GOD’S PLAYTHINGS

BY
MARJORIE BOWEN

AUTHOR OF “THE VIPER OF MILAN,” “THE GLEN O’ WEEPING,”
“I WILL MAINTAIN,” ETC.

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET
1913

PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED
LONDON AND BECCLES

CONTENTS

GOD’S PLAYTHINGS

THE KING’S SON

“This letter has given rise to various conjectures.”–Dalrymple’s Memoirs.

From Ringwood, the 9th of July, 1685.

My Lord,

Having had some proof of your kindness when I was last at Whitehall, makes me hope now that you will not refuse interceding for me with the King, being I know, though too late, how I have been misled; were I not clearly convinced of that, I would rather die a thousand deaths than say what I do. I writ yesterday to the King, and the chief business of my letter was to desire to speak to him, for I have that to say to him that I am sure will set him at quiet for ever. I am sure the whole study of my life shall hereafter be how to serve him; and I am sure that which I can do is worth more than taking my life away; and I am confident, if I may be so happy to speak to him, he will himself be convinced of it, being I can give him such infallible proof of my truth to him that, though I would alter, it would not be in my power to do it. This which I have now said, I hope will be enough to encourage your lordship to show me your favour, which I do earnestly desire of you and hope that you have so much generosity as not to refuse it. I hope, my lord, and I make no doubt of it, that you will not have cause to repent having saved my life, which I am sure you can do a great deal in if you please; being it obliges me to be entirely yours, which I shall ever be, as long as I have life.

Monmouth.

For the Earl of Rochester, Lord High Treasurer of England.

Knowing that I had been involved in the miserable final adventure of that unhappy Prince, James Scot, Duke of Monmouth, and even been with him in that last Council in Bridgewater, my lord Rochester showed me this letter with a kind of languid malice, and even had the indecency to smile at it and address to me a remark slighting to the unfortunate writer of that desperate appeal.

“For,” said he, “had Monmouth a secret to reveal, though ever so base a one, he had disclosed it to save his life–and since he disclosed nothing ’tis proof plain this was but a fool’s trick to catch mercy.”

He said no more, but I was minded to tell what I knew that I might do justice to the memory of one wronged and wretched; yet the impulse was but passing, for I knew that the secret his dead Grace had never discovered was one which for pity’s sake I must be silent on; and well I was aware also that what I could say would awaken no understanding in the cold heart of Lawrence Hyde. My Lord’s Grace of Monmouth has been dead ten years, and in the potent and huge events that have changed Europe since, he has been forgotten by all but some of those poor souls in the West who called him King. But I, who joined fortunes with him in his reckless enterprise, hold often in my thoughts him whose fate is now reckoned but a trifle in the history of nations. Both in the exile that followed Sedgemoor and the years in England under His present Protestant Majesty have I considered silently the tragic mystery of this young man whose life was useless pleasure and whose death was bitter anguish.

It hath a curious sound that I, once penman to his Grace, should now be secretary to the Earl of Rochester; I gave my master this reflection, and he laughed in his indolent fashion and answered that ten years had accomplished the work of a hundred, and that the rebellion in the West was ancient history. Yet when he had left me to my work I copied this same letter (written in a quick hand with the agony of the author showing in that forceful entreaty to one who had never been his friend), and I brought the copy home with me and now must write under it the explanation like the key to a cipher. Not to show any, but rather to bury or destroy; not to betray the secret of the dead, but to ease mine own heart of one scene which has haunted me these long ten years.

It hath a turn of folly to write what will never be read, but the impulse driving me is stronger than reason, and so I make confession of what I know while holding my faith inviolate.

At the time of the capture of my lord in ’85, the indecent cruelty of the then King in seeing one whom he had resolved to be bitterly avenged on, and in commanding to be published an account of those agonies he should have been most sedulous to veil, was much commented upon, and first gave his people the impression of that ill-judging severity of character and stern harshness of temper they soon found unendurably galling.

It was well known too at that time, that my lord had obtained that interview with the King by reason of the desperate letter he wrote, of the same trend as the epistle he sent to my lord Rochester, declaring he had somewhat of such importance to reveal that it should put the King’s mind at rest for ever concerning him. Various were the rumours abroad concerning this secret and what it might be, and as it was known from the King’s lips that his Grace had revealed nothing, many supposed, as my lord Rochester, that it was but a feint to obtain an audience of his Majesty; yet how any could read those letters and not see they were inspired by the bitter truth, I know not. Some believed that it was that his Grace had been urged to his fatal undertaking by His present Majesty, then Stadtholder of the United Provinces, and that he had about him letters from that Prince’s favourite, Monsieur Bentinck.

Yet all evidence was against this, and the Duke himself appealed to the Stadtholder to bear witness that he had no designs against England when he left The Hague, but intended for Hungary (for which purpose, indeed, the Prince equipped him) and had since been misled by the restless spirit of the Earl of Argyll and other malcontents whom he met, to his undoing, in Brussels.

More believed that the disclosure related to that subtle designing minister, the Earl of Sunderland, who was deep in the councils of the King’s enemies, yet held his Majesty in such a fascination that no breath against him was credited, even at the last, when he ruined the King easily with a graceful dexterity that deceived even Monsieur Barillon, who is esteemed for his astuteness.

Yet what reason had my lord Sunderland, intent on far larger schemes, to lure my lord Monmouth into a disastrous expedition, and what object had his Grace in keeping a final silence about such treachery?

Nor would the revelation of the falsehood of his Majesty’s minister or the discovery of the dissimulation of his Majesty’s nephew be such a secret as his Grace indicated in his letter–“for I have that to say to him which I am sure will set him at quiet for ever”–whereas either of these communications would rather have set King and Kingdom at great trouble and dis-ease.

No one came near the truth in their guesses, and after a while no one troubled, and truly it is an empty matter now; still, one that containeth a centre of such tragic interest that for me the wonder and pity of it never dieth.

To bring myself back to the events of that fatal year (the recollection groweth as I write), it shall here be noted that I was witness of the great and bitter reluctance of my lord to lead this rebellion.

He was brave in his spirit, but of an exceeding modesty and softness in his temper, of a sweet disposition, averse to offend, fearful of hardship, a passionate lover of life, generously weak to the importunities of others.

Yet for a great while he withstood them, avoided Argyll, shut his doors to Lord Grey and Ferguson and was all for retirement with the lady whom he truly loved, Harriet Wentworth.

But from Love for whom he would put by these temptations came the goad to urge him into the arms of Ambition, and she, who in her pride would see him set on a throne, joined her entreaties to the arguments of the men who needed a King’s son for their leader, and pawned the very jewels in her ears to buy him arms. And he was prevailed upon to undertake this sad and bitter voyage with but a few adventurers whose much enthusiasm must take the place of money and wits, for of these last they had neither. At first his Grace’s heart utterly misgave him and he was more despondent than any man had ever known him, being indeed in a black and bitter mood, reluctant to speak on anything but Brussels and my lady waiting there.

This brought him into some discredit with his followers, but Ferguson had spirit enough to inspire the ignorant, and Lord Grey, who, though a man dishonoured in private and public life, was of a quick moving wit and an affable carriage, animated the little company of us, not above a hundred, who had joined together on this doleful enterprise.

But when we had landed on the rocky shores of Lyme Regis, it was his Grace whose mood became cheerful, for his ready sensibility was moved by the extraordinary and deep welcome these people of the West gave us, for, whereas we who were at first, as I have said, but a hundred, in a few days were six thousand, all hot on an encounter and confident; truly it was marvellous to see how these people loved his Grace and how he was at the very height of joyous exaltation in this fair successful opening.

Taunton saw a day of triumph when his Grace was proclaimed King in the market-place by a mad speech of Ferguson in which wild and horrible crimes were laid to the charge of James Stewart, and I think Monmouth saw himself King indeed, at Whitehall, so gracious and gay was his bearing.

But my lord Grey looked cynically, for not a single person of any consideration had joined us, and, while the gentry held back, ill-aimed and untrained peasants were of no use to us. Yet had his Grace done better to trust their fanatical valour and march on for Bristol and so take that wealthy town, instead of spending his time endeavouring to train his men–God knows he was no general, though a brave soldier in his services in the Low Countries!

While he dallied, my lord Beaufort was raising the trained bands, and my lord Feversham came down from London with some of the King’s troops. Then came that attempt of my lord Grey on Bridport when he forsook his men and fled; though this was proved cowardice, his Grace was too soft to even reprimand him.

In miserable searching for food, in vain straggling marches, in hesitations, in fatal delays the time passed; his Grace might have had Bristol, a place abounding in his own friends; yet, hearing that the Duke of Beaufort had threatened to fire it rather than open the gates, he turned towards Bath, saying he could not endure to bring disaster on so fair a city.

This faint-hearted gentleness was not fitted for the position he had assumed; at Bath they killed his herald and returned a fierce defiance. So we fell back on Frome in disorder; and my lord saw his visions melting, his dream of Kingship vanish, for in the same day he received three pieces of news: that the three Dutch regiments had landed at Gravesend, that my lord Argyll was a prisoner, and that my lord Feversham was marching upon him with three thousand men and thirty pieces of cannon.

And now the full utter madness of what he had undertaken was apparent; we had neither cannon nor arms, scarcely powder; and he who had seen the fine armies of Holland and France could not but see the hopeless position he held with a force of these poor peasants, the cavalry mounted on cart and plough horses, the foot but armed with scythes and pruning-knives. Despair and dismay gained an audience of his mind; he fell suddenly into agonies of fear and remorse for what he must bring on these followers of his; from every one who came near him he asked advice, and the anguish of his spirit was visible in his altered countenance. He called councils in which nothing was resolved but the desperate state they were in, and nothing talked of but the folly that had put them there; his Grace passionately blaming Ferguson and Argyll for their evil urgings. Then it was resolved to retreat on Bridgewater to be nearer the sea; on this march some few left his Grace, but most stayed in a dogged love, and this faith touched his tender heart as much as his own danger, and wrought such a passion of weak agony in him it was piteous to see the expression of it in his face.

At Bridgewater he viewed the enemy through his glasses from the top of the church tower; there and then, I think, he knew that he gazed on a country he must soon for ever leave.

Alas! alas! In my nostrils is still the scent of that July afternoon, the perfume from the slumbrous grasses, the scent of the peaceful flowers.…

That day we had a very splendid sunset; all the west was gold and violet and the whole sky clear of clouds, yet over the morass below the castle the marsh fog lay cold and thick, for lately it had rained heavily and the Parret had overflowed its banks, so the whole earth was wet–very clearly I recall all details of that day.

Here I come to that picture that is for ever with me–the last Council of my lord. Had I the skill of some of those Hollanders whom I have seen abroad, who can limn a scene just to the life, I could give this scene on canvas with every colour exact.

It was a room in the Castle, not large, looking on to the garden; through the open window showed that emblazoned sunset, and a rose and vine leaf entwined against the mullions.

The panelling of the chamber was darkened and polished, above the mantelpiece was a painting of a stone vase of striped and gaudy tulips, very like, and there were logs ready on the hearth, for the evenings were chilly. On the floor was a little carpet of Persia, and in the centre a table with stools set about it, all of a heavy, rather ancient design. A little brass clock with a mighty pendulum stood against the wall on a bracket; on the table were two branched candlesticks, clumsy and shining.

There were gathered the rebel officers, talking themselves into a boastful confidence; the only man of quality among them, my lord Grey, stood a little apart beside the open window–and smiled; he was a curious man, not well-favoured, but one whom it was pleasant to look upon, tall and dark, with that little fault in the eyes that casteth them crooked. My office was an idle one, for there was nothing to write, so I watched the others and felt chilled at the heart for the hopelessness of it all.

When the dusk gathered, my lord Grey drew the curtains across the rising mists and lit the candles slowly.

When the last flame rose up, Monmouth entered quietly: he ever had a light step.

Marred as he then was by his inward misery, he was still the loveliest gentleman in England and of a winning beauty impossible to be realised by those who have not seen him; he wore a riding coat of brown cloth and a black hat with a penache of white plumes, being more plainly dressed than ever he had been before, I think, in all his easy life.

They all rose when he entered, but he motioned them to their seats again, and I saw that he had not the firmness to command his voice to speak. He took the place they had left for him, and Lord Grey, shading the candle flame from his eyes, stared at him with that crossed glance of his and that immovable expression of amusement on his lips. For a while they spoke together, to cover, as I took it, this dismal discomposure on the part of their leader.

But presently he took off his hat impatiently, showing his long soft hair of that English-coloured brown and his eyes, of the tint of a chestnut, that usually shone with so bright a light, and leaning a little forward in his chair he broke into astonishing speech.

“I cannot go on,” he said. “I will not go on–there is nothing ahead but ruin.”

At these words that so stript the poor pretence of hope from their councils, these officers sat revealed as fearful and stricken men. They looked at Monmouth as one who would be the mouthpiece of their own terrors; my lord Grey withdrew himself a little from them and went to stand by the mantelshelf, from there observing all.

The red came into the Duke’s face and he eyed them wildly.

“What are we going on?” he said. “We are not such fools as to think we can prevail now.… I saw Dumbarton’s Scots yonder on Sedgemoor.… I know how they can fight … they were under me at Bothwell Brig.…” He pressed his handkerchief to his lips and he was trembling like a sick maid.

