Front matter (continued 5)

"O God!" she cried aloud, with a passion that had slipped her control. "Ye had no right to make childless women!"

She flung the shell from her, and buried her face in her hands, while the painful sobs heaved her body.

She had not long even the comfort of lonely weeping, for the sound of voices and footsteps coming up the narrow stairs caused her to rise heavily, with a start of self-reproach.

It was her secret boast that she had not allowed a tear or a sigh to escape her in public since the King had gone. She dried her poor tired eyes hastily, and bit her lips to steady them, while she thrust her sorrows back into her heart with that placid courage that never failed her. She descended the stairs and faced the people who were, she knew, looking for her.

She was not prepared to see Lord Nottingham, whom she had left at Whitehall; the sight of him among her attendants caused her to pause at the foot of the stairs.

"You, my lord!" she cried faintly.

His dark face showed obvious relief at her appearance.

"I have been searching for Your Majesty," he said, with some reproach. "I have ridden hot after Your Majesty from London——"

"There must be grave news," said Mary, knowing that otherwise he would not have come himself.

"There is, Madam—the gravest."

Mary raised her head; she was perfectly composed.

"From—the King?" she asked.

"No, Madam."

Mary smiled superbly.

"Then it is not the worst." She was colourless to the lips, but bore herself with majesty. "What is it, my lord?"

Nottingham was always tragical in his discourse, and now his face and tone were gloomy in the extreme.

"Madam, M. de Waldeck and the allies have been defeated at Fleurus, M. de Tourville and the French fleet have been spied under full sail for the coast of Devon. There is no relying on our sailors—there is a panic in the city."

The Queen's eyes flashed with something of her husband's look when fronted with disaster.

"We will to London," she said—"there to face these misfortunes."

CHAPTER V

A WOMAN'S STRENGTH

The council of nine was sitting at Whitehall waiting for news from the English Fleet, which, under command of Lord Torrington, had sailed out from Plymouth to meet the French.

The Queen sat at the head of the table, as usual silent and as usual watchful; at her right hand Lord Caermarthen, at her left Lord Devonshire, the others along the table, and at the foot Sir John Lowther.

The room was very handsome: the walls of varied-coloured tapestry, the cornices of gilt wood, and the floor covered with rugs from Persia. Through the tall, majestic window might be seen a view of housetops and a little turret with a bell clear against a sky of flaming summer blue.

Mary was seated in a heavy chair with crimson cushions; she wore a violet dress of stiff damask satin and a petticoat flounced with lace; her arms were covered to the wrist with ruffles of muslin, and she held a long chicken skin fan with ivory mounts and an emerald in the handle; her shortsighted and narrowed eyes dwelt anxiously and critically on the faces of these men in whose hands she, and England, lay.

Facing her, Sir John Lowther, commonplace, courtly, agitated, was stabbing the polished table with a broken quill; to his left sat Edward Russell, impatient, blond, swaggering; to his right, Pembroke, gentle, hesitating, reserved. Godolphin, thin and hectic, was, as ever, mute and self-effacing; his companion was the restless, feverish, and volatile Monmouth, extravagantly dressed and fiery in manner.

Opposite him sat the gloomy honourable Nottingham, and another man, an object of peculiar dislike and suspicion both to the King and Queen, John Churchill, recently created Earl of Marlborough.

Of all the company he was the most remarkable in appearance—young, tall, of extreme good looks, though florid and flamboyant in type, of a calm, easy, and courtly demeanour, but obviously not an aristocrat nor anything of a great gentleman, but rather of a kind of vulgarity, even in his richly coloured beauty, and in that different to the other ministers, who were all of noble appearance; he was dressed in scarlet silk and wore a very rich sword-belt; he sat opposite the window, and the sunlight made his splendour glitter.

My Lord Devonshire was of another and more winning type of handsomeness; his young face was refined and delicate in feature, yet expressed an ardent strength and a proud decision; he looked continually at the Queen, and seemed, with the exception of Caermarthen, to be the only one who had much sympathy or regard for her position.

"The conspirators——" began Nottingham heavily. He was drawing up a list of the suspected names; he had industrious spies, as the Whigs had found to their cost.

"Well, my lord?" asked Godolphin imperturbable. He had made his peace with King James himself, but was calm in the knowledge that he had been far too cunning to leave evidence of it in anybody's hands.

Nottingham pursed his lips; he added a name to his list, and handed the paper with a significant look to Russell, who shrugged and passed it on to Monmouth.

"These are people to be put under arrest, are they not?" asked that nobleman.

"Yes," said Nottingham dryly. "Shall I leave that last name?"

The paper was now in Lord Marlborough's hands; he smiled serenely, and put up his glass.

Mary spoke, and her woman's voice sounded strangely in the council chamber.

"What is this name?"

Marlborough inclined with great deference towards her.

"The Earl of Clarendon, Your Majesty."

The other councillors were silent; he was the Queen's uncle, and even the most callous of them felt some pity for her dilemma. Devonshire cast an indignant look on Marlborough, whom he hated, but nothing could put that gentleman out of countenance.

"I will erase the name," muttered Nottingham.

The Queen put out her hand in a gesture to stay him.

"No, my lord. I know," she said, with great dignity, "and you all know, that my Lord Clarendon is far too guilty to be left out."

"A wise decision, Your Majesty," remarked Marlborough calmly.

She set her lips in disdain of him, and turned to the haggard Lord President on her right. She had never liked Caermarthen, even though she owed her marriage largely to him, but she softened to him now; since the King's departure he had worked incessantly. He was in extreme ill-health, and she believed he was loyal.

"My lord," she said, "should we not soon have news from Lord Torrington? It is twenty-four hours since he had our orders to fight."

"We are better waiting for that news than listening to it, Your Majesty," said Admiral Russell bluntly.

Mary knew that he was largely inspired by professional jealousy.

"Oh, sir," she answered, "we will have more trust in the man on whom the fate of three kingdoms dependeth."

"Madam," said Lord Devonshire, "I do not think Lord Torrington a man to be intrusted with the fate of three kingdoms."

Mary answered with animation.

"That censure hath been passed before, my lord—and at the privy council—but since we must trust my lord let us pray God he will not fail us."

"He would not like those orders to fight," exclaimed Edward Russell, who had been the main means of sending them. "A cautious man!"

"One who was not cautious should have been sent to urge him!" cried Monmouth, who was angry that his entreaty to be permitted to join the fleet had been refused.

Mary pressed her fan to her lips and sat mute; in truth, the agony she endured was not to be soothed with words. Her whole being was strung for the arrival of the next letters, not only from Torrington, who was now the sole defence of England, but from Ireland, where she knew her father and husband were rapidly approaching face to face.

"Maybe," said the Lord President, "Torrington never got Your Majesty's dispatch——"

Monmouth, who was discussing with Godolphin the details of Fuller's confession (that conspirator having turned informer to save his neck), swung round violently in his seat.

"Dear Lord!" he exclaimed. "Do you mean that he may be still idle at St. Helens?"

"It may be—the advice packets last reported that he had not moved, and that M. de Tourville was beyond the Needles."

"Oh, were I on board," cried Monmouth, "there should be a battle—I pledge my life on it!"

Mary was perfectly pale; she still held her fan to her lips and sat silent, so motionless that it seemed as if she scarcely breathed.

"He had positive orders to fight," said Godolphin.

"Oh, my lord," answered Marlborough sweetly, "is it not believed that this invasion is in concert with these plots among the malcontents?"

"Do you mean that Lord Torrington is a traitor?" asked Caermarthen bluntly; he gave Marlborough a glance that conveyed he thought him one.

The Queen dropped her fan and clenched it tightly in her right hand.

"Gentlemen, this is no time for these insinuations, with the enemy on the coast. We," she said proudly and courageously—"we trust all those in our service, and have faith in God who hath it all in His keeping."

She paused; the effort of speaking had brought the colour into her face, her eyes sparkled, and the western sunlight trembled in her auburn hair. They waited silently, watching her with curiosity and some judgment. She was principally conscious of the malignant smiling eyes of my Lord Marlborough.

"This is our decision," she continued, with unfaltering voice—"that Admiral Russell and my Lord Monmouth go down to the coast, and there join the fleet, and give our commands to Lord Torrington that, for the honour of England, he fight the French, whom he must now outnumber since his juncture with the Dutch. My lords, the council is over."

It was the first time that she had given her commands to her advisers, almost the first time she had announced her opinion on their discussions; but she left them no chance to doubt that she meant what she said; she had the manner of Kings.

"Let these disloyal subjects," she added, pointing to Lord Nottingham's list, "be at once lodged in the Tower."

She rose, gave her hand to Lord Caermarthen, and descended from her high chair with a soft heavy sound of silks.

"England is Your Majesty's debtor," said Lord Devonshire, bowing low.

She answered with her sweet stateliness.

"I do what a woman can, my lord."

"Your Majesty doth what few women would," said Caermarthen warmly; he had for her a real and deep devotion.

She turned as if she would have rebuked his compliment, but checked herself at sight of his worn and ghastly face, livid with fatigue and anxiety.

"I am like your lordship," she answered kindly, "I am fond of my country."

He coloured with pleasure, and bent over her fine hand.

"Now I must go wait for letters." She smiled and left them with her usual little formal salutation.

Devonshire looked round at the other councillors.

"There is more courage in that lady than in most of us," he said gently. "I did mark the tears lying in her eyes even while she smiled."

