times no! Hers was a dual nature, wherein angels
and devils alternately held sway!
He, poor fool, had fallen under the spell of the angels, and the devils
had then turned him away from his shrine, shattered his illusions, shown
him his idol's feet of clay, then dared him ever to worship again, ever
to forget the mud which cloyed the bottom of the limpid stream.
With Harry Plantagenet for sole companion, during the brief days which
preceded his trial, Wessex had indeed leisure for his thoughts. The
faithful animal knew quite well that his master suffered and could not
now be comforted, but he would sit for hours with his wise head resting
on Wessex' knee, his gentle eyes fixed in mute sympathy upon the grave
face of the Duke.
He knew better than any one that his master was in serious trouble, for
when they were alone together, when no one was there who could see, no
one but this true and silent companion, then philosophy, pride, and
bitterness would fly to the winds and a few hot tears would ease the
oppression which made Wessex' heart ache almost to breaking.
And Harry Plantagenet, when he saw those tears, would curl himself up
and go to sleep. With his keen, canine instinct, he felt no doubt only
that an atmosphere of peace and rest had descended on the gloomy Tower
prison.
The faithful creature could not understand that it was the visit of the
angel of sorrow, who, in passing, had lulled a weary man's agonizing
soul with the gentle, soothing touch of his wing.