They saw in his eyes that he considered them, as the play saith, on “the edge of doom,” and as he had given them leave for ignoble thoughts, so each took advantage of it and bethought him of his own sad condition.

“We have but a rabble,” said one. “And there is yet a chance to get over seas—”

“I cannot fall into the hands of James Stewart,” muttered Monmouth; “for I have done that which cannot be forgiven.” And there was such pusillanimous fear in his wretched look of shivered dread that it passed like a panic through all that they too had done what could not be forgiven; nor was James Stewart a merciful man. One voiced the general terror:

“We could get to the coast before any guessed we had left Bridgewater–in flight lies our only chance.”

Then my lord Grey made this speech.

“There are six thousand people have left their homes to follow you–would you, my lord, abandon them to that fate ye cannot face yourself?”

Monmouth looked at him; maybe he thought it strange that the man that had been a proved coward under fire should speak so intrepidly in the council, yet he was too unnerved for a retort or an answer.

“Oh, you,” added Lord Grey, with a flick of a scorn in his tone, “who took the title of a King, and are a King’s son, cannot you make a more seemly show of it than this?”

“It is my life,” said the Duke in a piteous agitation. “Five thousand pounds on my head … to die as Russell did.…”

“You are a King’s son,” repeated Lord Grey.

In a desperate passion his Grace answered him.

“Why did you induce me to this folly? It was you, that villain Ferguson and Argyll—”

“He has paid,” said the other quickly.

“As I must pay.… My God, was I not happy in Brabant? You but wanted my name to gild your desperation—”

“We would have made you King,” said Lord Grey, and he smiled a little.

There fell a silence, and it seemed that the Duke would speak, but he said no words.

“Come, gentlemen,” spoke out my lord Grey. “The Council is over–you will have your orders before morning–all expedients are ineffectual; now each, in his own way, must go forward to the end.” He took up the candle to light them from the room, and they, being men of a little station, were overawed by his quality and went; two of them deserted that night, and one betrayed us by firing a pistol to warn Lord Feversham of our approach and so got the King’s pardon. God be merciful to the others; I think they died unknown and brave.

I, being trusted because there was a price on my head and I had borne the torture in Scotland, was asked by Lord Grey to stay and help hearten his Grace.

We endeavoured to reason him into going into Castle Field, where Ferguson preached to the miners and ploughmen; he would not, but in a weak agony abused Wildman and Argyll as the engines of his torture, and he had the look on him we call “fey”; I believed he was near his death.…

So the night fell very misty and warm, and my lord would not lie down, but sat in that little room struggling with anguish.

He had his George of diamonds on and often looked at it and spoke incoherently of how King Charles had given it him … surely my pity was more provoked than my scorn, for he was soft and gentle in his ways and so had gained much love.

That morning one had complained to him Lord Grey should be dishonoured for his behaviour without Bridport–and he had answered: “I will not affront my lord by any mention of his misfortune–” yet here was he sunk in utter misery while Lord Grey strove to rouse in him a manly and decent courage with which to be worthy of these poor brave souls who loved and followed him; presently he came round to his old and first appeal.

“Remember you are a King’s son.”

It was near one in the morning by the little brass clock, and I sat wearily by the door that led to the bedchamber; the Duke was at the table, and as my lord Grey spoke he looked up and began laughing. He laughed so long and recklessly that we were both dumb in a kind of horror, and when at last he came to a pause in his laughter there was silence.

Now the Duke discovered some fortitude: he rose and helped himself to wine, which brought the fugitive blood back into his cheeks and he held himself with more dignity, though there was that wild look of unsettled wits in his wide-opened eyes.

“My lord,” he said, “and you, sir–bring the candles nearer and I will show you something—” He put back the admired locks that screened his brow and took from the pocket of his inner coat a leather book that he laid on the table before us.

“What is this?” asked my lord Grey.

The Duke untied the covers in quiet and let fall on the polished wood all manner of odd and foolish papers, letters, complexion wash recipes, charms and notes of his journeyings in Holland.

These he put aside and drew from a secret lining a silver case such as is used for a painting in little.

It was my thought that it contained the picture of Lady Harriet, which we were to return to her if either lived to do it, and I was sorry for this lady who had been so faithful in her love.

From one to the other of us the Duke looked strangely; his face was flushed now and beautiful as in former days when he was the loved one of that great brilliance at Whitehall, yet still he had the seal of death on him, and, worse than that, the horrible fear of it writ in every line of his comely countenance.

“Please you, look here,” he said; he opened the locket and held it out in his palm.

“What is this?” he asked in a husk and torn voice.

It was the likeness of a man, very fairly done, who wore a uniform and cravat of the time of the death of King Charles I.

Lord Grey looked at it quickly.

“It is your Grace,” he said; then, seeing the dress–“No,” he added, and glanced swiftly at Monmouth–“who is it?”

“It is Colonel Sidney taken in his youth,” I said, for I had known the man well in Rotterdam when he was attached to the court of the late King Charles, then in exile there. And I gazed at the painting … it was a marvellous fair face.

While I looked my lord Duke had three letters out from the same secret corner of his book, and I saw that two were in the writing of Colonel Sidney and the third in a hand I did not know, the hand of an ill-educated woman.

“Who is this?” asked Lord Grey with an amazed look. “Surely Colonel Sidney was never any concern of your Grace?”

He stood with the picture in his hand and Monmouth looked up at him from the old worn and folded letters he was smoothing out.

“It is Colonel Sidney,” he said.

“Well?” asked Lord Grey intently.

“He was my father,” said Monmouth; then he began laughing again, and it had the most doleful sound of anything I have ever heard. I could not grasp what had been said, but my lord Grey with his quick comprehension seemed in a moment to understand and value this truth.

“Your father!” he said softly, and added: “To think we never saw it!” which was an extraordinary thing to say; yet, on looking at the likeness in little and on the fair agonised face staring across the candlelight one might notice that they were in almost every detail the same, and methought I was a very fool never to have observed before how these two men were alike, even to little manners and fashions of speech.

And being that I saw the tragic pitifulness of it all, I could do no more than laugh dismally also.

“See you these letters if you want proof,” said Monmouth.

“There is no need,” answered my lord Grey. “The likeness is enough.” Then he repeated: “And we never saw it!”

“No,” said his Grace half-fiercely; “you never saw it–I was always the King’s son to you–instead of that I am scarce a gentleman.… Now you know why I cannot go on.… I am no Stewart, I have no royal blood.…”

Grey looked at him, turning over in his mind, I think, the aspects of this bewildering turn; he gazed at Colonel Sidney’s son with a curiosity almost cruel.

I was thinking of the obscurity from which he had sprung, the mystery round his early years in Rotterdam, his sudden appearance in a blaze of glory at Whitehall when the King had made him Duke.…

“Who did this?” I asked. “And who kept silence?”

“King Charles loved me as his son,” he answered vaguely, “and I loved him.… I could not have told him–and I was ambitious. What would you have done?” he cried. “I did not know until I was fourteen.” He pressed his hand to his breast.

“But I will not die for it,” he muttered. “Why should I die for it?”

“Your death must become your life, not your birth,” said Lord Grey.

“My death!” shivered Monmouth.

Lord Grey turned to face him; thin and harsh-featured as he was, he made the other’s beauty a thing of nothing.

“Why?” he said commandingly. “You know that you must die–you know what will happen to-morrow and what you have to expect from James Stewart, and those honours that you have won in life will you not keep to grace your death?”

“I cannot die,” answered Monmouth; he rose and began walking about in a quick passion of protesting anguish: “I will not die.”

“That you cannot decide; the manner only is in your power,” said Lord Grey calmly, and I marvelled to think that he had been a coward in open field.

“I am not the King’s son—” his Grace cried out at him, and fell across a chair sick with unavailing love of life.

Lord Grey took up a candle and turned to the door, looking at him the while.

“Will you give James Stewart this triumph?” he asked.

This seemed the one thing to brace Monmouth, for those two had always hated each other strongly; James in the old days had feared my lord’s power, been jealous that he was the elder son of the elder son, and Monmouth seemed to remember that; yet a mean thought hurried on the heels of the manly reflection.

“He would give me my life for this,” he said weakly. “My life for this secret—”

“Good night,” said Lord Grey–a strange man–and left us.

The Duke seemed not to know that he had gone or that I remained; after a little he went into the bedchamber, but not to sleep, and all night I heard him weeping … such sick and bitter womanish sobs all through that long watch I kept.…

Colonel Sidney’s son!

Who were they who did this–and they who kept silence?

A curious commingling of motives, sordid and lovable, ambition, some little love, some touch of self-sacrifice.… I felt compassion for King Charles, who had had no deeper feeling in all his spoilt life than this affection for what was not his.…

I put the wasting candles out and sat in the dark; I lifted the curtain and saw the sun rise over Sedgemoor.

Six thousand men to fight against hopeless odds to-morrow for him they deemed a King, the blood of Bourbon and Stewart, the heir of Tudor and Plantagenet.…

And in my ears was the thick sobbing of a mere Englishman of a stock that scarce boasted gentility, who could not face the end of his masquerade nor fit the robe of greatness he had assumed.

So here is the secret revealed at length to the dumb and innocent paper; God knoweth it is, as Lawrence Hyde saith, a great while ago; for the rest, the world knows how the Duke rode out to Sedgemoor with such a look in his face the very children knew he was marked for doom, and how he fled, leaving his men to gain great honour after he had forsaken them. Also how he was found in peasant’s dress, so changed they did not know him till the George of diamonds flashed out on his tattered garments as he fainted in his captor’s clutch. Lord Grey was taken with him; they stayed at Ringwood two days and from there his Grace wrote frantically to the King and to Lord Rochester.

It is very clear he meant to buy his life with his wretched secret, though I think my lord Grey must have been ever urging him to die with a decent carriage.

So they brought him to London and he was taken before his Majesty, swordless and with his hands tied behind him.

What passed no man knoweth but James Stewart; he has spoken often of it, and I know those to whom he has told of Monmouth’s ignoble desperate pleadings for life at any cost, of his casting himself down and imploring mercy.

Yet he must have been spurred by something in the demeanour of his ancient enemy, for he never told his secret, and he left the presence with anger and dignity, resolving, it must be, to cheat the King of that last satisfaction. Yet afterwards he fell again into unmanly misery that was the wonder of all, and then into a strange mood that was neither the apathy of despair, or, as some said, an exalted enthusiasm. I wondered then and now where his proofs were: not found on him with the other poor trifles I had seen at Bridgewater Castle–destroyed, perhaps. And so he died, hurried reluctant from life, without either religion or repentance, sorry for the blood shed in the West, firm in his love for Lady Harriet, indifferent to the clergyman who cried out on the scaffold:

“God accept your imperfect repentance!”

He would not join in the prayer for the King; when they goaded him he said “Amen” with a careless air.

Knowing as I do what bitter terror he felt, what ghastly anticipations he had, what agony he had endured at the thought of the sheer moment of death, with what shivering sickness he felt the axe, with what horror he eyed the headsman, I cannot bear to write or think how they mangled him.…

And so he died; he brought much misery on the innocent and he was maybe a worthless man, yet I could weep for him even now. I am glad he did not speak; Lord Grey has been ever silent and no one else knows.

Among all those who watched that fair-haired head held up it is strange there is not one to think it showed little likeness to the dark-browed Stewart Kings.…

Here the paper is endorsed in another hand:

“If this be truth then this was a thing ironical. The writer of this rambling manuscript and the Earl of Tankerville, once Lord Grey, are dead, and there be none that know save God who knows and judges.”

A BIOGRAPHY

The Earl of Strafford

“Certainly never any man acted such a part, in such a theatre, with more wisdom, constancy and eloquence, with greater reason, judgment and temper, and with a better grace in all his words and gestures, than this great and excellent person did.”–Whitelock on the trial of Strafford.

This was a man who in his own time was great and fell to dishonoured death, leaving a brilliant memory, but one neither respected nor praised; a King raised him, used him and forsook him, a people judged him, condemned him, and put him to death. Great events followed; the nation shook and changed. The King himself was swept away by that same power to which he had in vain sacrificed his minister, a greater than the King ruled England and men forgot the Earl of Strafford save to execrate his policies.

But they who come home crowned with laurel from the wars the popular heroes of an hour are not always the only saviours of their country, and they who flatter the people do not always serve them best. History is a hard, often an unreflective, judge; her verdict, dictated by the passion of a moment, lasts too often for centuries.

Judging a man by his inner spirit, his desires, the use he makes of great abilities, pitying a man for his misfortunes, his bitter death, those English born may well give a little gratitude to this Englishman who had ever England in his heart.

Thomas Wentworth was of an ancient and noble family of Yorkshire, powerful by intellect, Puritan by tradition, strong by courage and self-belief, above all things deeply desirous of rendering that service to his country which is the way that most readily appeals to a man of an active complexion of satisfying that almost unconscious yearning for glory that is the sign of a great spirit. Mere personal ambition is a proof of either meanness or madness, and the self-seeking of either insanity or vanity has never attained any but a brittle fame and a hollow achievement; if a man is to even contemplate the performance of mighty deeds, he must have some mightiness within him.

Strong enthusiasm, unless it be of the headlong useless kind, is ever joined to that tincture of melancholy which comes from viewing the contrasting apathy of the rest of mankind, and for the first years of his opening understanding Thomas Wentworth was silent, reserved in matters political, given to reflect and observe more than to speak or act.