"She will need her courage," answered Caermarthen briefly; "for seldom hath the country been in the pass it is now."

Mary had gone no farther than the antechamber with the French tapestries and crystal candelabra when she was met by the news that the Duke of Shrewsbury required an immediate audience.

Her face hardened; she could not forgive Shrewsbury either his secret treachery or the vexation he had caused the King by his sudden resignation; she hesitated, then commanded his presence.

When he entered she was standing before the great gilt mantelpiece, very cold and contained.

"What is the reason of your coming, my lord?" she said.

His gentle face was flecked with feverish colour in the cheeks, he drew his breath sharply, his riding-suit was dusty; indeed, he was spent with rapid riding.

"Madam," he answered, "upon this news—that M. de Tourville rode at the Isle of Wight—I am come at once to London to offer Your Majesty my services—my sword——"

"You, my lord!" exclaimed Mary.

"Madam," he said, "for the second time all I have is at the service of His Majesty."

She looked at him steadily; she could not doubt his sincerity. He was again the man he had been in '88. Danger struck a fine spirit out of him, she thought, and she the more deplored his miserable defection of late.

"Ah, my lord," she said sadly, "when His Majesty wished for your services you refused them——"

"Then," cried Shrewsbury, "the French were not on the coasts."

She saw in his eagerness a desperate remorseful desire to make atonement, and further softened.

"I am in such a strait that I can refuse no offers," she said; "but, sir, I have no work for you."

"Send me to the Fleet, Madam—put me under my Lord Marlborough with the army. I will serve as a volunteer—as anything——"

"Had you shown this spirit before His Majesty went to Ireland I had been more grateful," Mary replied gently. "But I am glad to know of your loyalty, my lord."

"Madam, this is an urgent crisis—there is almost an open panic—as I rode up from Epsom, the people came running out of their cottages crying that the French were coming; in the country all are looking out their arms——"

The Queen interrupted.

"Some, I fear, with the design of joining the invader."

"Why, God forbid!" he cried.

"I have commanded the Guards down to Devon to seize the arms and houses of suspect persons," said Mary quietly; "and to-night, my lord, all the leaders of this Fuller plot will be in prison—yea, even to my Lord Clarendon."

"Ah!" exclaimed Shrewsbury sharply.

Mary fixed him with a proud but kind gaze.

"There are many others whose guilt I know who have not been arrested," she said slowly.

The young Duke pressed his hand to the embroidered ruffles over his bosom.

"Why is Your Majesty thus tender with these—traitors?" he asked, in a trembling voice.

"It is my policy," she answered quietly. "I am only a woman, and must trust to instinct. My lord, I will ask your advice about this matter."

"My advice?" he stammered, very pale.

"Yes. Supposing a great nobleman who had finely served His Majesty in '88—one whom His Majesty loved and trusted—had, in a moment of weakness, of temptation, betrayed him, and then, being remorseful, I think, left his service—supposing, I say, that this gentleman came forward now, with offers of help, should I not trust him?"

Shrewsbury stood mute.

"I think I should," said Mary softly. "He is an English gentleman, and he would not take advantage of my great difficulties to intrigue against me; he would not take advantage of my confidence to lead his people to join the French—am I not right?"

The Duke raised his head; his face was pitifully trembling.

"Your Majesty's generosity would not be misplaced," he answered hoarsely.

"I am glad you think so, my lord. I may trust him, then?"

"I pledge my life you may," said Shrewsbury ardently.

"Thank you, my lord—I shall find you at your town house?"

"I shall wait there to receive the commands of Your Majesty."

Mary moved a little from the mantelpiece and held out her hand.

Shrewsbury went on one knee to kiss the soft fingers.

"I hope to see you at court once more," she said, with a pretty smile. "I hope you will serve the King again when we are through this difficult pass."

He answered from his heart—

"I would serve His Majesty with my life."

When he had gone Mary went to the window, for the light was beginning to fade, and drew from her waist a crystal watch enamelled with white violets.

It was nearly time for her supper. She resided now at Whitehall to please the people, and to please the people dined nearly always in public, a practice the King detested and could scarcely ever be brought to do; that penance was over for to-day, but she had other disagreeable duties to perform.

She rang the handbell on an ormolu bureau between the windows, and asked the Dutch usher who came if Lord Feversham was without.

He had, it seemed, been long awaiting an audience.

The Queen commanded him to be brought to her, and seated herself in the yellow brocade chair to the right of the fireplace.

Lord Feversham, a Frenchman, a Catholic, and Chamberlain of the Dowager Queen Catherine's household, entered with a most lowly obeisance.

Mary looked at him haughtily.

"You can guess the matter on which we have sent for you?" she asked, speaking in French.

"I fear I have again fallen under Your Majesty's displeasure."

"Both you and your mistress are very much in our displeasure," answered Mary. "It was our duty to reprimand you three days ago for leaving out the prayers for the success of His Majesty in the services held in Her Majesty's chapel, and we listened for near an hour to your excuses, nor could make much sense of them. And now the offence is repeated."

"I entreat Your Majesty to believe that it was an oversight," answered Feversham humbly.

"Disloyalty and insolence prompts such oversights," flashed the Queen. "We will not take it, my lord; for though we may be meek, yet we stand for His Sovereign Lord the King. Tell Queen Catherine so, and bid her to-night put up prayers for the success of my Lord Torrington against our enemies the French——"

Feversham winced, and stole a startled glance at the woman he had believed to be an amiable cipher; the young beauty's demeanour as she sat stately and resolved in her regal gown undeceived him.

"When we rode abroad in Hyde Park to-day," she continued, "we did note many swarming villains, French and Irish, who gave us impertinent and joyous looks as if they did anticipate a triumph, and maybe Her Majesty thinketh also that she may do as she list now M. de Tourville is in the Channel. But we have no fear of any kind as to the issue of these matters, nor shall we be weak. Some great men will lie in the Tower to-night. Bid your mistress take care."

She rose, and her full height, with heels and head-dress, was more than his. He made as if to speak.

"There is no more to say," she said coldly, and left him discomfited.

No news came, but many rumours found their way into the crowded galleries at Whitehall, where the anxious courtiers waited and endeavoured to read the situation in the Queen's face and manner.

She baffled them all, both at her supper-table and afterwards, when she sat down to basset as usual in that splendid hall where King Charles had held his festivals. She was gay and gracious and unconcerned—some even thought her unfeeling. She appeared to notice nothing; but her eyes and ears were quick for it all—the whispers, the looks, the ill-concealed fears and hopes.

She was, she knew, absolutely alone; not one of the throng about her could she confide in, and very few could she trust. She suspected that many of them were but waiting for a slackening of her courage to call all lost and hasten to make their peace with James; ill news from the Fleet or from Ireland might mean instant rebellion, she was well aware.

Meanwhile she played basset and made no mistake in her moves.

When it was near ten of the clock Lord Nottingham entered the room. The Queen's eyes at once distinguished him among the crowd.

She continued dealing the cards. When he approached her she looked up with a steady smile.

Her lips shaped the one word—

"News?"

He placed a dispatch on the card-table beside her fan and gloves. She saw at once that it was not from Ireland, and she drew a breath between relief and disappointment.

Her glance went swiftly round the faces now undisguisedly watching her, and then she broke the seal.

While she read her bosom heaved, and those nearest her saw the colour faintly stain her face.

She folded up the letter and rose. The ace of spades fell from her lap to the shining floor.

There was a pause of silence. Mary's eyes were the eyes of a creature at bay.

"This is evil news," she said, at length, to Lord Nottingham, and a proud little smile curved her lips.

She had just read that Lord Torrington had been utterly defeated off Beachy Head by the French, who were landed at Tynemouth.

"What will Your Majesty do?" he asked, under his breath. "The courier saith the enemy is in possession of the west——"

She crushed up Lord Torrington's letter in a passionate right hand; she saw that his defeat had been inglorious. The Dutch had been in the van all day and were near annihilated; the English, mere spectators, had drawn off to Plymouth almost untouched.

"The French are landed," she said, "but we English will not let them far advance. I will call upon the city of London. Summon to me the Lord Mayor."

CHAPTER VI

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!

On the evening of the fourth day after the defeat at Beachy Head, the Queen, who would abate none of her state during this time of anxiety, but rather kept it more splendidly, as a besieged general will hang out all his flags when his garrison becomes scant, so as to defy and deceive the enemy, held court in the most sumptuous gallery of Whitehall.

The land was full of panic, of terror, of mistrust, but the spirit of the people had risen to the need. The city of London had responded finely to the Queen's appeal; a hundred thousand pounds had been paid into the treasury, she had to-day reviewed the train-bands in Hyde Park and received an address assuring her of the loyalty of the capital.

The spirit she showed made her suddenly popular. The distant King and the Dutch were viewed with more favour. Hatred of the French was an emotion powerful enough to overcome all lesser dislikes, and the whole nation, Whig and Tory, Protestant and Catholic, shook with rage at the part Lord Torrington had made the British navy play.

It was apparent to all the world that he, irritated by orders he conceived were devised by his rival Russell, had sacrificed the Dutch, whom he believed were so unpopular that no outcry would be raised at their destruction, to the English.

Admiral Evertgen, the admiral of the States, had, with heroic valour, fought his ships all day long against the overwhelming armament of France, while the English fleet looked on, and only came forward at nightfall to tow the disabled Dutch hulks away and destroy them at Plymouth.

Popular fury rose high. The London crowd would gladly have torn Torrington limb from limb. Mary sent him to the Tower and dispatched a special envoy to the States with the best and most flattering apology she could devise; her very blood burnt with shame that her husband's people should be thus sacrificed and her own behave so basely; she ordered the wounded Dutch seamen to be tended in the English hospitals, and wrote a letter of compliment to the gallant Evertgen.

She had, in every direction, done what she could, and the spirit of England had responded; but the situation was still acute, might yet turn to utter disaster, and though people might shout for her in the street, there was little but enmity, jealousy, and opposition among those by whom she was personally surrounded.

Even her own sister was under the influence of the Marlboroughs, her enemy, and the Catholic Queen Dowager had no love for her; it was these two women she was watching as she sat in her lonely weariness beneath a candelabra of fifty coloured candles.

Anne, beautiful, but stout and sullen, lacking all vivacity and charm, was making knots near the gilt chair of the little dark Portuguese lady who had been the wife of the second Charles.

Catherine very seldom came to court, and would not have been there now, as Mary reflected with a swelling heart, had the last news been of victory instead of defeat.

The Princess, who lost no opportunity of vexing her sister, was attired in the free and gorgeous costume of the last two reigns, in defiant contrast to the decorous modes the Queen had made fashionable, and Catherine of Braganza wore a stiff farthingale of brown brocade sewn with pearls.

Presently Anne, becoming aware that Mary was watching her, broke into challenging laughter, which rang false enough at this juncture.

Mary hung her head; it seemed terrible that the wretched family divisions to which she had been forced to be a party should be increased by this breach between her only sister and herself. On a sudden impulse she sent her new maid of honour, Basilea de Marsac, with a message requesting Anne's company.

The Princess tossed her head and came reluctantly; she was at no pains whatever to conceal her rebellious attitude towards the throne.

Mary greeted her gently.

"It would be more fitting if you would give me some of your company, Anne; Queen Catherine's sentiments are well noised abroad—you need not—laugh—with her at such a time."

Anne sank down on the other end of the settee; the ladies behind the Queen withdrew, leaving the sisters alone; the musicians were playing a monotonous little march in the gallery.

"We should display a united front now," continued Mary unsteadily.

"I don't know what you mean, Madam," answered Anne almost insolently; she never used any manner of respect to the Queen; she considered that she was of as much importance; she never ceased to flaunt that she was the mother of the child who would be the future King of England.

Mary gazed at her pouting, overblown comeliness with sad eyes.

"You will not understand," she answered. "You take a pleasure in doing everything contrary to what I do——"

Anne smoothed her grey satin skirt with a plump white hand.

"Our tastes are different," she said.

Mary was silent. Anne kept her languid eyes downcast, then jerked out—

"I have writ to the King for the vacant Garter for my Lord Marlborough. I hope Your Majesty will use your influence?"

Mary coloured hotly.

"You have writ to the King in Ireland on such a matter?"

"And so hath the Prince. It is allowable to write to the King, I hope?"

"You should have spoken to me first," answered Mary, with trembling lips. "I have no mind that the King should be vexed with these things. I do not think he meaneth the Garter for Lord Marlborough."

Anne flung up her head with a force that set her huge pearl earrings quivering.

"And who better deserveth it, I should like to know? I suppose it is meant for Lord Portland, or some other Dutchman?"

"Anne, you are infatuate to speak so. The services of my Lord Marlborough have been well rewarded."

At that Anne burst out with what had evidently been her secret grievance.

"He is slighted on every possible occasion—'tis he who should have reviewed the militia this afternoon!"

Mary turned angrily.

"This is my Lady Marlborough her doing; she put this into your head, Anne, and it is too much."

"Yes, it is too much," answered Anne, "that Your Majesty should have such a dislike to my friend."

"Her insolence," exclaimed Mary, "is beyond all bearing. I have it on good report that she hath spoken of the King with great disrespect."

"She ain't the only one if she hath," retorted Anne. "His Majesty ain't so popular——"

"I command you stop," said Mary, in a cold tone of deep anger.

Anne submitted sulkily.

"La, I meant no harm."

"You go too far," answered Mary in a low controlled tone. "His Majesty thinketh it ungenerous to quarrel with a woman, or your behaviour would have been put a stop to before. I, perhaps, shall not be so long enduring. I cannot and will not take the defiance of my Lady Marlborough—no, nor your incivility either, Anne."

"I don't suppose Your Majesty would hesitate to clap me up if you dared," said Anne, lashed by the attack on her favourite. "There is one of your relations in the Tower, and where the uncle is the sister may follow; but I warn Your Majesty that I have the Parliament behind me——"

Again Mary interrupted.

"Leave me until you can command yourself."

Anne hesitated, but the music that had screened their talk had ceased, and beyond a point Mary always quelled her. She rose, courtsied haughtily, and withdrew to the other end of the gallery, where Lady Marlborough—a gorgeous blonde shrew with a vulgar voice—was playing comet with Prince George for partner.

Mary closed her eyes for a second. This sordid quarrel with her sister, mainly based on demands for money, was the last bitterness of her position; she had tried every means of conciliation in vain. Lady Marlborough's hold on her puppet was too firm, and Anne but took advantage of any kindness from the Queen to press for an addition to her already huge allowance.

The violins played a gavotte. Mary sat motionless, listening to the subdued volume of talk by which she was surrounded, and thinking of that far-distant day when she had danced with her husband in this very room—a week or so before her marriage.

She recalled how she had enjoyed dancing, and wondered to think how dead that passion was.

"I used to think," she thought, "that a dance measure would lure me from my grave, and now the gayest melody written will not move me."

She gazed over her shoulder at her reflection in the tall mirror against the wall to the left; she beheld a fair image, in yellow silk and diamonds, with a very proud carriage. A Queen, young and beautiful—the description sounded like a favoured creature from one of those fairy tales she used to read; she knew the reality—a tired woman, unutterably lonely, estranged from all her family, childless, and forlorn.

Queen Catherine came to take her leave.

"No news yet from Ireland?" she asked, in her awkward English.

Mary courteously rose before the woman who had been Queen in Whitehall when she was a child.

"None, Madam."

The Queen Dowager hesitated a moment, then said—

"I have not failed of late to put up prayers for His Majesty's good success."

"I thank you, Madam."

Catherine of Braganza pulled at her curling feather fan and laughed.

"We are both in a strange position, are we not?"

"The positions God put us in," said Mary coldly. She wondered why the other woman paused to talk.

The Queen Dowager continued to smile over her fan.

"I think to go back to Portugal."

"That must be as Your Majesty pleaseth."

"England is no longer the same to me."

Mary's hand tightened on the rich back of the settle. She read perfectly well the scorn of the Stewart's wife for the usurper and the Protestant.

"I find Whitehall a little dull," continued Catherine, with a malicious twist of her lip. "Geneva bands and black coats are a strange sight in these halls——"

"Certainly they were not seen here in the days of my Lady Portsmouth," flashed Mary.

The little Portuguese winced slightly, but ignored the thrust.

"I do not blame Your Majesty," she said. "You are not so fortunate in your court as I was; the Dutch," she raised her thin shoulders in a shrug, "do not make the best of courtiers——"

"No," answered Mary impetuously; "but they make good husbands, Madam."

Catherine made no attempt to turn this hit. She put her hand to her dark throat, and her large melancholy eyes filled with tears. She answered the thought and not the words.

"I cared as much as you do, all the same;" she said, "and I shall always be a Jacobite for his—worthless—sake."

"Forgive me," murmured Mary instantly. "I had no right. But do you be charitable. I am in great trouble, Madam, and very much alone."

Catherine lifted her small olive face with a kind of defiant brightness.

"We have that loneliness in common, Madam. If you or I had an heir it would have all been different. I shall say a mass for your husband his safety. Good night, Your Majesty."

She swept her grave foreign courtsey and retired, followed by her silent duennas. Mary stood pressing her handkerchief to her lips, and felt the whole pageant of people, lights, speech, music, swing past her like reflections on troubled water—broken, scattered without substance or meaning.

No news came.

She dismissed the Court presently and went to her rooms; it was late, long past ten o'clock, yet she would not go to bed, but sat in her cabinet writing to the King. Sheet after sheet she covered with news, hopes, fears, love, entreaties for God's blessings—all her heart indeed laid out before her one confidant.

The candlelight hurt her eyes, weaker of late with work and tears, and at last she folded up the letter unfinished. The express did not go till the morning, and she hoped that by then she might have the long-looked-for news from Ireland.

When she rose from her desk she was utterly tired, yet could not rest—there was so much to do.

Her letter to Admiral Evertgen, which she had written with great pains in Dutch, had been returned as unintelligible, and now she must write again in English, which language the Admiral understood perfectly, it seemed. There was the question of the command of the Fleet on her mind; Russell and Monmouth had been met at Canterbury by the news of the disaster of Beachy Head, and now were back in London, hot against Torrington; Mary feared that the King would be vexed with her for having let them leave the council, yet she must again send some one to the Fleet, now without a commander. Her choice had fallen on Pembroke, who was an admiral, and Devonshire, whom she could trust, and thereupon Caermarthen had taken umbrage, and it had been a weary work of tact and sweetness to prove to him that he was indispensable in London and could not be spared—yet perhaps she had been wrong, and she should have let him go.

All these lesser anxieties crowded on her weary soul, aching with the desire for news from the King, and, as she left her cabinet and came into her bedchamber, a profound melancholy overthrew her gallant spirit.