He had the usual education of a gentleman, studied at Cambridge, travelled in Europe, became Sir Thomas and member for Yorkshire before he was twenty-one.

It was the beginning of the power of parliaments, the beginning of that temper in the people which was to later furnish the extraordinary spectacle of a nation ruling its own kings and retaining a monarchy as a mere ornament to that independence which displayed undisguised is likely to be too stern an object to please a people full of levity and love of show. This party was represented by the Opposition that had galled and restricted the first Charles since his accession; he, however, rather disliked than feared them, and did not doubt that his authority would quell their republican principles.

With these men, among whom was John Pym and afterwards a nobler patriot, John Hampden, Sir Thomas took his seat; he went not into extremes against the court, but conducted himself moderately; he became Custos Rotulorum for the West Riding; presently the king was advised to make him Sheriff of York that he might be disqualified as a Parliamentary candidate; next he was imprisoned for refusing to pay a forced loan imposed by Charles; it seemed that he was committed beyond withdrawal to the Opposition, daily more daring; and that he was to be one of that band of men, firm willed and single minded, who discovered in an absolute monarchy a menace to the general good; but Wentworth did not see with them; tradition was strong in him, his imagination glorified loyalty; he saw in the king an instrument for procuring the greatness of the people; he saw a crisis approaching, a struggle drawing nearer, he chose his side, knowing perhaps that it was bound to lose, but seeing at least a chance for his own dormant abilities to strengthen and exalt a weakening institution. In 1628 the Duke of Buckingham was stabbed to the heart by one of those Puritans who were resolved that all pertaining to Kingship was fatal to their country’s peace, and in that year Thomas Wentworth took the place of the murdered favourite and became, with Laud of Canterbury, chief adviser to the King.

It was supposed by his former friends that he had covered himself with immortal infamy by his desertion of the popular party for that of the court, and their censure has been often echoed, it being assumed that because the cause he espoused was unsuccessful he wasted his genius in serving it; but in 1628 Sir Thomas may have hoped to make England as great as did Cromwell afterwards, and there was no prophet to tell him his judgment was deceived.

A personal friendship rose between him and the stately, formal King with whose traits he had much in common. Charles, grateful to the genius that took the place of Buckingham’s careless talents, created him in one year baron, viscount, and Lord President of the Council of the North.

The Puritan party viewed his rise with peculiar hatred; so hard is it for even just men to stifle the claims of party and see any good in that cause which is not their own.

“You have left us,” said John Pym, “but we will not leave you while your head is on your shoulders.”

In 1633 Wentworth was made Lord Deputy of Ireland, and endeavoured to reduce order into that vexed and discontented country by measures which were abused as despotic, but which were necessary to a man occupied with great schemes. England could never be a great empire while Ireland was an independent kingdom; his claim of Connaught only anticipated the inevitable, and if the army he was so abused for raising could have been kept together under his direction, the crown of England might have been saved. As far as time permitted, he introduced social benefits into the wretched land and encouraged the linen industry by planting flax.

But he was too late, perhaps too impetuous, blinded by his own genius for command into overlooking the steady rise of the democracy; he himself described his policy as “thorough.” Had he been allowed the time, he would have made a notable thing of this policy; but the tide was against him, and bore him sharply out to ruin.

Private malice, not his own faults, brought about his downfall, and he was thrown by a misuse of the law as wanton as any tyranny that could be brought against him. In 1639 John Pym carried out his threat and impeached him of high treason; Wentworth, newly created Lord Strafford, was committed to the Tower, and the outward disgrace and real glory of the man began.

It was one of the most memorable of all state trials, and lacked no element of the tragic, the strange, the terrible, or the dramatic.

The prisoner was he who for over ten years had been the greatest man in the three kingdoms; the principal accuser was one who had been the closest friend of the man he accused; the judges were eighty peers of the realm, the witnesses the two Houses. A King who loved and a Queen who hated the accused were present. The prisoner conducted his own defence, and outside beyond the doors of Westminster Hall the first murmurs of the growing civil war were beginning to rise and swell.

Sir Anthony Van Dyck painted Lord Strafford as a dark, handsome man of a robust type dictating to his secretary; the picture shows a personality such as is in accordance with what we know of the man, and when looking at the proud, half-frowning face it is easy to imagine how he stood during his trial, pale, composed, erect, scornful of them, seeing very surely the axe ahead, having no trust save in the sad-eyed King at whose ear the Bourbon Queen whispered hatred of him, yet using all his magnificence of eloquence to save himself as one who is conscious that his life is worth defending.

Thirteen accusers, who relieved each other, plied him with questions for seventeen days, and he answered them all with unshaken judgment, calm and grace, unaided, unpitied. John Pym’s hatred spurred his enemies on, and Lord Strafford must have tasted the bitterest of all humiliation when he looked to where sat his friend Charles Stewart, not daring to lift a hand to save him–and he had hoped to make his King great indeed.

The man on trial for his life and honours and the King in his regal seat exchanged many a deep look across the commoners who were the masters of both–“he trusts me, and I am helpless” was like a dagger in the heart of Charles.

By his side always sat the Queen, Mary of France, black-eyed, small, in satin and pearls, ready with her hand on his wrist, her voice in his ear: “Do not rouse the people–let Strafford go—”

She had always hated him; she hated any who endeavoured to share her dominion over her husband; she began, too, to be afraid of the people, and as she was of the blood royal of France, a breed that could not understand concession, she and her priests urged the King into further tyrannical measures; first, let Strafford go: he had devised the unpopular laws; if his death would appease the people, let them glut in his blood and keep their complaints from the ear of his Majesty.

So the Queen; but the King loved Strafford, who had served him to this end of ruin, and when he looked across at the dauntless figure pleading his cause to ears deaf with prejudice, he vowed in his heart that his minister should not die, and cursed the barking commoners who forced him there to witness the humiliation of this his faithful servant.

The genius of one man was triumphant over the malice of many. Strafford argued away every charge raised against him. A bill of attainder was then brought forward, hurried on, and passed on April 26th, a week after he had closed his splendid defence.

The King, desperate and seeing his own throne shaking, yet had the resolution to refuse his assent; he had promised his protection to Strafford and would not give way.

The whole nation rose to demand the blood of Thomas Wentworth; Laud was already in the Tower, the Puritan party dominant; the fallen minister had no friend save the King.

His ambitious, lofty, and reserved spirit tasted great agony while he waited through the long days of early spring, tramping his chamber in the Tower–he who had hoped to make England great–and here was England howling for his life and honours … here was John Pym and his fanatic followers triumphant.

“What is left? Can the great spirit rise to the great crisis? Having proudly lived, can I proudly die? Can I still serve England–now?”

The King was firm, and public feeling rose to a panic of excitement. Revolution was on the point of shaking the very palace. The Queen, with a baseness doubly vile in a woman, used her arts to wrest death from Strafford for her husband, vowed with tears to flee to France. The Bishop of Lincoln urged that the needs and desires of the nation were more than a mere private promise.

But the King was firm; he would not sign the death warrant of Strafford.

Then the Queen, potent for mischief, wrought on the King, since he was obstinate on that point, to save his servant by violent means. The distracted Charles took her fatal advice and endeavoured to seize the Tower of London by force by means of the troops lately raised by the Queen.

This attempt on the keys of the kingdom threw the nation, already in a ferment, into a tumult of wrath and fear, and Lord Strafford was lost.

The wildfire of party zeal inflamed men into believing anything desperate of the King; thrice the members of the House of Commons fled on a cracking of the floor, thinking they had trod again over gunpowder as in the former reign. There was nothing too monstrous to be stated, nor too extravagant to be believed.

But the King would not sign the death warrant of his friend and servant; he was supported by the Bishop of London, who bade him listen to his conscience rather than to the fierce demands of party. Amid all the press of turning strife one man was calm–the prisoner in the Tower who saw every day how he had failed in his scheme of government and how he had been the means of embroiling the King with the people instead of establishing a great man over a great nation and making a light in Europe of Charles Stewart.

Of all bitter failures, what can be more bitter than that of a great statesman who hugely stakes and hugely loses beyond redemption, beyond hope? The proud dark-faced man who had stood so high and dreamt so daringly had his vigils of anguish during those long May days and nights in the old Tower already darkened with noble blood and the memory of splendid sufferers. He had lost everything but his life, and that hung on the promise of the King. My lord did not doubt that his master would keep that promise; but what was mere life to a man who only valued existence as it meant use, power, achievement?

He who had given the King and England his best now gave all left to him. On one of those awakening days of spring, when even in the Tower there were trees bursting into leaf, glimpses of cloud-flecked blue, bars of sunshine across the cold walls and sounds from the wide river of music and merry-making, Lord Strafford wrote to the King, asking, for the sake of the peace of England, to be left to his fate.

In these words he concluded his noble letter: “My consent will more acquit you to God than all the world can do besides. To you I can resign the life of this world with all imaginable cheerfulness.” The King gave way, but with no abatement of his anguish, since he justly felt that such a request was but another reason for him to keep his word.

He could not, when he had consented, sign the warrant himself, so this was done by four lords, and he sent a message entreating mercy of the peers, or at least a delay; but there was no pity in England for Lord Strafford, nor for the King.

The worst half of the tragedy was his; he never forgot nor shook his conscience free of what he had done. When he came to his own agony and bent his sad head to the block he looked at Juxon, that same bishop who had been advocate for Strafford, and said, “Remember,” and it was believed that the terrible whisper referred to the forsaken friend who had died the same death eight years before.

At the moment he fell into a kind of apathy in the midst of the rejoicing faction who had their way at last.

Lord Strafford prepared for death; he was in the full vigour of life, of a worldly temper, proud and ambitious; the warm days were full of the keen joy of life. He tasted to the utmost the sharpness of the struggle between flesh and spirit. When he heard from the written paper the actual words of the King formally condemning him he was for a moment broken with emotion and overcome at thought of the friendship that had failed so miserably; he, beloved of the King, was to die an attainted man, a death humiliating and shameful, branded as a traitor.

He struggled to control his haughty spirit, to subdue the flesh that clung to lovely life, but always before his eyes were the ripening green, the sweet early weather, the sounds from the river, and it was not easy.

The execution was hurried on; on the 12th of May he went to his death in black satins like the great gentleman he was; as he left the gate Archbishop Laud, his one-time coadjutor, now his fellow-prisoner, met him, and he went on his knee to receive the blessing of one who was to so quickly follow him to the scaffold, then on between his guards silent and scornful like the leader of them all, while on his face were the low-breathed air and the early sunshine, and in his ears the calls of the birds and the swish of the river rippling hurriedly under the fortress walls.

Many men have died for England in many ways, none under circumstances more difficult and bitter than this proud man who sank to rest upon the block that May day while his sick, haunted King waited in the great palace for the awful news of the irrecoverable.

A POOR SPANISH LODGING

Philip Wharton, Duke of Wharton

“The scorn and wonder of his age.”–Alexander Pope.

A young man sat at a wooden table in a small, mean room.

His hands were in his pockets and his head sunk on his breast, his legs outstretched before him.

A miserable bed, covered with a dirty blanket, occupied one corner of the room, above it being a gaunt and poorly carved crucifix.

The floor, walls and ceiling were lath, plaster and worn wood, all soiled, smoked and crumbling.

The one small window was covered with a thick pane of discoloured glass that could not open; some portmanteaux stood beneath and a broken chair.

On the table was a coarse glass stained with lees of wine, a loaf of bread, an hour-glass and a knife.

The flies turned in and out of the glass, clustered round the loaf and hung in clouds about the window.

Outside the sun, at its full height and strength, blazed at white heat, and a bar of vivid light streamed through the smeared glass and fell in a pool of gold on the dirty floor near to the young man, who appeared to be dozing, so still did he sit and so level was his breathing.

He was humbly dressed in a travelling coat that was much worn, though of a good cloth and fashionable cut, a frayed blue silk waistcoat, black breeches, boots to his knees, and a coat of grey tabinet, all much used and soiled.

At his side was a light sword, and round his throat a neckcloth of fine Venetian lace, carelessly folded.

His hair hung untidily down his back and forward over his face; it was a charming chestnut-brown colour and very thick. Presently he stretched himself and raised his head without removing his hands from his breeches pockets.

He glanced round the room, and it would have been impossible to discover from his expression whether the squalor of his surroundings moved him to disgust or no.

His face was unusually handsome, of a high-born and rakish type, but ravaged in a ghastly fashion by want and illness. The contour and pose of youth remained, but all bloom, freshness and colour had gone; his person seemed to have seen as much hard service as his clothes and to have suffered more.

From the lines on his brow and at the corners of his remarkably beautiful mouth it might have been supposed that he was in pain, but his expression was calm and his large hazel eyes serene. The flies circled the room and beat at the window with a monotonous persistency; the sun burnt up the already foul air and heated the room almost unbearably. The young man rose, displaying a figure no more than the middle height, but of a graceful, well-trained manliness, and walked unsteadily to the window.

As he moved he felt his own weakness and caught his breath with a quick exclamation.