Only two of her ladies were up—Madame de Marsac and Madame Nienhuys. Mary told them to go to bed, and cast herself into the window-seat and pulled the curtains apart from before the windows open on the warm soft night.

"It is Your Majesty who should go to bed," said Madame Nienhuys firmly.

Mary shook her head.

"I cannot. I cannot sleep until I get a letter."

"You neither sleep nor eat," protested the Dutch lady.

"I am very well," smiled Mary sadly. "Go to bed, like a good creature——"

"Indeed, Madam, I will not leave you in this state."

"Have you been with me so long that you become disobedient? Very well, put out some of the candles—the light hurts my eyes."

Basilea de Marsac rose softly and extinguished all the candles, save those on the mantelshelf. The large rich chamber was full of grateful shadow. Mary's yellow gown gleamed secretively like gold through a veil.

She took the diamonds from her neck and arms and gave them to Madame Nienhuys. She pulled off her rings slowly, and dropped them into her lap, looking the while out on to the July dark, that seemed to her to be painted with the menacing forces of war, flags, banners hanging bloody to their poles, the hot, smoking mouths of cannon, the glitter of armour through the dust—her husband's army and her father's struggling together to the death.

She rose so suddenly that the rings fell and rolled all over the floor.

"I think I will go to bed after all," she said faintly.

They undressed her in silence and left her wide-eyed in the great crimson bed, canopied and plumed and enriched with the arms of England.

When they had gone she lay for a while quite still. There was no moon, and she could not distinguish a single object in the room, and only uncertainly the dim spaces of the window.

All that had seemed small, petty, and wretched in the daytime seemed a thousand times more mean and unworthy now. She was haunted by the stiff little figure of Queen Catherine, whose personality had suddenly flashed out on her, by the fair sullen image of Anne, and the vulgar enmity of Lady Marlborough. She was tortured by the idea that she had done everything wrong....

She sat up in bed and locked her hands over her heart.

"I must not despair—God will not let me despair," she clung to that word, "God—ah, He knoweth best—He seeth what man cannot see—therefore He did not give me children, knowing I could not have endured this if their safety had been at stake."

The Palace clock struck one. Like an echo came the bell of the Abbey Church, then the dead silence again.

The Queen rose from her bed and made her way lightly to the dressing-table. After a little fumbling she found the tinderbox and struck a light.

The silver table, the enamel, jade, and gold boxes glittered into points of light. In the depths of the mirror she saw her own face lit by the little flame she held.

It flared out between her cold fingers. She struck another and lit one of the tall candles in the red copper stands.

By the dim wavering light she found her scarlet shoes and a little mantle of fox's fur that she put on over her muslin night-dress. She then took up the candlestick, which was so heavy that it made her wrist shake, and quietly left the room, which opened into the cabinet.

Here she paused at the red lac desk, unlocked it with the gold key she wore round her neck, and took out a packet tied with orange ribbon.

These were the letters she had received from the King since his departure. She looked at them tenderly, took up her candle again, and passed on through an antechamber to a private door that led straight into the chapel.

Her feeble light gave her glimpses of the lofty walls panelled in cedar wood, the majestic altar of white marble gilt, and the great painting brought from Italy—all heavenly blue, and deep crimson, and angelic faces breaking from rosy clouds.

Mary went to the altar steps, set the candle on the topmost one, then fell on her knees with her letters pressed to her heart.

As she prayed she bent lower and lower till her beautiful head touched the marble, and there it rested while she sobbed out her humble prayers for her husband, her father, for England, for her own poor tired soul.

She grew cold as she lay across the altar steps, and peaceful in her heart. She thought God was not so displeased with her; a confidence rose in her bosom that he would not let His cause fail though her weakness....

A gentle confusion came over her senses, and she fell into a kind of swoon; when this passed she found that her candle had burnt to the socket and gone out, and that a blue dawn was lighting the glowing arms of England in the painted glass windows.

She got to her feet, shivering but calm, and went back stealthily through the vast silent rooms, filled with the early sun, and so reached her bed; and, for the first time for weeks, fell placidly asleep. Next morning when she woke she was very silent; but, as her ladies thought, more at ease.

She had hidden her letters under her pillow, and when she was dressed slipped them into her gown.

As she left her apartments on the way to the chapel she was met by Lord Nottingham.

The news from Ireland at last!

"The King is safe, Madam," said my lord, in pity of her face.

She stood speechless; those about her were little less moved. The silence hung heavy.

"His late Majesty is also safe," added my lord delicately.

She spoke then.

"I—I thank you."

She tore open her letters, but could not read them.

"Oh, tell me, sir," she said hoarsely.

"Madam, the King hath had a great victory at Boyne Water. Ireland is conquered."

Even as he spoke the bells broke out from a thousand steeples and the guns of the Tower boomed triumph.

"The news is just abroad," said Nottingham.

Mary flushed into a glorious exaltation.

"The King hath redeemed us all!" she cried, with inexpressible pride. "The King hath saved us!"

"Not the King alone, Madam," answered my lord, with a flush on his shallow face—"listen to these——"

From without came the sound of wild joyous murmurs from the crowd that had gathered to hear the news. As it sped from mouth to mouth a frenzy of relief and triumph shook the people. They burst into one shout that drowned the cannon and the bells—

"Long live the Queen! God save and bless the Queen!"

CHAPTER VII

THE SHADOW

Mr. Matthew Prior, Private Secretary to the Earl of Portland, was enjoying the winter sunshine in the gardens of Hampton Court Palace.

It was the year 1694, and near Christmas. Many vast events had taken place since the young poet had been first introduced to the Court by my Lord Dorset—plots, counter-plots, change of ministers, of parliaments, the defeat of Landen and Steinkirk, the great victory at La Hogue, the loss of the Smyrna Fleet, four bloody campaigns, four winters of gloom, depression, and internal convulsion, and still, as by a kind of miracle, the two lonely princes ruling England maintained their station and kept their faces calmly to their enemies.

Mr. Prior was a grateful soul; he adored the King and worshipped the Queen; he had berhymed both copiously, and was ever ready to use his sword or his wit in their behalf. The last of the King's unending differences with the Parliament was on the matter of the Triennial Bill, and Mr. Prior had his tablets on his knee and his pencil in his hand.

He was engaged in composing a pamphlet in defence of His Majesty's action in firmly refusing to curtail the regal authority by passing an Act that permitted no parliament to sit longer than three years.

But it was cold, and the neat little secretary found his fingers too stiff to write. He returned his papers to his pocket, rose, and walked on briskly.

Both palace and grounds were now very noble, being designed closely after the King's house at Loo: trees, thirty-five years old, had been transplanted either side of a wide canal that had been cut opposite the Palace; beds were shaped, walks laid down, shrubs cut after the Dutch style; every endeavour had been used to make the place as much like Holland as possible. Even now, in mid-winter, topiary art had preserved monstrous box hedges and bushes in the shape of windmills, birds, and animals.

The day was cloudy, but the sun streamed through in a fine gold light on the splendid front of the Palace, still unfinished but very imposing.

Mr. Prior turned to the left, where was the privy garden directly beneath the royal apartments, and the covered walk where the Queen would sit in summer with her ladies, sewing and reading. There, too, was a small sunk Dutch garden, with a fountain in the centre and tiled paths, bare now of everything save a few evergreens, but in the spring a mass of blooms from Holland.

Here walked two ladies and a gentleman, all muffled in furs, and talking together with some earnestness.

Mr. Prior took off his hat; he recognized the Queen, his patron, the Earl of Portland, and Lady Temple. He was passing respectfully on when Mary called to him.

He came up to her, and she paused to speak to him.

"My lord tells me you are just returned from The Hague?" questioned Mary.

"Yes, Madam."

"I envy you," said the Queen wistfully; "it is, Mr. Prior, such a dream with me to see The Hague again."

The ardent little poet thought he had never seen her look so beautiful. There was an almost unnatural lustre in her eyes, an almost unnatural brightness on her lip and cheek; the fresh wind had stirred the auburn hair from her brow, and the fitful sunlight touched it to sparkles of red gold.

"The Hague liveth only in hopes of one day seeing Your Majesty," he answered. "You are most extraordinarily beloved there, Madam."

"They were always very good to me," said Mary simply. "I still feel an exile here—but you must not breathe that, Mr. Prior," she added almost instantly.

"Are you returning to Holland?"

"Very soon, Madam."

"Well," smiled Mary, "I hope that when next I see you it may be at my house in The Hague—for I have good hopes that I may be free to go there soon. Let me at least flatter myself so."

She dismissed him kindly and continued her walk, keeping her gloved hand affectionately on Lady Temple's arm.

"What is this of the Duke of Leeds?" she asked Portland.

"They say he is to be impeached in the new Parliament, Madam, for taking money from the East India Company."

Mary frowned.

"That is a hit at me," added Portland calmly.

"And at the King," she said proudly. "There is no end to the spite of these people. Heard you also that Sir John Dalrymple must go for the Glencoe affair?"

"If the Parliament had their way, it would be his head and not his place he lost."

"It seemeth to have been a cruel thing," said Mary, "if it is true? But I am sorry for the Duke of Leeds (Danby he always is to me) for he has been a faithful servant."

"The King would like to employ Sunderland, who lieth quiet at Althorp," said Portland, with some bitterness. "A villain if there ever was one!"

Mary glanced at him anxiously.

"The King doth not love Sunderland," she said, "but might find him useful."

"Will he persuade His Majesty to pass the Triennial Bill?" asked Lady Temple.

"No man can do that," answered the Queen. "If any could have done it, it would have been your lord, a year ago—but nothing will move the King once his mind is resolved." She laughed, and added, "You both have known him longer than I have—tell me if you ever knew him change his decision?"

"Never," said Portland. "When he was a child he was immovable."

"Sir William hath wasted eloquence on him more than once," smiled Lady Temple.

The sun had suddenly gone in, and a greyness overspread the gardens.

"Let us go in," said Mary.

They entered the Palace by the private door that led to the King's apartments. Portland prepared to leave for Whitehall, where His Majesty stayed to open the Parliament, and the two ladies went to the Queen's great gallery, that was fine and beautifully furnished, though but ill heated by the one fireplace where the pine logs blazed.

They joined the little company gathered about the fire and protected by tall lacquer and silk screens.

Mary took off her furs and drew close to the flames. She was shivering violently.

"The room is too large," she said, "but a noble apartment, is it not?"

She had taken great pride in furnishing Hampton Court and Kensington House, and in introducing and making fashionable the arts and crafts of Holland—the pottery, the brass-ware, the painted wood, and wrought silver.

The ladies answered in eager praises. The Queen's modest court now consisted of a set of gentle ladies, Dutch and English, who were her constant companions; their piety, their charity, their blameless lives, their industry with the needle, made them utterly different to the ladies of the two last reigns, and set an example which had made soberness fashionable, at least in many homes; for Mary had won England as, many years before, she had won her husband, and was now nearly as beloved in London as at The Hague—at least among the common people.

One fashion she set was a rage through the country—this was the collecting of strange and monstrous pieces of old china.

Above the yellow brocade chair where she now sat was a shelf laden with vases and figures of extraordinary shapes and violent colours. Mary loved them all; she looked up at them with a little smile, then took up the book from which she had been reading to her ladies, but dropped it on to her lap, and sat with an air of lassitude, gazing into the flames.

"The truth is," she said, "I have a great headache, and have had one this three days past."

"It is the wind," answered Lady Nottingham.

Mary shivered.

"I have taken cold, I think," she remarked. She laughed; she was more than usual gay.

She was expecting the King in a few days, and, for the moment, the troubles and difficulties had a little cleared from his path. For the first time since the war began the last campaign had decided in favour of the allies; the weight of England was beginning to tell in the balance. Mary could not forget that; it coloured her days with pleasure.

"I think the ball will be popular," she continued irrelevantly; "every one seemeth very pleased——"

"What is the date, Madam?" asked Lady Temple.

"The twenty-eighth—about a week from now," answered Mary. "I am to have a new dress!" She laughed again; she seemed, for her, to be very excited. "I shall put it on presently, and you must judge of it."

She leant back in her chair, and was suddenly silent. The short day was darkening; sullen crimson, presaging rain, burnt fitfully in the west, and a gloomy brightness reflected through the windows of the great gallery, and struck changeful colour from the mother-of-pearl figures on the black china screens.

Mary coughed and shivered. She turned to Madame Nienhuys.

"When is your cousin coming to Court?" she asked.

"Not yet, Madam. I had a letter from The Hague yesterday from her mother saying she would send her in the spring."

"Why not sooner?" asked the Queen.

"She saith she is frightened by the reports of the plague in London."

"They say it is worse this year," assented Mary. "And the smallpox."

"And the smallpox, Madam. But it is foolish of my cousin to be so timid."

"Yes," said Mary gravely; "since timidity will save no one. God doth His will, despite our fears."

She opened the work-table beside her and took out a chair-cover she was working with a design of birds and flowers on a black ground. She made a languid attempt to thread the needle, then dropped the sewing as she had the book.

"I will try that gown on," she said, "and then we will make tea in the little antechamber—this is so large."

The ladies rose with a pretty rustle of skirts, folded up their work, and followed Mary through Sir Christopher's noble apartments to her chamber, which was very exactly furnished but cold.

On the canopied bed of blue and yellow damask lay the Queen's new gown, and two sewing-girls sat on low stools and stitched the lace into the sleeves.

At Mary's approach they rose silently.

"How cold it is!" shivered Mary. "Put me down a grumbler, but we had warmer houses at The Hague."

"But the dress is beautiful!" cried Lady Nottingham, and the five ladies gathered about the bed with exclamations of admiration.

It was of white velvet, embroidered with little wreaths of coloured silk flowers opening over a silver petticoat trimmed with flounces of lace. The sewing-maidens eyed it shyly, and blushed at the compliments bestowed.

"I must dance in that," smiled Mary. "Dancing used to be one of my prettiest pleasures, as you may remember, my Lady Temple!"

"Will Your Majesty try it on?" asked Basilea de Marsac.

"Yes," laughed Mary, "the sewing-girls will help me; get you into the other room and make the tea——"

The ladies trooped off, and the two sempstresses timidly helped Mary out of her brown velvet and laced her into the state dress.

A fire was burning, and the Queen stood between it and the bed, facing the long glass mirror above the mantelshelf that was crowded with china grotesques. As they pinned, arranged, and draped the rich silk about her, Mary felt a sudden great fatigue; her limbs were heavy beneath her, and she gave a little sigh of weariness.

The dress was cut very low, and one sleeve was yet unfinished, so her shoulders and left arm were bare save for her shift, and, as she moved for her skirt to be adjusted, that slipped. The Queen noticed this in the mirror, and put up her right hand to draw it up, when suddenly a deep shiver ran through her. She stepped back, clutching the dress together on her shoulder.

"It is too dark to see," she said levelly. "There is a silver lamp in my cabinet—will you fetch that?"

The sewing-girls looked surprised. The light still held, and there were candles in the room; but they left at once, with respectful courtesies.

The instant they had gone the Queen sprang to the door and locked it, then went back to the bed and leant heavily against the post nearest the fire.

She felt sick and weak; her head was giddy.

"Be quiet—be quiet," she said aloud, and pressed her clenched knuckles against her leaping heart.

Only for a second did this weakness endure. She returned to the glass and turned her chemise down; there she saw again what had made her send the sewing-girls away—a large purple patch on the white flesh, unmistakable.

For an instant she stood gazing, then sat down in the majestic arm-chair beside the bed. There was another test she knew of—she winced from applying it, yet presently rose and took from a side-table near the tall clock a rat-tailed spoon she used for rose-water.

She put the bowl of this far back into her mouth, and then withdrew it; the silver was covered with bright blood.

Footsteps sounded without. Mary flung the spoon on to the fire and softly unlocked the door.

The sempstresses entered with the silver lamp, dutifully lit and placed it on the mantelshelf.

Mary stood holding her garments tightly together on her breast.

"Have you ever had the smallpox?" she asked gently.

They both answered together.

"Yes, Your Majesty; but not the black smallpox, an it please Your Majesty."

Mary looked into their fair, undisfigured faces.

"No," she answered; "the black smallpox is ever fatal, is it not——"

"They say so, Your Majesty," said the elder girl, pinning up the lace on the silver underskirt. "And there is a deal of it in London now, Your Majesty."

Mary made no reply. They finished with the dress and left her, having laced her into the brown velvet.

The Queen put out the silver lamp and went into the antechamber where the ladies were chattering over the tea Lady Temple was making in a Burmese silver urn.

Mary seated herself near the fire.

"We will go to Kensington House to-morrow," she said. Then, noticing Lady Temple's look of surprise, she added, with a slight tremor in her voice, "I have a fancy to be near the King."

CHAPTER VIII

FEAR

My Lord Sunderland was climbing from obscurity, disgrace, and infamy to that great position he had once held—climbing very cautiously, working secretly, biding his time, venturing a little here, a little there, helped always by my lady and some few ancient friends.

The King had been obliged to leave him out of the Act of Grace. He was, nevertheless, at this moment waiting for a private audience of His Majesty, who had already visited him in his princely palace at Althorp.

The King had gone in state to Parliament; my lord did not care to yet take his seat in the House on great occasions; he preferred to wait in Whitehall and reflect quietly on his policies.

He believed that the summit of his ambitions was about to be reached; he had staked on William of Orange twenty years ago, and had never lost faith in him. The King was not a man to be ungrateful. Sunderland saw close within his grasp the moment he had worked for steadily, unscrupulously, so long—the moment when William of Orange and he should rule England together.

From his seclusion at Althorp he had watched the King's stormy reign, and known that if he had been at William's right hand half the troubles would have been averted or smoothed over.

He was even scheming to make the Court popular; the attitude of the people towards his hero considerably annoyed him.

It was undeniable that the irreproachable example of the Court awoke in the English more ridicule than respect or admiration; they regarded with a sneer the sincere efforts of the gentle young Queen to elevate and dignify her position, to improve the tone of a corrupt society. The industrious simplicity of the King, his dislike of blasphemy, evil-speaking, and frivolous amusements, his private tolerance, justice, and modesty were as so many causes of offence to a people regretting former princes so much more suited to their temper. They missed the pageant that had continually entertained them at Whitehall, the money that had been squandered by the Court in a manner so pleasing to the national extravagance, the continual spectacle of the King in the obvious exercise of gracious royalty, even the gay ladies whose histories had diverted a generation. This humour provoked cynical smiles from William and distressed comment from Mary. Sunderland resolved to alter it; he saw the truth; he knew that nothing but genius in the man every one combined to disparage could have kept the nation together, and nothing but the greatest courage and strength on the part of the woman they affected to dismiss as a cipher could have maintained a government during the Irish war.