For years he had been warned that he was killing himself as he had been warned that he was ruining himself. The last had occurred; he had been ruined in fame and fortune, and it seemed as if the first prophecy would be justified also. Two nights ago he had ridden from one town to another; six hours in the rain and the chill that had followed had greatly increased the vague illness that had been for the last two years threatening his life.

He had always been as reckless of his health as of all the other great gifts he had once been blessed with, and he was paying toll now, a penniless exile, bankrupt in everything.

He could see nothing from the window, the blaze of the sun was too strong on the white Spanish street.

The flies droned in his ears, and they were the only sound.

He closed his eyes, for the dazzle of sunshine made him feel giddy.

“Gad,” he murmured, “one could do with a few drops of rain–a cloud at least.”

He began to be conscious of a great thirst; there was no water in the brown earthenware jug standing in the corner, he knew. Languidly, but with the well-schooled and now unconscious grace of the man of fashion who is used to move with a thousand eyes watching every detail of his dress and deportment, the young Englishman crossed the room, unlatched the door and went slowly down the dark, steep and dirty stairs.

He came directly into a large picturesque room that gave by a tall open door on to the street.

It was a kind of general hall or kitchen, the smooth black beams of the ceiling hung with rows of onions and herbs, all manner of pots and pans about the huge open hearth, a window at the back looking on to the garden, and in a dusky corner an empty cradle and a spinning wheel.

The young man went to the shelf where the thick green glasses stood, took one down and dipped it into the red-glazed pitcher that stood beneath. The bubble of the water sounded pleasantly; he raised the dripping glass and drank with a grateful air.

He was glad of the cool shadows and of the intense quiet; every one seemed abroad; it was autumn and he supposed they were at work in the vineyards.

There was an old rush-bottomed chair near the black-carved supports of the door; he seated himself with his back to the sunlight in the deserted street, and his eyes on the window the other side of the room that gave an exquisite glimpse of a fig-tree drooping in the shadowed garden, and beyond a glossy myrtle, glittering in distant sunbeams. The young man knew that he had not long to live, both from ordinary signs and fore-warnings and the sure inner instinct his keen intelligence was quick to notice and regard.

He was absolutely without fear; he had never had any credence in any religion or any belief, even vague, in a future state of existence, nor had, like many, tried to invent these feelings for himself or supply their place with superstitions and conventions.

He had never needed these lures to gild his life with promise, always he had found the moment sufficient, and whatever the moment demanded, in wealth, honour, talent, charm or health, he had given lavishly, not unthinkingly, for he had always known that a price would be demanded, as he had seen it demanded from others of his kind.

And he was prepared to pay.

A long life did not attract him; all the pleasures he valued were pleasures that could not with dignity be enjoyed when youth was past; his own sparkling wit had often made a butt of an old rake, or an elderly prodigal; he had never intended to join the ranks of those people who had outworn their enjoyments.

A poet whom he had patronised had called him “The scorn and wonder of the age;” but from his own point of view his life had been the very steady following of a very simple philosophy.

Caring for nothing but the world, that he regarded as the golden apple hung above the head of every youth to ignore or gain, he had bought the world, with money, with charm, with honour, with talent, with beauty and strength and exulted in it and sated himself–and he did not complain of the bargain. He never complained of anything; his sweet, good humour was held by many to condone his villainies as the grace with which he took his final fall almost justified the acts which had led to that fall. When his political levity, his social extravagances, his dissipations had finally left him without health or money, he had taken the verdict of the doctors, the curses of his creditors and the flight of his friends with the same gentle smile, and, urged by his ardent love of the world to make life an adventure to the last, had disappeared from London, where he was so dazzling and infamous a figure, to die abroad, in the sun and among scenes that by their freshness and simplicity disguised, at least to a stranger’s eyes, the sharpness of their poverty. So he, by birth an English Marquis, by patent of the Pretender a Duke, son of a famous man and himself the most renowned rake in London, even among a set that included Viscount Bolingbroke, stayed his obscure wanderings at a poor inn in an unknown Spanish village and prepared himself for death among the peasants of a strange land.

He regretted nothing, not the splendid chances he had thrown away, not the fine name he had tarnished, not the great talents he had wasted, not the life he had sapped and used up before its time. He admitted no sins, he claimed no virtues and he believed in no judgment.

God he considered a polite myth, invented to frighten human weaknesses, the devil a fable to excuse man’s breakage of his own laws; he had never paid the least regard to either; never, in any moment of disappointment or sickness, had he felt any touch of remorse, of regret or fear.

If he had been given his life over again he would have again used it for the same extravagances, the same follies, the same short brilliant flare.

As he sat now, looking at the distant fig-tree and myrtle, he was thinking of his past life without compunction, though every incident that rose to his memory was connected with some broken promise, some shameless deception, some ruined heart, some wanton, dishonourable action.

The one thing he had been faithful to (beyond his own Epicurean creed) was the code of a gentleman, as interpreted by the society in which he moved. It was a curious code, inherited, not learnt, an instinct more than a quality only remotely connected with the chivalry from which it had sprung.

The Duke would have found this code difficult to define; he called it honour, but it was only a kind of flourishing likeness of honour.

Its laws were simple, mainly these: never be afraid; never chaffer with money nor earn it in any way, nor mingle in trade; never play false in your games or your bets; always be courteous to your inferiors and to women; never take insolence from any one, even the King; seek out danger and the company of your equals; never take up money once you have put it down; smile when you win and laugh when you lose; never speak of your loves nor toast an actress at your club.

My lord had never broken these laws: he did not put this to his credit; he took them as naturally as clean linen and neat table manners, but perhaps in the casting up of his worthless life they might be set against the black length of his wicked record, as some poor palliative. There was something else my lord could claim, a personal quality this and peculiar to himself: he was tender to animals and anything weak that came his way.

He could not have turned a step aside to seek out the poor or miserable, but when they crossed his path he was lavish.

And no bird or beast had ever suffered through him; he had never lent the brilliance of his presence to any baiting or cock-fighting or bull-fight.

This, too, might be set to my lord’s account, but there was little else.

Yet he was lovable; he had always been lovable.

People who knew him and scorned him still cared for him; he had been caressed by Charles Edward in genuine affection and liked by King George. Perhaps because he was so utterly soulless and made no pretence of being other than he was, because he was so entirely frank in his passionate capacity for happiness, in his beautiful gaiety he attracted those who were themselves divided in their aims and too timid to crown their own vices as he crowned his, for his fascination was more than merely physical and the attraction of exquisite manners.

He was lovable now; even after his long exile from the splendours of St. James, even in his worn clothes, even marred by illness and weariness, he carried with him something that was wholly pleasing, not in the least suggestive of the shameful, unlovely things with which his name was branded.

He was reviewing the final adventure of his life with no changed sense of values, no blurred outlook.

The near presence of death did not alter his opinion in one jot on any particular nor confuse his estimate nor awaken new feeling; he must have satisfied, in some way, the purposes for which he had been born, to be so serene, so content on the eve of the complete end.

All his senses were absolutely clear, even more exquisite than usual; even more perhaps than ever did he appreciate the beauties of light and colour and scent, the delicacies of sound, of touch, yet his mean and unbeautiful surroundings did not trouble him; compared to what they might have been they were well enough. It was better to die in a poor Spanish lodging than in the Fleet, or a garret in Whitefriars, or some kinsman’s back room; nay, better this than the Tower and the panoply of death some chill morning on the scaffold.

He would perhaps have preferred an active death in some duel, but he made no complaint that this had not been the end ordained for him.

He was grateful that he was going to die in the sun.

Leaning back easily in the old willow-wand chair, he began to compose some verses–some of those witty cynical lines for which he had been famous in London and which amused him to fashion.

Presently his sensitive ears detected a light sound, a sweet and familiar sound, the play of a woman’s skirt against her ankles and the floor.

He broke off his mental composition and turned his head towards the shadowy depths of the room that lay between him and the window at which he had been gazing.

From out these darknesses a figure emerged from a mysterious door that opened and shut on farther recesses of blackness, moved into the clearer shadows and finally into the full light.

It was a woman, young and notable, who appeared not to notice that there was any one in the room, for she stood in a watchful, motionless pose, gazing up the dark staircase from which the Duke had descended.

Her dress was fantastic and charming, a tight blue satin bodice gleamed round her slender waist, and beneath it panniers of pink gauze billowed over her hips and were looped away from a white petticoat trimmed with blue jet that glimmered even when she stood still.

Round the bottom of this petticoat was a garland of pink roses, her stockings, that showed well above her ankles, were blue, her shoes white, heelless and fastened in with embroidered pink ribbons.

On one arm she carried a pale yellow cloak and a black velvet mask; over her wide shoulders was flung, carelessly, but gracefully, a white silk scarf with a deep fringe border.

Her dusky brown hair was slightly powdered and gathered on the top of her small head by a huge tortoiseshell comb set with red coral, long blue jet earrings quivered in her ears, and she wore a necklace of fine pearls.

The Duke noticed these things and the delicacy and grace of the woman herself, the poise of her head, the straight lines of her profile, the fineness of her hands and ankles, the richness of her locks, the dark sweep of her eyebrows and the dusky bloom on her round cheek.

He also knew her dress to be that of a dancer or ballerina, despite the blue brocade train that dragged a couple of yards behind her.

What or who she was he did not care, nor how she came to be in this poor inn dressed in this festal fashion.

He was pleased to see again one of the pretty creatures who had always been to him the most entrancing and beautiful objects in an entrancing and beautiful world.

He watched the gentle vision with interest and tenderness, making no movement or sound.

Suddenly she turned full on him her dark face that, although it was too broad for perfect beauty, was piquant and glowing with fine colour.

The Duke rose and bowed.

“I am Philip Wharton, Señora,” he said in Spanish.

She advanced towards him.

“I thought you were upstairs,” she said gravely.

Her voice was delicate, but her speech had the peasant accent of Andalusia.

“Were you watching for me?” he asked curiously.

“Yes,” she said. “For who else? Why should I come back after this long time save to see you? Yesterday I was here,” she added, “but you would not see me.”

“Pardon me, I was ill yesterday and did not come downstairs.”

She gazed at him with soft, luminous and unfathomable eyes.

“Have I seen you before?” asked the Duke, endeavouring to place her among the many women who had flitted across his life.

“I used to dance,” she answered, “at the opera in Venice.”

He did not remember her. How could he recall one face from out the whirl of joy and gaiety he had known in Venice?

“You are Spanish?” he asked.

“From Andalusia. And you are English?”

“Yes.”

“And dying?”

“Ah, you know as much as that, do you?” he smiled.

“I know many things now.”

“Ah, wisdom!” he mocked. “I could wager your knowledge begins and ends with the list of your victims and triumphs. How did you come here?” he asked abruptly.

“I ran away.”

“To this place?”

“It was but a stage on the road.”

“You know me?” he asked.

“Yes; I have met you at Paris, at Vienna, at Rome and Naples.”

“By gad,” he said, “you flatter me by your memory.”

He began to notice that she never smiled, and it displeased him; he disliked a grave woman.

“What is your name?” he asked in the tone of a master, and sank back into the chair, for indeed he felt very weak.

She shook her head.

“I have so many.”

“Give me one.”

She bent her eyes on him earnestly.

“What was the name of your first love?” she asked.

He started.

“I have forgotten.”

“What was the name of the woman you loved the most?”

Fair faces rose before him, tearful faces, pleading faces, angry faces–he could not choose between them.

“I do not know,” he said faintly.

She glanced round the room as if she, too, saw the faces that had risen so clearly before his mental eyes.

“You were not kind or loyal to one of them,” she said.

Philip Wharton laughed.

“Tell me your name,” he insisted.

“You have forgotten it, and you do not know it,” she returned quickly. “Once I was called Helen, but that was a long time ago.”

He looked at her curiously.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said, “and how you come to be here alone.”

She put her hands behind her back; the mantle trailed over her train and her fragile dress glimmered in the shade.

“It was after the opera at Versailles,” she began. “I was dressed for the ballet and was leaving my dressing-room, when they put a cloak over my head and carried me out to a coach–we drove all night to the house of an English lord in the Rue de Vaugirard—”

She stepped suddenly and noiselessly behind the Duke.

“—as I was descending from the coach they put a handkerchief over my eyes, so—”

Philip Wharton felt a scrap of muslin flung over his head and drawn tight over his eyes, leaving him in pleasant darkness.

“—and one led me by the hand, thus—”

Her fingers touched his; he smiled passively beneath the bandage.

“—and took me into the presence of my lord, who had betted a thousand guineas that I should ride in his cabriolet through Paris. But it was not very long before he was tired of me.”

She loosened the handkerchief and withdrew it gently.

Philip Wharton opened his eyes on cool shade, a room hung with raised crimson and white velvet and furnished in a very stately style.

An arched marble window looked on to a blue canal on which the rays of the setting sun sparkled, and in the seat of this window, that was piled with cushions, a lady sat; she wore a great hooped skirt, fluttering with sarcenet ribbons, and in her red-gold locks drooped a red rose.

“As I was saying,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “you very soon got tired of me.”

“Carina, no,” answered the Duke. “I have always been in love with you and Venice.”

“You went away. It was the day of the Carnival. I was then wearing an orange cloak with a fringe. It was exactly five days since I had met you. But you cared for me more than for any woman you met in Venice.”

“I love you now,” said Philip Wharton, “for I have come back to you when I am dying.”

She looked at him gravely and stepped out of the window on to the balcony.

“Will you come once more in my gondola?” she asked.

He followed her.

Light steps led from the balcony to the Canal, where a gay gondola cushioned in sapphire blue floated.

The lady stepped in and the Duke after her; the gondolier sped the light boat forward between the palaces.

“This has always been a pleasant memory to me,” he said.

She sat erect with a fan of curled white ostrich to lips and looked at him over the feather tips.

“The night you went away,” she said, “my husband hired three bravos. I was crossing the bridge when I met them–this bridge—”

Suddenly the Rialto was over them; the gondola had shot from blue and gold into darkness.

“They thought I was coming to meet you. My husband—”

The boat stopped in the blackness; he felt, though he could not see, the lady rise and step out.

Her hand touched his, and blindly following the guidance of it, he stepped ashore, and felt a step beneath his feet; the firm clasp on his wrist drew him through a doorway.

“My husband is coming back to-morrow,” the voice continued. “Oh, Philip, I am afraid!”

He put his free hand to his sword.

“That is foolish of you,” he said. “I am here.”

“But you have begun to cease to care,” her voice wailed, “and you will go away.”

As she spoke a door opened to her right, and she released his wrist; he followed her into a little boudoir charmingly hung with straw-coloured silk.

The Duke remembered it very well; he turned to the woman.

She was now a pale blonde wrapped in an embroidered mob and wearing dazzling little silver slippers.

Her face was tear-stained and her eyes pleading.

“Paris was terrible after you left,” she said. “Why did you go? You tired so soon.”

“You have remarked that,” he returned, “twice, I think, before.”

She began to cry.

“Do not you love me any more, Philip?”

“I have come back to you,” he answered; “but my head is rather confused. And, Madame, you are spoiling your complexion with these tears.”

“Hush!” she cried.

She ran to the dainty hangings that concealed the door, raised them, and listened.

“Some one is coming!”

She hastened back to him and half dragged, half pushed him to a secret door; as she touched a spring it flew open, and he stepped with a laugh into the concealment of a dark secret room that was filled with a bitter, pungent perfume. He closed his eyes; there was a heaviness in his head; he could not tell how long he had been closed in when the sliding panel was drawn.

“It was a false alarm after all,” said the woman.

Her black hair hung dishevelled on her brocade gown, her hollow face was pale and her eyes stormy.

“Did you say that you must leave Bois-le-Duc to-morrow?” she demanded hoarsely.

She held a candle in a pewter stick in her right hand and her left clasped her dress together over her palpitating bosom.

“The Prince gave me leave to return to England,” he answered.

He stepped from his concealment into a room with polished walls, furnished heavily and well.

“You would not betray him after he has given you a Dukedom–you would not forsake me?” she asked anxiously.

“Do you not trust me?” he asked lightly.

“Oh yes, I trusted you. But you went away.”

“Always the same!” he exclaimed impatiently. “Have I not been faithful to return to you now?”

She began to laugh.

“Faithful!” she cried. “Faithful!”

He laughed too, and the echo was long and loud.

He went to the door and opened it on dark stairs; without looking back he descended.

The first landing blazed with the light of a thousand candles; a magnificent doorway with portals flung wide invited him into a gorgeous ballroom, where splendidly dressed people moved to and fro to the melody of violin and harp.

Philip Wharton entered; in a little alcove to his right he found the woman waiting for him.

The diamonds sparkled red and blue as if her flesh was on fire; her powdered locks were piled high, and the billows of her violet dress spread wide on the settee where she sat.

She laughed.

“Faithful!” she cried. “Faithful! And you are leaving Vienna to-morrow!”

He seated himself on the small portion of the brocade her spreading skirts had left uncovered.

His nostrils distended to drink in the perfumed air, and his eyes sparkled; his whole spirit became animated in the congenial atmosphere of a court–a luxurious court.

“And I must really die and leave all this,” he complained.

He looked at the lady and smiled; but her face was very grave.

“Let us walk once more in the garden,” she said, and rose and opened a glass door in the alcove that led into a garden that was very prettily lit by coloured lanterns. She took the Duke’s arm, and they passed along the prim paths between avenues of clipped limes and box bushes.

For some while she did not speak; then she whispered–

“It is strange to see you at Kensington again, my lord.” Her voice sounded as if it was full of tears. “Strange to think that you must leave again so soon.”

She pressed close to his side now, for she no longer wore a hoop; a quilted hood and cloak concealed her head and figure, and he thought that she must wear jasmine somewhere on her person, so strong was the scent of that blossom on the air.

“I wonder,” she continued, “if, when you come to die, you will ever think of these moments–the broken promises, the broken hearts?”

“When I come to die,” repeated the Duke musingly, “I shall no doubt think of you and your sweetness.”

“Not of me and my sadness?”

Philip Wharton did not answer; he smiled into the darkness, which he perceived was beginning to be lightened by the first delicate sparkle of dawn.

“Have you ever done one good action?” continued the voice at his side.

“Oh, Madame!”

“Or shed one tear–one tear for another? One tear to heal all the wickedness you have committed–all the grief you have caused?”

“Never!” he answered. “Never!”

“Is there no memory you can recall that would soften you to tears now?”

He answered “None.”

Her hand slackened on his arm and was withdrawn; in the confusion of the lifting shadows and the spreading milky whiteness of the new day he lost her.

He was alone in the garden. No, not a garden; it was soon light enough to see, and he then noticed that he was walking in an English field in early spring-time.

Before him a meadow sloped to a fence that enclosed a little wood; bluebells, daffodils, and primroses grew under the branches of the trees; the meadow was starred all over with buttercups and daisies.

To one side of the fence was a small thatched cottage behind which the sun was rising, and where the distance merged into the early blue vapour the sharp spire of a church rose.

A slight, very slight, feeling of apprehension came over Philip Wharton.

“I do not wish to come back here,” he said. “This has all been a dream, and I will wake up now.”

Yet he walked on.

It was absolutely still; though the sun had now risen clear of the mists and was glittering in a clear heaven, there was no one abroad.

The Duke approached the cottage, saying to himself–

“I know this place, and I do not wish to see it again.”

Before the wooden gate of the tiny garden he paused.

A few modest flowers were growing in neat beds–pinks, wallflowers, and sweet williams; beside the closed door was a lavender bush.

The Duke’s sensation of dread deepened. He noticed that a white blind hung behind each of the four windows. He felt that he was there against his will. Peaceful and lovely as the scene was, it was one from which he would willingly have fled.

He left the garden and wandered away into the little wood and seated himself under a pine tree and took his head in his hands.

And as he sat there he heard the church bell tolling.

“I am not going,” he said to himself, and for a while he was resolute and would not move; yet presently he rose and went back to the cottage.

The door was half open now.

He pushed wide the garden gate and entered; he was acutely conscious of the scent of the simple flowers and the tolling of the bell.

Without knocking he entered.

Two men were in the narrow passage carrying before them a coffin.

Philip Wharton found himself face to face with it; it was held upright, and the name-plate was near his eyes. He read, “Aged nineteen.”

He heard a woman sobbing in the room into which the coffin was being taken, and he peered through the crack of the door.

On a humble bed lay the wasted form of a young girl from which the soul had recently departed.

Philip Wharton passed out of the house, out of the garden, and down the meadow.

“I am sorry,” he said; he had never sincerely spoken those words before.

He walked till he came to the church, and then he entered the graveyard, and seated himself on an old sunken tomb and watched the poor funeral procession that presently wound through the lych-gate.

When they had all left and he was again alone, he walked down the sloping churchyard path and looked at the new-made grave.

A simple headstone was already in place; it bore no name, but only the date and the words–

“A broken and a contrite heart, O Lord, Thou wilt not despise.”

Philip Wharton put his hand before his eyes; he felt sorry and afraid.

All the women who had ever loved him seemed to lie buried in that humble grave. Love itself, compact of a thousand graces, a thousand transports, which had been made manifest to him under so many different shapes, in so many climes, seemed to have fallen and died at last and to lie buried here with Lucy.…

He took his hand from his eyes and saw about him the poor Spanish lodging, the distant window with the fig and myrtle from which the sun had now departed. He sat up shivering.

“What dreams!” he muttered. “What dreams!”

He found his eyes wet with tears; he rose and held on to the back of the chair. For one awful moment he believed in God. Then he shook off the oppression.

“She died as I must die,” he said. “Why not?”

A chill had fallen with the setting of the sun. He shivered again, and found that his limbs were stiff beneath him; he pushed the dark hair back from his face and gazed before him, trying to conjure the figure of the dancer in the pink gauze and blue jet out of the encroaching shadows.

But he knew that it was useless, that she was dead and buried with all those other women.

And death had him by the throat, was struggling with him even now, and he must prepare himself to go down into the darkness that enveloped them.

He went upstairs to the room he called his own; as he opened the door of it he heard steps below, and leaning over the rails saw the old woman who owned the inn enter with a basket of grapes on her grey head.

The young Duke blew her a kiss; she was the last woman whom he would ever see. He entered his room; the flies still buzzed round the stale bread and dirty glass, but the golden pool of sunlight had gone from the floor.

“Not one of those women,” reflected Philip Wharton, “ever thought that I should die–like this!”

So saying the young rake seated himself heavily and wearily in his former seat by the table and stretched out his hand for his pipe which lay next the glass.

But before he touched it, he felt a slight cold touch on his shoulder, and thought he heard some one behind him.

As he turned to look he drew a long breath.

“Why, Lucy—” he said, and on that word–died.

DEFEAT

Edward Plantagenet

Edward Plantagenet, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Earl of Chester, Lord of Biscay and Uridales, rested at Bordeaux with his brother Johan of Gaunt, Duke of Acquitaine and Lancaster, Earl of Derby, Lincoln and Leicester, Seneschal of England and the English army.

Edward of Wales had saved his word; he could not save Acquitaine.

He had redeemed the oath sworn before the high God that the treacherous Limoges should pay for its disloyalty. The town lay now a burning ruin; in one day three thousand men, women, and children had atoned with their blood for the falsity of Jean le Cros, Bishop of Limoges.

For Edward had sworn by his father’s soul to wipe out every life in Limoges. Chained and bare-headed the Bishop had been brought before the Prince, and had only been spared by the intercession of Johan of Gaunt, for Edward had vowed by God and St. George that the arch traitor should perish.

Yet at this he stayed his hand and came to Bordeaux, carried in a litter, his vengeance satisfied but his chivalry stained by the innocent blood of churls, an unhappy knight, ill at ease in mind and body, without money for his men-at-arms, with Acquitaine slipping from him. East and south and north the French were advancing, and he had no means to stay them.

This was great bitterness for one who had been the pattern of knighthood in Europe, who was a King’s son and the hero of the English. So he came to Bordeaux, where his family waited him in a castle above which the Leopards floated, and saw the ships in the harbour waiting to carry him back to England. At Cognac he had delegated his powers and his offices to his brother, and Johan of Gaunt had taken up the almost hopeless task; but he was ambitious, a famous knight, eager to play a great part among the Princes of Europe, also in his full health and lusty; but Edward wasted from day to day. After the feverish fury of the attack on Limoges and the ferocity of his vengeance, he fell deeper into his sickness and brooded bitterly in his mind.

When he had halted at Lormont a messenger had ridden up to meet him with word from the Princess, Jehanne of Kent. She had her two children with her, and one, the elder, was sick.

Edward said no word to this message, and so they carried him, a silent knight, into the castle.

All gaiety, all joy, all splendour of chivalry and deeds of arms, all the brightness of glory and bliss of youth seemed overclouded now.

Edward the King was old, Edward the Prince was sick and defeated, Philippa the Queen was dead, and English chivalry was smirched by the massacre of Limoges.

And the ships waited to take ingloriously home the proudest knight in Europe to rest his limbs in the Savoy and presently his bones in St. Peter’s Church at the Abbey near Westminster. When he came to the castle he asked after his little son Edward.

They carried him to a room overlooking the Bay of Biscay that lay placid beneath a pale October sky, and laid him on a couch by the window; and he asked again for his son.

Immediately the Princess Jehanne, his wife, entered the room and came to his side, and in silence went on her knees beside him.

“Ah, joli coeur!” he said, and raised his weary eyes and took her long face between his hands and gazed down into it.

“What happened at Limoges?” she asked, without a word of greeting or duty.

His hands fell to his sides and his worn countenance overclouded.

“I kept my word,” he muttered.

Tears came into the eyes of Jehanne of Kent.

“I would you had been foresworn, seigneur,” she answered, “for the hand of God is against us.”

“In what way?” asked Edward.

“In your sickness,” she said, “for, certes, I perceive you very weak–and in the illness of the child.”

“Help me up,” answered the Prince, “that I may go to him.”

He raised himself to a sitting posture and put his feet to the ground; his simple dull red robe flowed round him unbroken by a jewel, his dark thin face had the look of a man weary of himself.

With her arm round his shoulder Jehanne supported him; she was very grave, like one who had no comfort to give.

“That I should lean on you, joli coeur!” he said, and rose unsteadily, holding to her arm. “Look well to this child, Jehanne,” he added in a sterner tone, “for meseems he will wear the crown sooner than I—”

“Hèlas!” she answered tenderly.“ This is not Edward who speaks so sadly—”

“Jehanne,” he said, “I shall never wear mail again.”