Sunderland largely blamed the ministers. Halifax had failed, Caermarthen (now Leeds) was failing, the others had never been really trusted by the King, who relied mainly on secret advisers, such as Carstairs, Temple, his Dutch friends, and lately Sunderland himself.

My lord knew that he could do better than any of these; he had the great advantage of understanding the King; he even believed that he could make him again as beloved in England as he had been in '88.

William was no boor, but of noble blood thrice refined; his passionate nature and the constant control he had put it under made him break out fiercely sometimes against the foolish and the vexatious; he never flattered, and he took no trouble to please women. Natural modesty and the languor of ill-health made him refuse to concede to the national love of display; but he was beloved abroad, and Sunderland believed he could be beloved in England. My lord resolved to persuade him to go to Newmarket this year; he flattered himself that he had a considerable influence over William.

He became impatient for the King to return; he went to the window and looked at the surging crowd beyond the courtyard waiting for a sight of the Royal coach. It was not likely to be greeted very warmly, for the King was, a second time, going to veto the Triennial Bill, a great popular measure which, from the first, he had set his face against.

Sunderland upheld him; to consent to the Bill would be an enormous concession to the people, and my lord had no love for the democracy, but, like William, had a high ideal of the rights of the Crown. He took pleasure now in thinking of the King's firm stand and the disappointment of this crowd when the news of the vetoed Bill was flashed from mouth to mouth.

As he watched, standing within the silver-corded curtains, a party of halberdiers suddenly scattered the people to right and left, a company of soldiers drove up, and then the Royal coach came, unusually fast, swinging on its leathers.

A deep hum rose from the crowd; some broke into cheering, hats were thrown up, and handkerchiefs waved. Sunderland had never seen the King receive such a cordial reception.

He withdrew from the window, surprised, a little puzzled.

The satisfied murmur of the crowd continued.

"Why—is it possible——" cried my lord.

He hastened to seek out the King.

William was in his dressing-room, disrobing. M. Zulestein was with him, and several other nobles.

Gold-embroidered purple, scarlet and ermine, the collar and star of the George lay tossed on one of the gilt walnut chairs; the King, in silk shirt and white satin breeches, sat by a marquetry dressing-table with a letter in his hand.

Sunderland entered as one sure of his welcome. William had promised him countenance if he would come to Court.

"Your Majesty——" he began.

The King looked at him blankly; his face, between the dark curls, was of a startling whiteness.

"Ah, sir," said Sunderland, "do I break in upon Your Majesty?"

"No," answered William vaguely.

My lord looked round the other nobles; they seemed strangely silent.

"Sir, how went it in Parliament?" he asked, approaching the King.

William made a heavy effort to answer.

"I—well enough—they——" His voice trailed off.

Sunderland stood utterly amazed. Was this man going to fail?

"Sir, the Triennial Bill?" he questioned half fearfully.

The King rose; he seemed utterly unnerved; he whom my lord had ever considered beyond the touch of weakness.

"I passed it," he said faintly.

The colour flashed into Sunderland's face.

"You did!" he cried. "You made that great concession. By God, if any but Your Majesty had made that statement I should have disbelieved them——"

The King did not seem to hear him; he called distractedly for his coat, and walked up and down the splendid little chamber with his head bent.

Sunderland, sick at heart, drew M. de Zulestein aside.

"What is the matter with the King?" he whispered. "I should not have known him——"

"He hath been all day like a man in a confusion," answered the Master of the Robes.

"And to give way," muttered Sunderland. "To concede like any weakling!"

William mechanically took from one of the lords his coat, sword, and hat, and stood still a moment before the chair on which his orders glittered on his robes, like frozen coloured water gleaming in the winter sunlight.

"Is the coach ready?" he asked abruptly.

"Your Majesty," reminded M. de Zulestein, "is to dine in public here to-day——"

"No," said the King, "I will go at once to Kensington House—hasten the coach——"

"But there are a number of people already gathered—it will cause grievous offence——"

The King stared at him with wild dark eyes.

"My God, I will not stay an instant."

de Zulestein bowed.

At this moment Lord Portland entered; they saw him with profound relief, believing that, if any could, he would fathom and combat the King's humour.

At sight of him William flushed with animation. Portland crossed to him at once; he seemed himself troubled in his manner.

The King caught his hand and pressed it inside his open satin waistcoat, over his heart.

"Do you feel that?" he asked. "Have you ever known it beat so?—that is fear, William, fear——"

He spoke in his own language, and with an extraordinary energy and passion.

"The letter," asked Portland tenderly, "that was handed you as we started——"

"From Sir Thomas Millington," said the King; he put it into his friend's hands and sank on to the chair beside the dressing-table; he seemed utterly unconscious of the watchful eyes upon him, of the presence, indeed, of any but Portland.

That lord read the letter of Sir Thomas (he was the King's physician) with, it seemed, some relief.

"Why, he merely saith the Queen is not well."

William answered hoarsely—

"Lady Temple came to Whitehall this morning when you were abroad ... you know she hath never had the smallpox." His voice broke; he stared out of the window at the winter sky.

"God in Heaven!" exclaimed Portland. "You do not think of that?"

"Lady Temple," muttered the King, "said—she had sent from Kensington—every one, even to the maid-servants—who—had not had the smallpox——"

"That is but her own sweet kindness," cried Portland—"she cannot know——"

"I am afraid, afraid," answered the King. "My father, my mother, my uncle ... all dead of that..."

He sprang up and turned to the door. Sunderland was in his way, and stayed him gently.

"Sir—I entreat you do not disappoint the people—stay in Whitehall to dine——"

William looked at him fiercely.

"Do you not hear that the Queen is sick?"

Sunderland's face was cold; he was disappointed in the King.

"What of this Bill for the Calling of Parliaments?" he said. "I would like to hear some good reason for that concession on the part of Your Majesty."

William made no answer; he put out his hand and motioned my lord out of his way. Sunderland stepped aside and the King left the room. They heard his high heels going quickly down the corridors.

Portland turned to M. de Zulestein.

"Why, he hath known two days that the Queen was not well."

"It was Lady Temple," answered the Master of the Robes. "She told him Her Majesty was worse than she would admit."

"But the doctors——"

"You know the King hath never had any trust in doctors—and certainly it giveth an ill-colour that she hath sent away all that are like to be infected."

"Meanwhile the Bill is passed," said Sunderland. "And I have misreckoned on the King."

He took his leave haughtily of the Dutch nobles, and they went after the King. An excited and disturbed crowd filled the galleries and the banqueting hall where the dishes were already on the table and the lords ready to serve.

The King had already left Whitehall in the Duke of Leeds' coach, with no other company but that nobleman.

So completely deceived were the spectators who lined the way from the Palace to the post office in Charing Cross to see the great people drive away from Parliament that they, recognizing the arms and liveries of Leeds (now unpopular by reason of the East India scandals), hooted lustily, with no conception that the King was beside my lord.

Nor did either King or minister care one whit whether the crowd hooted or cheered. Leeds was on the verge of ruin, and knew it, yet thought little about that; he had a peculiar regard for the Queen, a peculiar loyalty towards the King; his thoughts, like his master's, were with that lady whose life meant so much to England.

In half an hour they were at Kensington House; in a few minutes more the King, the Duke's mantle over his white satins and the garter still round his knee, was by Mary's side in the long Queen's gallery.

She was seated close to the fire with Basilea de Marsac and Madame de Nienhuys—very languidly seated, with her hands in her lap and a blue scarf about her shoulders.

Her extravagant joy at the King's coming was piteous to see.

"So soon!" she cried, and her whole face changed. "I thought it could not be till this evening ... but were they not expecting you to dine at Whitehall?"

"No matter for that," he answered breathlessly. "You—you are no worse?"

"Oh, I am well again," smiled Mary; "but you will make yourself unpopular if you disappoint the people—yet I am glad you came—I thought I must see you—that is why I came from Hampton yesterday, forgive me—but even the sound of the Tower guns as you went to Parliament was company——"

She paused, and seemed rather exhausted by the effort of speaking. William noticed with unutterable anxiety that the hand he held was burning hot and that she shivered continuously, yet she was so joyous, smiling, and lovely he could not trust his own fears.

The two ladies had withdrawn to the other end of the gallery. The King took the stool beside Mary.

"Did you pass the Parliament Bill?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, never taking his eyes from her face and speaking as if it was a matter of no moment.

"Ah, why?" she asked, startled.

"I did not care; what doth it matter? Do not talk of business, Marie."

"No," she said softly; "let us forget great affairs for once. I am so weary, dear."

"But you are better?" He could scarcely control his voice.

She smiled brightly.

"Oh yes; I was out driving this morning, and afterwards talking to Dr. Burnet, and you know that taketh some energy—I think to have my ball just the same next Saturday. I have remedied myself and not troubled the doctors."

He wished to ask her why she had given the orders about her household that had so shaken him, but could not bring the words to his lips.

Mary coughed a little, and sat up.

"I wanted to ask you something," she said. "I am always begging—am I not?"

He pressed the hand he held between his so fiercely that his heavy rings hurt her, but she continued smiling.

"About Greenwich Palace," she added rather faintly. "I want it for a hospital——"

"I know, I know," he answered remorsefully. "You have spoken of it before. It hath always been the cursed money, but you shall have it if I have to pawn my furniture."