She shook her head, looking up at him, and tried to smile.

“I shall no more set lance in rest nor draw sword,” he continued. “I have been useless sick so long, and now I feel death in my bones.”

“Never,” said the gentle Jehanne, “have you come back to me in this ill humour–the air of England will restore you, seigneur.”

“The air of England will be no balm to my hurts,” he answered. “Take me to the child.”

She led him gently to the next chamber, her own, where Prince Edward had lain two days in an increasing fever.

It was a tall and glooming room, hung with cloths covered with stitching in bright wools.

The two arched windows opened on to the courtyard and the distant prospect of the sea, and were crossed by the boughs of a poplar tree that shook golden and amber leaves against the mullions.

An Eastern rug spread the floor, and there was an open hearth on which some logs smouldered.

The bed stood out from the wall opposite the windows, and was hung with curtains of clean blue and white check linen; at the foot of it were two chairs, on one of which a white dog slept.

Beside the bed was a prie dieu, with an illuminated book on the rest, beneath which hung a long strip of embroidered silk, beyond that several coffers and chests, still unpacked, and a couch piled with skins and garments.

Two women and a man were talking together over the fire; they rose hastily at the entrance of the Prince, but he took no heed of them.

Aided by his wife, he came to the end of the bed and stood holding by the light rail.

Under the blue and white frill of the canopy a child lay asleep, his brown hair a tangle on the stiff white bolster, his flushed cheek pressed against his hand.

The coverlet that was worked with the arms of England on a blue ground was drawn up to his chin, his little body only slightly disturbed the smoothness of the heavy fall of the silk.

“In what manner did he become sick?” demanded the Prince hoarsely. “God wot, you might have looked to him better.”

The Princess quivered beneath his hand on her shoulder.

“Neither he nor Richard,” she answered, “has been from my sight since you left me; but there has been much sickness in Bordeaux.” The tears overbrimmed her eyes and ran down her pale cheeks. “I have been watching him these two days without sleep,” she added.

Edward of Wales did not answer her; his hollow eyes were fixed upon his heir–that third Edward who was to carry on the splendour of England and the glory of Plantagenet.

The boy had always been next his heart; Richard, his second son, was not of so kindly a nature. His father did not see in him promise of his own qualities, but his eldest born was his own copy, beautiful, brave, at six a perfect little knight.

Jehanne glanced timidly up at his bitter, stern face.

“You must not grieve,” she whispered; “he will be well in a little while. Is he not strong, and will he not be running beside you in a few short days?”

Still Edward the Black Prince did not answer; he disengaged himself from her fond support and walked heavily to his son’s pillow, then sank on his knees on the bedstep and clasped his thin hands against the coverlet.

The little face so near to his was calm and proud, the flower of English beauty, gold and rose in tint, blunt featured, strongly made, yet delicate.

Save that he was deeply flushed and his hair damp beneath the tumble of silken curls, he might have been in perfect health. The weary, sick, disappointed, and defeated knight, with that dark day of Limoges on his soul, stared with a piteous eagerness at the child’s gracious innocency.

The child who would be King of England soon, surely; it was mere chance who would live the longer, the old King languishing at Westminster in tarnished glory at Alice Perrer’s side, or his famous son who had just resigned his commands and was coming home to die. Edward himself never thought that he would be King; he felt the sands of life running out too swiftly.

That day when he had been carried through the slaughter round the church of St. Etienne at Limoges he had known that it was the last time he would look on war.

And Edward the King could not live long now.

So soon the fair child would be Lord of England and possessor of all the perilous honours and glories of his father. The Prince’s proud head sank low; the hot tears welled up and blinded him, then dripped down his cheeks as he considered his smirched chivalry.

And the Princess Jehanne saw this, but did not dare to stir from her place, for she knew that, as a shield once dented by a heavy sword can never be made smooth again, so a knight’s honour once stained can never more be cleaned, even by the bitterest repentance. For her husband to have fallen from this lofty code, which was the only code that held among those of gentle blood, was a more awful thing than the lapse of a poor obscure knight, for he had blazed so brightly in his chivalry and brought such renown to England that the whole world had echoed with his fame.

The Prince rested his cheek against the arms of England on the coverlet; he felt the lassitude of a man who sees that life is done, and that never more in this world will he perform feats of arms or guide great policies or strive with men or shine before them.

The loss of his strength had had the effect of drawing a veil between him and the world; seeing as a spectator those events in which he had once played a leading part, he had come to estimate things differently.

And now that feeling culminated; he felt like one very old, looking back on a long life, or as if he beheld the incidents of his career painted in little bright pictures on a long roll of vellum.

It was an unfinished life, a broken, defeated life, perhaps men might hereafter call it a tarnished life.

The Prince knew this, and the sense of failure was like a black cloud on his heart.

But his little son, sleeping beneath the leopard-strewn coverlet, would redeem his own unfulfilled promise.

“Ah, dear Lord Christ, and St. George,” he prayed, “let this be so–let him be a very perfect knight and a great King.”

Hearing a little movement, he lifted his head.

The child was awake; the sparkling blue of his eyes was brilliant in his flushed face.

“Seigneur!” he whispered, seeing his father; he smiled. “Shall we be going to England soon?”

“Even now they load the boats,” answered the Prince. “You wish to return to England?”

“Certès,” said the child wistfully. “Is the war over?” he added.

“What should you know of that?” asked the Prince, startled.

“I did hear the knights all talking of the war.”

“It is not over,” answered Edward sombrely. “Your Uncle Lancaster will finish that business.”

“Hèlas! I would I were a big knight, Seigneur,” murmured the child.

“There is time for that,” said the Prince.

His son stared at him for a moment’s silence, then said–

“When the knights showed us feats with the lance in the courtyard, Richard was afraid.”

“Nay,” replied Edward angrily, “not afraid!”

The child nodded.

“Richard has a new silk cote hardie which pleases him mightily; but when I am well I shall have a shirt of mail, shall I not?”

“Ay!” answered the Prince, “if the armourer can make one so small.”

The child closed his eyes.

“Why am I sick, Seigneur?” he muttered. “Did I do wrong?”

Edward shivered.

“You are not sorely sick?” he demanded hoarsely.

His son put out a hot hand, which the Prince clasped tightly.

“I feel so tired,” he whispered, still with his eyes closed; “but when I sleep the dragons come and crawl over the bed—”

Jehanne had crept round to the other side of the pillow.

“Let him sleep, Edward,” she whispered anxiously.

“He can sleep while I hold his hand,” answered the Prince, never lifting his eyes from his son’s face.

“Nay, but you should rest,” she insisted. “Have you not come a long journey, and are you not sick?”

“I rested at Lormont,” answered Edward.

The Princess lifted her red kirtle from her feet and crossed to the doctor, who stood between the two women on the hearth, and whispered to him, her pretty face quivering with agitation.

A wind was rising from the sea, ruffling the waves, shaking the cordage of the anchored ships and lifting the little pennons of England that struggled at the main masts. This wind beat at the diamond-shaped leaded casements and scattered the leaves from the poplar tree without in a yellow shower like golden ducats dropped by a reluctant hand across the prospect of sea and town.

The Princess Jehanne came back to the bed with the doctor; he was a Spaniard, who had been in the service of Don Pedro and was renowned for his knowledge of Eastern medicine.

He spoke in French to the Prince, with a courteous humility.

“Fair Seigneur, permit me to look to the little Prince. And for yourself, it would be wiser that you should rest.”

Edward glanced up into his cool, composed face; then rose heavily and seated himself in the stiff chair against the wall.

The doctor bent over the child, delicately touched his brow, then called, in soft Spanish, one of the women, who came with a small horn beaker in her hand.

The little Prince was moaning. When he saw the draught he tried to push it away, and shut his lips obstinately.

“Ah, par dè!” cried the father, “what manner of knight will you become?”

The child sat up, shuddering, but meek, and swallowed the noisome liquid without a protest.

“Is he better?” whispered the Princess Jehanne, drawing the coverlet anxiously up over him as he lay down.

The doctor shook his head.

“Not–worse?” she faltered.

“That I cannot say,” he replied. “The fever is very high.”

She glanced at her husband sitting gloomy and silent, and beckoned one of the women and whispered to her to fetch Prince Richard, who might charm the Prince out of his melancholy.

But when his second son was brought and led up to him, Edward showed no manner of interest.

Yet the child was of a neat and exact beauty and very richly dressed in brown silk and very humble in his duty.

“Were you afraid of the lance play?” asked his father.

Richard looked up in a mischievous and charming manner.

“I do prefer, Seigneur, to go in a litter to horseback,” he lisped.

“Do you not love to see the jousts?” frowned Edward.

“I like to play at the ball,” returned Richard.

“Take him away for a false knight,” said the Prince wearily.

“Ahè, at four years old!” cried Jehanne of Kent indignantly. She came round the bed and caught the younger Prince to her bosom swiftly.

“He is my son,” flashed Edward, “and he loves not arms. Take him hence.”

The Princess gave Richard to the lady who had brought him, and as he found himself being carried away he began to wail and cry, which completed the Prince’s contempt; in truth he was angry with Richard for being well and lusty while his brother lay sick. The Princess noticed his exclamation of annoyance as the child broke into sobs.

“You are not fair to Richard,” she said, flushing.

“Pardi, you must have your favourite,” he retorted gloomily. “If you had given the care to Edward you do to Richard he might have been on his feet to welcome me.”

Jehanne turned abruptly away, smarting from the injustice of the rebuke.

“If you had spared Limoges,” she answered, “God’s judgment would not have fallen on you in this matter.”

The Prince shrank against the wall and lifted tortured eyes.

Instantly she was on her knees before him.

“Forgive me,” she said passionately.

He did not speak a word; his thin hand lightly touched the silver caul that bound her fair hair, but his eyes had moved to his son.

The little Prince slept again, though uneasily, with moans and twitchings in his limbs.

“I might have spared Limoges,” muttered Edward, “but I had sworn by my father’s soul.”

Jehanne kissed the hand that had been withdrawn from her head.

“Come away for a little while,” she pleaded, “while he sleeps.”

He rose and suffered her to lead him into the next chamber, where he lay exhausted along the couch by the oriel window and sent for his beloved brother, the Duke of Lancaster.

Jehanne sat silently by his side on a little stool, her brow furrowed and her cheeks colourless; she had never seen the Prince so silent, so weak, so troubled.

She was relieved when the magnificent Johan, still in his camail and surtout, full of vigour and energy, entered the chamber.

“How goes the lading of the ship?” asked Edward of Wales. “We sail with the first fair wind.”

“Pardi,” said the Duke in his deep voice, “I have no time to go down to the shore yet, but I do not think they will make delays.”

“Surely,” said the Prince. “I am right weary of Acquitaine.”

And he gave a sigh as if he would burst his bosom.

“Yet I must see more of it,” returned Johan, coming to salute the Princess, which he did with good will, being close in sincere friendship with this lady.

The Prince lay back languidly.

“How can you keep a foothold without money?” he asked impatiently.

Johan’s deep eyes rested lovingly on his brother’s changed face.

“By St. George,” he said, “if I can keep these fiefs no other way, I will out of my own revenues and charges support the war—”

Edward looked at him fully, and the tears washed the eyes of the Princess.

“Seigneur,” she said, “you can with a very comfortable heart return to England, knowing how loyally Johan will uphold you here.”

She felt warmly towards Johan, for she knew that it was he who had turned aside the Prince’s vengeance from Jean le Cros and saved him from the crime of taking the life of a son of the Church.

Perhaps the Prince thought of that too; perhaps he thought that the blood of the three thousand slain in Limoges was as heavy a burden to bear as the blood of a bishop.

“Ay, save Acquitaine, Johan,” he murmured, “for the honour of England.”

His eyes turned wistfully to the fading day that died beyond the oriel window. Surely, he thought, I have drunk of the last drop of bitterness. I, Edward of Wales, to return to England a useless man, leaving defeat behind for a younger knight to redeem.

The Duke of Lancaster stood watching him, with many thoughts in his heart, and presently Edward turned to him and spoke, in a voice earnest and feeble.

“Johan, when the King dies I shall be in my grave.”

The Princess broke his speech by a sharp, piteous intake of breath, and caught desperately at his slack hand.

“Oh, Jehanne,” he said, “I have flattered your fears long enough. And now I must speak straightly.”

He paused, for his breath failed him.

“Speak,” answered Johan, “for I am ready to take any charge that you may give me—”

“My son Edward will be King of England,” whispered the Prince; “and he is a young child. Stand you by him and by his mother in their difficulties.”

“I will,” said the Duke gravely.

“I entreat this of you now,” added Edward, “for it well may be that I shall never see you again. I think,” and the bitterness of his failure echoed in his voice, “that I shall die before we regain Acquitaine.”

“Be of better cheer, brother,” answered the Duke, “for I have great hopes that you will recover in England.”

“Nay, I am past mending,” said the Prince; “and were it not that I have some desire to draw my last breath in English air, I would die here and leave my bones where I have left my knighthood and my chivalry.”

“You scarcely think of me,” said Jehanne of Kent, and her eyes reminded him how much he had loved her once; lately he had seemed to fall away from the close confines of her affection.

He returned her gaze sadly.

“Yea, I think of you,” he answered, “but men’s matters fill my mind. Yet be content. You are a sweet woman, Jehanne.”

He caressed her cheek with languid fingers, and again his eyes sought the window and the pale sky beyond, and his face was moody, as if he saw passing in the windy spaces without all the pageants, battles, triumphs, achievements and glories that had gone to make his life–all the great world that was still full of feats of arms, of ambitions, of splendour, of laughter, whirling, receding, leaving him in this quiet chamber, useless, sick, and defeated.

The Duke of Lancaster, who was in command of the troops who had escorted the Prince to Bordeaux and had a hundred matters on his mind, left the chamber.

Jehanne sat silent, forgotten, unnoticed, beside the Prince, who, with his head sunk on his breast, was dreaming of the life that was past and the life he had hoped to live.

Presently candles were brought in, but he made no movement nor did the Princess, stiff and cold on her stool.

The wind, with a gentle persistence, shook the tall window-frame and lifted the arras on the wall; clouds were coming up from beyond the sea and blotting the tawny crimson streaks of the sunset.

Dark settled in the chamber and the candles winked, little points of light in a great gloom.

Pleasant, cheerful noises of horses and men came from the courtyard where the lading and unlading was proceeding; the sounds of the mules and their drivers could be heard as a long procession of them laden with baggage started for the ships.

At last the Prince spoke.

“This is a homeward wind,” he said.

As he raised his head to speak he saw the door open and the Spanish doctor enter.

Jehanne turned, and, fearful of bad news, put her finger to her lips.

But Edward got to his feet, caught her aside, and said in the voice of a strong man–

“What news of my son?”

The doctor answered steadily, without fear or hesitancy.

“The Prince is worse, Seigneur, and it were well that you should come.”

Edward of Wales bowed his head and followed the doctor into the next apartment.

The candles were lit and the curtains drawn; a smell of herbs, of wax, of incense, was heavy in the air. A priest was kneeling at the foot of the bed; the full Latin words of his whispered prayer came clearly to the Prince’s ears.

The little Edward lay on his back with his head flung upwards.

An awful change had come over him since last his father had looked on him; an expression of pain had also given him an expression of maturity, the unnatural flush had faded, leaving him bluish-white, while under his bright eyes was a purple stain.

The Prince staggered to the bed.

“Limoges, Limoges,” he muttered.

He cast himself on his knees and clutched the coverlet.

“Dear Lord Jesus, what is this coming to me!” he whispered.

Another doctor moved about; Jehanne stopped and spoke to him. He could tell her nothing save that, despite all the most approved remedies, the Prince had within the last hour become rapidly worse and finally lost consciousness.

Jehanne turned desperately to the great bed where her child lay, breathing heavily, with glazed fixed eyes and dry lips.

“Is it the plague?” she asked.

They could not tell her.

“Oh, dear, dear Lord and St. George,” prayed the Prince, “put not this loss on England; punish me not this way!”

The child turned on his side and muttered a few words, all relating to arms and horses and war; his eyes closed jerkily and then fluttered open.

Johan of Lancaster entered; he whispered to the doctors, then came lightly to the bed, walking as softly as a woman for all his great stature and bulk.

He glanced at the child, he glanced at his brother, then touched the kneeling priest on the shoulder.

“He will not die,” said the Prince; “in a little while he will wake and be well again.”

The priest rose and left the room.

A long swell of wind lifted the Eastern tapestry on the floor, fluttered the long curtains and stirred the aromatic scents and the clouds of incense that hung in the air.

Jehanne of Kent stood rigid, staring down at the pillow; her yellow hair had slipped and hung loose in the silver caul.

And her face showed hollow in the fluttering candlelight.

The little Prince turned from side to side, catching his breath in his throat.

“Seigneur …” he gasped, “let me … mount the white horse … the great horse.…”

He began to cough, and his small fingers pulled at the pillow; he stared straight at his father.

“He does not see me,” whispered Edward; “he is blind.”

“Why do you leave me alone?” complained the child; “but I … am … not … afraid–never … afraid.”

The Prince caught his arm passionately, then turned in a slow horror, for he saw Jehanne and his brother sink to their knees. He looked over his shoulder.

In the doorway stood three priests; the centre one held with upraised hands an object swathed in white silk.

The Host.

“In nomine patris, filiis, et spiritus sanctus,” he said, and drew aside the white silk, revealing the Eucharist glittering like a captured star.

“No,” began Edward, “no—”

He turned again to the bed; a light struggle shook the child’s limbs. He twisted his arm out of his father’s grasp and pressed his two hands together, pointed heavenwards.

“Saint–George—” he breathed very faintly, then “England.”

His hands fell apart and his mouth dropped into a circle; a faint quiver ran through his body, and his head sank on to his shoulder.

The Host was borne round the bed, and no one moved.

Then Edward rose, regardless of the Presence of God.

“Too late,” he said in a terrible voice. “My son, my son!”

And before the priest carrying the Eucharist the victor of Cressy sank like a felled sapling, and Jehanne caught his head on her knee, her heart motionless in her bosom.

So died the youngest of the three royal Edwards of England, a few days before the sailing from Bordeaux, and soon after the other two were both at peace in Westminster and Richard was on the throne with Johan of Gaunt for his guardian and many troubles ahead.

TWILIGHT

Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess d’Este

Three women stood before a marble-margined pool in the grounds of the Ducal palace at Ferrara; behind them three cypresses waved against a purple sky from which the sun was beginning to fade; at the base of these trees grew laurel, ilex, and rose bushes. Round the pool was a sweep of smooth green across which the light wind lifted and chased the red, white and pink rose leaves.

Beyond the pool the gardens descended, terrace on terrace of opulent trees and flowers; behind the pool the square strength of the palace rose, with winding steps leading to balustraded balconies. Further still, beyond palace and garden, hung vineyard and cornfield in the last warm maze of heat.

All was spacious, noble, silent; ambrosial scents rose from the heated earth–the scent of pine, lily, rose and grape.

The centre woman of the three who stood by the pool was the Spanish Duchess, Lucrezia, daughter of the Borgia Pope. The other two held her up under the arms, for her limbs were weak beneath her.

The pool was spread with the thick-veined leaves of water-lilies and upright plants with succulent stalks broke the surface of the water. In between the sky was reflected placidly, and the Duchess looked down at the counterfeit of her face as clearly given as if in a hand-mirror.

It was no longer a young face; beauty was painted on it skilfully; false red, false white, bleached hair cunningly dyed, faded eyes darkened on brow and lash, lips glistening with red ointment, the lost loveliness of throat and shoulders concealed under a lace of gold and pearls, made her look like a portrait of a fair woman, painted crudely.

And, also like one composed for her picture, her face was expressionless save for a certain air of gentleness, which seemed as false as everything else about her–false and exquisite, inscrutable and alluring–alluring still with a certain sickly and tainted charm, slightly revolting as were the perfumes of her unguents when compared to the pure scents of trees and flowers. Her women had painted faces, too, but they were plainly gowned, one in violet, one in crimson, while the Duchess blazed in every device of splendour.

Her dress, of citron-coloured velvet, trailed about her in huge folds, her bodice and her enormous sleeves sparkled with tight-sewn jewels; her hair was twisted into plaits and curls and ringlets; in her ears were pearls so large that they touched her shoulders.

She trembled in her splendour and her knees bent; the two women stood silent, holding her up–they were little more than slaves.

She continued to gaze at the reflection of herself; in the water she was fair enough. Presently she moistened her painted lips with a quick movement of her tongue.

“Will you go in, Madonna?” asked one of the women.

The Duchess shook her head; the pearls tinkled among the dyed curls.

“Leave me here,” she said.

She drew herself from their support and sank heavily and wearily on the marble rim of the pool.

“Bring me my cloak.”

They fetched it from a seat among the laurels; it was white velvet, unwieldy with silver and crimson embroidery.

Lucrezia drew it round her shoulders with a little shudder.

“Leave me here,” she repeated.

They moved obediently across the soft grass and disappeared up the laurel-shaded steps that led to the terraces before the high-built palace.

The Duchess lifted her stiff fingers, that were rendered almost useless by the load of gems on them, to her breast.

Trails of pink vapour, mere wraiths of clouds began to float about the west; the long Italian twilight had fallen.

A young man parted the bushes and stepped on to the grass; he carried a lute slung by a red ribbon across his violet jacket; he moved delicately, as if reverent of the great beauty of the hour.

Lucrezia turned her head and watched him with weary eyes.

He came lightly nearer, not seeing her. A flock of homing doves passed over his head; he swung on his heel to look at them and the reluctantly departing sunshine was golden on his upturned face.

Lucrezia still watched him, intently, narrowly; he came nearer again, saw her, and paused in confusion, pulling off his black velvet cap.

“Come here,” she said in a chill, hoarse voice.

He obeyed with an exquisite swiftness and fell on one knee before her; his dropped hand touched the ground a pace beyond the furthest-flung edge of her gown.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Ormfredo Orsini, one of the Duke’s gentlemen, Madonna,” he answered.

He looked at her frankly surprised to see her alone in the garden at the turn of the day. He was used to see her surrounded by her poets, her courtiers, her women; she was the goddess of a cultured court and persistently worshipped.

“One of the Orsini,” she said. “Get up from your knees.”

He thought she was thinking of her degraded lineage, of the bad, bad blood in her veins. As he rose he considered these things for the first time. She had lived decorously at Ferrara for twenty-one years, nearly the whole of his lifetime; but he had heard tales, though he had never dwelt on them.

“You look as if you were afraid of me—”

“Afraid of you–I, Madonna?”

“Sit down,” she said.

He seated himself on the marble rim and stared at her; his fresh face wore a puzzled expression.

“What do you want of me, Madonna?” he asked.

“Ahè!” she cried. “How very young you are, Orsini!”

Her eyes flickered over him impatiently, greedily; the twilight was beginning to fall over her, a merciful veil; but he saw her for the first time as an old woman. Slightly he drew back, and his lute touched the marble rim as he moved, and the strings jangled.

“When I was your age,” she said, “I had been betrothed to one man and married to another, and soon I was wedded to a third. I have forgotten all of them.”

“You have been so long our lady here,” he answered. “You may well have forgotten the world, Madonna, beyond Ferrara.”

“You are a Roman?”

“Yes, Madonna.”

She put out her right hand and clasped his arm.

“Oh, for an hour of Rome!–in the old days!”

Her whole face, with its artificial beauty and undisguisable look of age, was close to his; he felt the sense of her as the sense of something evil.

She was no longer the honoured Duchess of Ferrara, but Lucrezia, the Borgia’s lure, Cesare’s sister, Alessandro’s daughter, the heroine of a thousand orgies, the inspiration of a hundred crimes.

The force with which this feeling came over him made him shiver; he shrank beneath her hand.

“Have you heard things of me?” she asked in a piercing voice.

“There is no one in Italy who has not heard of you, Madonna.”

“That is no answer, Orsini. And I do not want your barren flatteries.”

“You are the Duke’s wife,” he said, “and I am the servant of the Duke.”

“Does that mean that you must lie to me?”

She leant even nearer to him; her whitened chin, circled by the stiff goldwork of her collar, touched his shoulder.

“Tell me I am beautiful,” she said. “I must hear that once more–from young lips.”

“You are beautiful, Madonna.”

She moved back and her eyes flared.

“Did I not say I would not have your flatteries?”

“What, then, was your meaning?”

“Ten years ago you would not have asked; no man would have asked. I am old. Lucrezia old!–ah, Gods above!”

“You are beautiful,” he repeated. “But how should I dare to touch you with my mouth?”

“You would have dared, if you had thought me desirable,” she answered hoarsely. “You cannot guess how beautiful I was–before you were born, Orsini.”

He felt a sudden pity for her; the glamour of her fame clung round her and gilded her. Was not this a woman who had been the fairest in Italy seated beside him?

He raised her hand and kissed the palm, the only part that was not hidden with jewels.

“You are sorry for me,” she said.

Orsini started at her quick reading of his thoughts.

“I am the last of my family,” she added. “And sick. Did you know that I was sick, Orsini?”

“Nay, Madonna.”

“For weeks I have been sick. And wearying for Rome.”

“Rome,” he ventured, “is different now, Madonna.”

“Ahè!” she wailed. “And I am different also.”

Her hand lay on his knee; he looked at it and wondered if the things he had heard of her were true. She had been the beloved child of her father, the old Pope, rotten with bitter wickedness; she had been the friend of her brother, the dreadful Cesare–her other brother, Francesco, and her second husband–was it not supposed that she knew how both had died?

But for twenty-one years she had lived in Ferrara, patroness of poet and painter, companion of such as the courteous gentle Venetian, Pietro Bembo.

And Alfonso d’Este, her husband, had found no fault with her; as far as the world could see, there had been no fault to find.

Ormfredo Orsini stared at the hand sparkling on his knee and wondered.

“Suppose that I was to make you my father confessor?” she said. The white mantle had fallen apart and the bosom of her gown glittered, even in the twilight.

“What sins have you to confess, Madonna?” he questioned.

She peered at him sideways.

“A Pope’s daughter should not be afraid of the Judgment of God,” she answered. “And I am not. I shall relate my sins at the bar of Heaven and say I have repented–Ahè–if I was young again!”

“Your Highness has enjoyed the world,” said Orsini.

“Yea, the sun,” she replied, “but not the twilight.”

“The twilight?”