"There are so many old seamen about," murmured Mary—"poor and wounded—and many of them were at La Hogue and helped save us all. I used to see them when I took my airing in Hyde Park, begging—one could not forbear tears. And the hospitals are full. But Greenwich——"

"It shall be," said William. "Give that no more thought. Wren shall draw plans. It shall be as you wish, only get well again, and that shall be my thankoffering."

Looking and smiling at him she sat silent while the firelight flooded her figure with gorgeous light; in that moment's stillness both of them thought of love as a terrible thing.

Mary suddenly closed her eyes.

"Your mother," she said softly, "do you remember her?"

He answered under his breath—

"Yes. Your name, my dear, your family, should I not remember her?"

"When she died she was no older than I am—I often think how strangely near her grave is. I think that Chapel in Westminster a sad spot. But if we live with our thoughts on Death how can we be afraid? God would not let one be afraid."

"Why do you speak of death?" asked the King, in a trembling voice. "You frighten me——"

"Ah no," whispered Mary. "Death is not fearful. I have been idle to-day, and thought of many strange things. I recalled a portrait of your mother I found in a desk of yours when I first came to Holland—a limning in little with white violets on the back, and these words, 'J'aime un seul.' That was a pretty thought of hers."

She moved her head restlessly on the red cushions and lifted her heavy lids.

"I would we were at The Hague again," she said wistfully.

"You shall go," he replied impetuously. "When the spring cometh we will go together to The Hague, and be free of all of it——"

"There is the war."

"Let Waldeck take the command this campaign—I will stay with you. We have had so little time together all these years."

Mary gazed tenderly into his ardent face.

"The spring seemeth so far off. Hold my hand. I feel as if the world might pass from beneath us if we could sit thus and I not notice. You will be with me this Christmas-tide?"

"I shall not leave you," he said hoarsely. "I will nurse you till you are well again. But you are not ill?" he added piteously.

"No—tired a little." She sat up and put her hands on his shoulders. "You do not regret the day they married you to your poor little cousin?" The soft brown eyes were full of yearning. "She was such a foolish child, so ignorant——"

He could not speak, but made a movement of his hands to hers as if to stop her.

"Let me speak," said Mary sweetly. "I have thought so much about it lately. We learnt everything so late—our mistakes last of all, I think, and I have made many mistakes. Perhaps another woman would have helped you more. But I have done my best—I wanted to say that—I have always done my best."

He managed to answer, but almost incoherently.

"You shame me—utterly shame me—you—know what you have been to me——"

Mary dropped her hands; the tears gathered in her eyes.

"And I am childless," she faltered.

He sprang up as if he wrenched himself free from torture.

"Do not leave me," entreated Mary feebly. "I think I am not very well, after all, and you promised to stay—forgive me—but indeed I think of it and your great kindness."

He turned about and leant over her chair. Mary clung to him with hot hands.

"No one could have loved you more," she said, in great agitation—"too much, for my own peace——"

Her fever-flushed face drooped against the lace on his bosom; he put his arm round her, and she gave a great sigh; the tears were on her lashes and running slowly down her face; he kissed her loose hair and the hand on his shoulder.

"God," he said, in an unsteady whisper, answering his own desperate fears, "could not be so cruel."

CHAPTER IX

CHRISTMAS EVE

Kensington House was hushed and dark; in only one room did a light burn, and that was where the Queen of England sat alone in her cabinet with the door locked and two tapers burning on her desk.

It was long past midnight on Christmas Eve, and she supposed in bed; the stillness was intense; the ticking of the little brass clock sounded loud and steady—a solitary noise.

Mary sat at the desk with her papers spread before her; she had burnt many of them in the candle-flame, and a little pile of ashes lay on the cold hearth.

It was four days since she had first sickened, and the doctors said this and that, disagreeing with each other, and constantly changing their opinion; but Mary had never been deceived; she had cheated herself, she had cheated the King, into a belief that she was lately better, but from the moment in her bedchamber at Hampton Court when the thought of her danger had first flashed on her, she had had an absolute premonition that this was the end. All her life had been coloured by the sense she would not live past youth. The first shock over, she did not grieve for herself, but terribly, more terribly than she had conceived she could, for the King.

At first a kind of wild joy had possessed her that she would go first; but the agony of leaving him alone was almost as awful as the agony of being left.

Because she could not endure to face his anguish she had so far concealed from him both her certainty of her own approaching end and her own belief as to her malady. Dr. Radcliffe alone among the physicians had said smallpox, and been laughed at for his opinion, but the Queen knew that he was right. "Malignant black smallpox," he had said, and she knew he was right in that also.

Few recovered from this plague; few lived beyond the week.

Alone in the little cabinet, consecrated by so many prayers, meditations, and tears, the young Queen faced her fate.

"I am going to die," she said to herself. "I am going to die in a few days."

She sat back in her chair and caught her breath. The stillness seemed to ache in her ears. So little done, so much unfinished, so many storms, troubles, attempts, poor desperate endeavours, and now—the end.

She recalled that when the King had been last on the Continent she had been ill of a sore throat, and been so melancholy on account of the dismal state of public affairs, the ingratitude and malice of the people, that she had wished to die, but checked that thought, believing that she could still be of service to her husband. And now it was no wish or idle fancy, but the very thing itself.

And she must leave him.

Her deep piety made her think the agony she endured at that thought a punishment for having so deeply loved a human creature. She tried to fix her mind on God, but earthly affection was stronger. The image of heaven became dim beside the image of him to whom her whole heart had been given; the very tenderness that had been provoked in him by her illness made it harder.

At last she rose and went over to a little gilt escritoire in the corner; there were locked away all the letters she had ever had from the King, some from her father, a Prayer Book of her mother's before her conversion, some of her own meditations and prayers, her diary, and various little trifles with poignant associations.

With the keys in her hand she hesitated, but courage failed her to open any of the drawers; she returned to the large bureau and took up a sheet of paper.

She felt ill and cold; her limbs were heavy, her eyes ached, and her head was full of pain. She made a strong effort of will to take up the quill and write; at first the pen shook so there were mere ink-marks on the paper.

What she wrote were a few last requests to the King: that her jewels and clothes might be given to her sister Anne, that her servants might be looked after, that he would remember his promise with regard to the hospital at Greenwich, and that if Leeds was disgraced the King would deal mildly with him—"for he hath ever been a good servant to us."

She did not trust herself to add words of affection, but wrote beneath, "The Lord have thee in His keeping," folded it up with the ink scarce dry, and rose to unlock the top drawer of the escritoire and place the paper within.

That done she relocked it and placed the key in her bosom.

All her other papers and letters she had destroyed; her private affairs were in order; she had not a debt nor an obligation in the world. There was nothing more to do.

She put her hands before her eyes and endeavoured to settle her thoughts, to dismiss earthly matters and think only of God, but she could not put the King out of her heart. Her thoughts ran past her own death, and saw him lonely amidst his difficulties, without her aid to smooth over little frictions, without her company in his infrequent leisure, without her sympathy in his disappointments; in a thousand little ways he scarcely knew of she had been able to help him, and now there would be no one—no one to watch and notice and understand as she had done; she could not trust even Portland to do what she had done.

"God forgive me for this weakness," she murmured, in great distress. "God strengthen and make it easy for us both."

She rose and went to the window; she could see the black sky pierced here and there by a few stars as the clouds parted—nothing else.

On an instant the deep silence was rent by a clamour of sweet sound; the sharp strong pealing of church bells rang out over the sleeping city.

Mary knew that it was the village church of Kensington practising for Christmas; she sank into the window-seat and fixed her eyes on those few distant pale cold stars.

She could not steady her thoughts. Old memories, pictures of dead days, arose and disturbed her. She saw the sunlight on the red front of the house at Twickenham and the little roses growing over the brick, herself as a child playing in the garden, and the figure of her father standing by the sundial looking at her, as he had stood once on one of his rare visits—very handsome and tall and grave with long tasselled gloves in his hand, she saw the hayfields beyond St. James's and the summer-tanned labourers working there and a little girl in a blue gown asleep on a gathered sheaf and Lady Villiers pointing out the last swallow and how low it flew—so low that the light of the setting sun was over its back and it was like a thing of gold above the rough stubble—she saw pictures of The Hague—that beautiful town, and her own dear house, and the wood...

She remembered her presentiment, before William left for England, that they were looking at the wood together for the last time.

All over now, mere memory, and memory itself soon to end; she would never see the flowers again either in England or Holland; she had looked her last on blue sky and summer sun; she would never more go down to Chester to welcome the King home from the war; she would never again cut the sweet briar roses to place in the blue bowls at Hampton Court.

It frightened her that she thought so of these earthly things, that she could not detach her mind from the world. She endeavoured to fix her attention on the bells, and they seemed to shake into the words of an ancient hymn she had known as a child—

"O Lord, let Thou my spirit rise

From out this Press of turning Strife.

Let me look into Thy awful eyes

And draw from Thee Immortal Life."

The bells seemed to change into one of the endless little Dutch carillons that she heard so often in her dreams; she put her hands before her face—

"Take, dear Lord, the best of me,

And let it, as an Essence pressed

Like unto Like, win Immortality

Absorbed in Thy unchanging rest."

The bells paused and shuddered as if a rude hand had checked them; the melody hesitated, then changed rhythm; a single bell struck out from the rest in clear ringing, then stopped.

For a little space the air was full of echoes, then a mournful stillness fell. The Queen remained in the window-seat with her hands before her eyes.

When she raised her head one of the candles had guttered out and the other was near its end.

She had lost the sense of time, almost of place; it would have given her no surprise to find she was sitting in the garden at The Hague or going down the waterways of Holland in her barge; she did not notice the darkness so ill-dispersed by that one flame burning tall, ragged, and blue in the great silver stick; she began to say over her prayers in a kind of exaltation; she went on her knees and pressed her face against the smooth wood of the window-frame; she was murmuring to herself under her breath as if she tried to lull her own soul to sleep; she got up at last, not knowing what she did, and unlatched the window.

She looked out on a ghastly dawn, pallid above the leafless trees, against which a few flakes of snow fell heavily. The Queen stared at this picture. The cold wind entered the chamber and a snowflake lightly drifted in and changed to a crystal drop on the window-seat.

She latched the window again and turned into the room; the last candle had been out hours; the wax was hard round the frozen wick; a whole night had passed with the drawing of a breath, and this was Christmas morning.

Above the chimney-piece was a mirror in a gold and ebony frame; the Queen stepped up to it and looked at herself; she beheld a woman without colour; her gown was black and her face and throat indistinguishable from her crumpled lace collar; her hair was dark and without a glint in the dead light; the pearls in her ears were ghostly pale; she thought her features were very changed, being hollowed and sunk.

"They cover the faces of the dead," she thought curiously; "they will soon cover mine." She put her hand delicately under her chin. "Poor face, that will never laugh or blush—or weep again!"

CHAPTER X

THE QUEEN

Dr. Burnet was returning from his diocese of Sarum to Kensington Palace, where he had been called by the grave reports of the Queen's sickness.

On Christmas Day she had been something better, but towards the evening notably worse; on Wednesday prayers were offered in all the churches, and the new primate, Dr. Tenison, was summoned to join the other prelates in attendance at Kensington.

The Bishop of Sarum was joined in London by M. Zulestein, for whom he had a peculiar friendship, and who came to urge haste.

The Master of the Robes hoped that the Bishop's presence might have some effect upon the astonishing and immoderate agitation of the King; he confessed he had been glad to escape from the atmosphere of anxiety and grief at Kensington.

Soldier and priest made a melancholy journey in M. Zulestein's coach. The Capital was very silent and awed. There could be no doubt now that the Queen was beloved.

"If she goes," said M. Zulestein bluntly, "he can never hold the throne. His very title to it would be questioned. Without her where are we all?"

Dr. Burnet answered unsteadily; he was deeply attached to Mary.

"Do not speak like that, sir. She must live—even if it be smallpox, is she not young and strong? Did not the King recover?"

"He had it but slightly," answered M. Zulestein. "He was back at the army in twenty days. They say it was his own resolution not to die and the services of M. Portland that saved him, but I do not think this lady hath any such will to live."

"God bless us," cried the Bishop, "who would have thought a man of the King's feeble constitution would have survived the Queen!" He shook his head sorrowfully. "She was our principal hope, our support—a prince of an extraordinary goodness."

"If she dieth she hath the better part," answered the Dutchman. "I know not how the King will well bear it—he hath hardly slept since her illness—for fear of his cough disturbing her he will not lie in her chamber, but hath his camp-bed in the anteroom—yet he is never on it—he hath himself nursed her—day and night with such devotion and care as moveth the heart." He paused, and added, with great emotion, "Had you seen him as I have, in all manner of dangers and fatigues and troubles, always master of himself, and of such an heroical courage that he inflamed those about him, you would find it, sir, terrible to see him as he is now."

"When I last saw him he was struck beyond expression," answered Dr. Burnet. "But I never thought his temper would bear an open display of emotion."

"You know him as well as any Englishman—yet you do not know him," said M. Zulestein.

The pompous self-love of the Bishop was rather hit at this, but he let it pass (as he would not have done at any other time), and neither spoke again before they reached Kensington House.

They found the household in much disorder—the courtyard filled with carriages, the corridors with messengers waiting for the news. M. Zulestein told his companion that the Princess Anne (in open disgrace on account of her championship of my Lord Marlborough, who had been discovered in flagrant treachery) had sent a humble loving message, and that the King had replied warmly, but requested her not to come till there was a turn for the better.

Dr. Burnet thought this answer of the King's looked as if the doctors held out hope; he shouldered his way through the crowd to the Queen's private apartments, and rather breathless and without ceremony he and M. Zulestein put aside the ushers and entered the first antechamber of Mary's apartments.

It was empty save for a couple of curious, frightened servants; but the door into the next room was open, and the two new-comers beheld an extraordinary scene.

A little group with their faces hidden stood before the window; near them at the table was a florid, coarse-featured man, plainly dressed, and cast down before him a gentleman in a violet coat—on his knees with his hands raised in a gesture of abandoned entreaty.

The back of this gentleman was towards Dr. Burnet.

"Dear God!" he muttered, seizing M. Zulestein's arm, "is it—the King?"

M. Zulestein, utterly pale, made a gesture of assent, and hastened forward. The man before whom the King knelt stepped back in a kind of desperation, and cried—

"If Your Majesty were to offer me your three kingdoms I could give you no other answer!"

At this the King fell forward on his face, and he was lying so, prone, when the Bishop and M. Zulestein entered.

Dr. Radcliffe wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, and looked round half-defiantly.

"Gentlemen," he said hoarsely, "I take you to witness I have done my duty. His Majesty asked the truth. It is smallpox, and Her Majesty is sinking rapidly. I was not called in until it was too late."

Portland had come from the window, and was raising the King.

"You have some courage, sir," he said grimly.

Dr. Radcliffe retorted in self-defence—

"I did not undertake this for pleasure, your lordship; there was no one else would dare tell His Majesty."

Portland got the King to his feet; the others stood awkward and still; William looked round and saw Dr. Burnet.

"Did you hear?" he asked, under his breath—"did you hear?"

He sank into the chair by the table. The Bishop approached with some faltering words of comfort, but the King cut him short.

"They say there is no hope of the Queen!" he broke out. "No hope! I was the most happy creature upon earth, and now shall be the most miserable! There was no fault in her, not one—you know her as well as any, but you could not know her as I did—there was a worth in her none could know but I!"

With that he burst into a passion of tears, and hid his face on the table in an abandonment of agony which amazed those about him, who knew neither what to say nor do in face of this overthrow of the Master whom they had always regarded as one who would preserve a decent control in the face of any sorrow, since he was a soldier and a statesman, and had kept his countenance in many a bitter crisis, and always shown a singular pride in controlling his passions—so much so, as to be stately and cold even to those he loved; yet here he wept before the very staring servants and gave no heed. Lord Portland thought there was something womanish and unworthy in this desperate grief; he went up to the King and spoke with a kind of heat.

"Will you give way thus? Where is your trust in God?"

He was speaking not to the King of England, but to William of Nassau, at whose side he had faced so many years of danger, his companion in arms, his truest friend.

"She will go to everlasting peace," he said, with energy. "You, who have faced so much, can face the loss of her—for her sake, for her eternal good."

If the King heard these words they did not touch him; he raised his head a little, and broke into incoherent lamentation in a misery of tears.

Portland spoke to Dr. Radcliffe.

"How long," he asked, "will it be?"

"She may," answered the doctor, in a lowered voice, "live another day, my lord, no more; the smallpox are now so sunk there is no hope of raising them."

"Should she not be warned of her danger?"

"That is as the King wishes."

"The King!" echoed Portland, in a tone of despair. He turned again to his master. "Sire," he said gently, "will you have the Queen told?"

William looked up; the tears were streaming down his face for any one to see; he continually shuddered violently, and spoke so hoarsely Portland could with difficulty catch the words.

"I'll not believe it yet—I cannot—these doctors—must save her——"

"Dr. Tenison," answered Portland, "is with her now—it were best that he should tell her of her condition——"

The King broke out into ejaculations of anguish.

"There was none like her in all the world—none! No one could know her great goodness. O God, my God, this is more than I can bear!"

Portland turned his eyes away, broken himself.

"I am amazed," whispered Dr. Burnet; "for surely I never thought him capable of such emotion."

Dr. Radcliffe touched Portland on the arm.

"Look to His Majesty," he said. "I think this will prove beyond his endurance—I will to the Queen."

He took his leave softly. The King lifted his head and looked after him.

"He said there was no hope!" he cried. "No hope!"

"God is your hope," answered Portland strongly.

"Talk not of God, for this is death and damnation to me—if she leaves me nothing matters on earth or in heaven—what have I done—what have I done that the Devil is let loose on me?" He cast his eyes round wildly, and staggered to his feet. "She was all I had—all—I should have died first—I might have died happy—I have not lived so wickedly I should be punished thus—but they mistake, these doctors—she cannot die—no, it is not possible."

They were all silent. The scene was painful almost past bearing. The King's agonies went beyond all bounds. None of them, though they were all men who had known him most of his life, had believed that his temper was capable of such passion. Dr. Burnet's fluent self-assurance was checked—he stood dumb and staring; the Dutch nobles gazed in horror and dismay at this spectacle of a proud man's utter overthrow. Portland remained beside him, and the King supported himself by holding heavily on to his arm.

"Doctors mistake, do they not?" he cried, between the long shudders that shook him. "How often have they not said—I should die—but I lived."

"Alas," answered Portland unsteadily, "I would not have you deceive yourself—Radcliffe was very certain. But you will command yourself——"

"I—I have no strength," gasped the King; "my soul is broken within me. O God!" he sobbed, "save her or let me go!"