“It has been twilight now for many years,” she said, “ever since I came to Ferrara.”

The moon was rising behind the cypress trees, a slip of glowing light. Lucrezia took her chin in her hand and stared before her; a soft breeze stirred the tall reeds in the pool behind her and gently ruffled the surface of the water.

The breath of the night-smelling flowers pierced the slumbrous air; the palace showed a faint shape, a marvellous tint; remote it looked and uncertain in outline.

Lucrezia was motionless; her garments were dim, yet glittering, her face a blur; she seemed the ruin of beauty and graciousness, a fair thing dropped suddenly into decay.

Orsini rose and stepped away from her; the perfume of her unguents offended him. He found something horrible in the memory of former allurement that clung to her; ghosts seemed to crowd round her and pluck at her, like fierce birds at carrion.

He caught the glitter of her eyes through the dusk; she was surely evil, bad to the inmost core of her heart; her stale beauty reeked of dead abomination.… Why had he never noticed it before?

The ready wit of his rank and blood failed him; he turned away towards the cypress trees.

The Duchess made no attempt to detain him; she did not move from her crouching, watchful attitude.

When he reached the belt of laurels he looked back and saw her dark shape still against the waters of the pool that were beginning to be touched with the argent glimmer of the rising moon. He hurried on, continually catching the strings of his lute against the boughs of the flowering shrubs; he tried to laugh at himself for being afraid of an old, sick woman; he tried to ridicule himself for believing that the admired Duchess, for so long a decorous great lady, could in truth be a creature of evil.

But the conviction flashed into his heart was too deep to be uprooted.

She had not spoken to him like a Duchess of Ferrara, but rather as the wanton Spaniard whose excesses had bewildered and sickened Rome.

A notable misgiving was upon him; he had heard great men praise her, Ludovico Ariosto, Cardinal Ippolito’s secretary and the noble Venetian Bembo; he had himself admired her remote and refined splendour. Yet, because of these few moments of close talk with her, because of a near gaze into her face, he felt that she was something horrible, the poisoned offshoot of a bad race.

He thought that there was death on her glistening painted lips, and that if he had kissed them he would have died, as so many of her lovers were reputed to have died.

He parted the cool leaves and blossoms and came on to the borders of a lake that lay placid under the darkling sky.

It was very lonely; bats twinkled past with a black flap of wings; the moon had burnt the heavens clear of stars; her pure light began to fill the dusk. Orsini moved softly, with no comfort in his heart.

The stillness was intense; he could hear his own footfall, the soft leather on the soft grass. He looked up and down the silence of the lake.

Then suddenly he glanced over his shoulder. Lucrezia Borgia was standing close behind him; when he turned her face looked straight into his.

He moaned with terror and stood rigid; awful it seemed to him that she should track him so stealthily and be so near to him in this silence and he never know of her presence.

“Eh, Madonna!” he said.

“Eh, Orsini,” she answered in a thin voice, and at the sound of it he stepped away, till his foot was almost in the lake.

His unwarrantable horror of her increased, as he found that the glowing twilight had confused him; for, whereas at first he had thought she was the same as when he had left her seated by the pool, royal in dress and bearing, he saw now that she was leaning on a stick, that her figure had fallen together, that her face was yellow as a church candle, and that her head was bound with plasters, from the under edge of which her eyes twinkled, small and lurid.

She wore a loose gown of scarlet brocade that hung open on her arms that showed lean and dry; the round bones at her wrist gleamed white under the tight skin, and she wore no rings.

“Madonna, you are ill,” muttered Ormfredo Orsini. He wondered how long he had been wandering in the garden.

“Very ill,” she said. “But talk to me of Rome. You are the only Roman at the Court, Orsini.”

“Madonna, I know nothing of Rome,” he answered, “save our palace there and sundry streets—”

She raised one hand from the stick and clutched his arm.

“Will you hear me confess?” she asked. “All my beautiful sins that I cannot tell the priest? All we did in those days of youth before this dimness at Ferrara?”

“Confess to God,” he answered, trembling violently.

Lucrezia drew nearer.

“All the secrets Cesare taught me,” she whispered. “Shall I make you heir to them?”

“Christ save me,” he said, “from the Duke of Valentinois’ secrets!”

“Who taught you to fear my family?” she questioned with a cunning accent. “Will you hear how the Pope feasted with his Hebes and Ganymedes? Will you hear how we lived in the Vatican?”

Orsini tried to shake her arm off; anger rose to equal his fear.

“Weed without root or flower, fruitless uselessness!” he said hoarsely. “Let me free of your spells!”

She loosed his arm and seemed to recede from him without movement; the plasters round her head showed ghastly white, and he saw all the wrinkles round her drooped lips and the bleached ugliness of her bare throat.

“Will you not hear of Rome?” she insisted in a wailing whisper. He fled from her, crashing through the bushes.

Swiftly and desperately he ran across the lawns and groves, up the winding steps to the terraces before the palace, beating the twilight with his outstretched hands as if it was an obstacle in his way.

Stumbling and breathless, he gained the painted corridors that were lit with a hasty blaze of wax light. Women were running to and fro, and he saw a priest carrying the Holy Eucharist cross a distant door.

One of these women he stopped.

“The Duchess—” he began, panting.

She laid her finger on her lip.

“They carried her in from the garden an hour ago; they bled and plastered her, but she died–before she could swallow the wafer–(hush! she was not thinking of holy things, Orsini!)–ten minutes ago—”

THE CAMP OUTSIDE NAMUR

Don Juan of Austria

“Sa Majesté ne résout rien; du moins, on me tient ignorant de ses intentions. Je pousse des cris, mais en vain. Il est clair qu’on nous laisse ici pour y languir jusqu’à notre dernier soupir.”

Don Juan to Mendoza, September 16th, 1578, from “The Camp” outside Namur.

“Nos vies sont en jeu et tout que nous demandons, c’est de les perdre avec honneur.”

Don Juan to Philip II., September 20th, 1578, from “The Camp” outside Namur.

The Imperial Army, composed of Germans, Walloons and Spanish regiments, was encamped outside Namur, at the juncture of the Sambre and Meuse, where Charles V. had been entrenched when pressed by the forces of Henri II.

The Commander of the Army was the son of Charles V., Don Juan of Austria, the hero of Christendom armed against the infidel, the victor of Lepanto, the conqueror of Tunis, blessed by the Pope, a brilliant name in Europe, half-brother of the great King Philip and son of a servant girl, near the throne, of the blood royal, but barred for ever from it, a prince yet linked with peasants; he had blazed very brightly over Europe, the King had flattered him, had caressed him and used him.

By the King’s favour he had swept over Italy, Sicily, Africa, a conqueror, almost within touch of a throne; by the King’s favour he had been sent to crush the rebel heretics who were rising against the might of Spain in the Low Countries.

And now the King was silent; it seemed as if he meant to abandon Don Juan. Antonio Perez was always at the King’s ear, and he hated Don Juan; Escovedo, the Prince’s Secretary and favourite, was assassinated in the streets of Madrid by order of Perez.

When Don Juan heard this news he thought that there was no better end preparing for him and that Perez meant his ruin; the King did not answer his letters, and his glory broke like a bubble.

He had been too great, too beloved, too popular; Philip tolerated no rivals.

And now he began to be unfortunate; the Prince William of Orange, one time page to Don Juan’s father and now the Captain of Heretics, marched against him with a powerful army; the Duc D’Anjou joined the cause of the rebels, and the Queen of England, Elizabeth Tudor, at last decided to send succours to the rebellious provinces.

The forces met; the day of Rynemants was almost a defeat for Don Juan.

A haunted, hunted feeling began to possess him; in the brilliant south everything had been right with him; here, in the cursed Low Countries, every step he took seemed a step nearer his grave.

The death of Escovedo weighed on him day and night.

And the King would not write.

Don Juan began to fear and hate his second-in-command, the Prince of Parma, Alessandro Farnese, a man of his own age, but his nephew, for Farnese’s mother was Margaret, daughter of Charles V.

This man was in the confidence of the King; Don Juan knew and feared that fact. He began to dread the sight of the dark Italian face; the figure of Farnese seemed to him like that of a spy–or executioner.

When he had fought Boussu at Rynemants he had been ill; when he had held the useless conference with the English envoys he had scarcely been able to hold himself on his horse, and when he returned to the camp on the heights of Bouges outside Namur he fell to his knees as he dismounted and could not rise for the weight of his armour.

They carried him to the quarter of the regiment of Figueroa and lodged him in a pigeon-house or place for fowls belonging to a Flemish farm the Spanish guns had demolished.

No one knew what illness ailed him; some spoke of the plague, some of the Dutch fever, others said he had worn himself out with the fatigues of war and the delights of Italy.

The fever increased on him; he wrote to Mendoza, the Spanish agent at Genoa; he wrote to Andrea D’Aria, his companion in arms of Lepanto; he wrote to the King. But with little hope, for he felt himself abandoned.

Monseigneur François D’Anjou, brother of the King of France, was at Mons and had taken on himself the title of Defender of the Low Countries against the Spanish Tyranny; Don Juan had only eighteen thousand men, of which six thousand were Spanish, old, tried troops, and the rest merely Walloon and German mercenaries of doubtful loyalty.

They had scarcely any artillery and but little powder.

The plague appeared in the camp, numbers of the small army sickened and died.

There came news that the English were sailing for Flushing and that William of Orange was advancing on Namur.

Don Juan of Austria lay in the pigeon-house, prostrate with fever, sad and silent.

It was the end of September; day after day was sunny, with a honey-coloured peaceful light resting on the camp, on the two rivers, on the fortifications of Namur; the windmills stood motionless in the stagnant air; the few willows by the river turned from grey-green to dull amber and shook their long leaves on the soft, muddy bank; the horizon was veiled in mist, yellow, soft and mournful; at night the moon rose pale gold through languid dusky vapours; in the morning the sun rose, glimmering through melancholy mists, and above the camp hung, day and night, the fumes of the plague, of fever, the exhalations of decay and sickness, the close odours of death.

Juan of Austria loathed this place as passionately as he had loved Naples and Sicily; the plain with the two rivers embracing the frowning town of Namur seemed to him hateful as some roadway to Hell; he dreaded the warm moist nights, the long misty days, the veiled Northern skies, the flat, distant melancholy horizon, and he hated these things more because he sometimes felt that he would never see any other skies or fields but these, never see any moon or sun rise over any town but this high battlemented fortress of Namur.

He was trapped, abandoned, forgotten; the hero of Lepanto, the conqueror of Tunis, was left to die miserably in this vile swamp–forsaken!

He resolved, when the fever left his mind clear, that he would not die, that he would live to face Philip in the Escurial and demand an account for this–and for other things.

On September 28th he confessed, on the 28th he received the communion.

His confessor, Francisco Orantes, told him that he was dying, but he laughed that away.

In the evening of that day he fell into a delirium and for two days tossed unconscious, in great torments, talking continually of wars, of soldiers, of conquests and arms.

On the first of October the fever abated and he seemed much recovered; he fell into a little sleep about the dawn, and when it was fully light he woke and sent for the Prince of Parma.

When that general came, Juan of Austria raised himself on his elbow and looked at him with a searching kind of eagerness, and Farnese stood arrested, in the poor doorway, glaring at the sick man.

The pigeon-house, in which Don Juan lay, was the size of a small tent, of clay with niches in the walls for the birds; part of the tiled roof and a portion of one wall had gone, and through this the early, misty Northern sunlight streamed, for the canvas that had been dragged over the aperture was drawn away to admit the air.

On the rough mud floor a carpet of arras had been flung; there were a couple of camp chairs of steel and leather; a pile of armour, helmet, greaves, cuirass, cruises, vambraces, damascened in black and gold and hung with scarlet straps, was in one corner; above swung a lantern and a crucifix.

Facing the entrance the Emperor’s son lay on a pile of rich cloaks and garments embroidered with a thousand colours in a thousand shapes of fantasy; two cloth of gold cushions served to support his head and gleamed incongruously against the dull clay wall.

He was himself swathed to the breast in a mantle of black and orange, and covering his lower limbs was a robe of crimson samite lined with fox’s fur.

The fine ruffled shirt he wore had been torn in his delirious struggles and showed his throat and the gaunt lines of his shoulders.

His face was colourless with the pure pallor of a blonde complexion, and his long, pale waving hair clung to his damp forehead and hung dishevelled either side of his hollow cheeks; his large grey eyes, whose usual expression was so joyous, careless and ardent, now shone with the brilliancy of fever and were sunk and shadowed beneath with the bluish tinge that stained his close-drawn lips.

His right hand, on which sparkled an emerald ring, clutched at the linen over his heart; the other was taut on the ground with the effort of supporting his body.

In the niche above him a solitary white pigeon sat contented and surveyed his invaded home.

Alessandro Farnese, tall and very slender, dark-haired, from head to foot in black save for a great chain of linked gold and jewels over his velvet doublet, let the improvised curtain fall into place over the doorway and stood leaning against the wall, never moving his sombre eyes from the Prince whose gleaming glance fiercely returned the scrutiny.

“Your Highness is a whole man to-day,” he said; his voice was smooth, low, carefully trained like his expression and his gestures; Philip’s favourites always had this quiet way.

“Whether I shall get well or no I cannot tell,” answered Don Juan hoarsely. “But this I know–that His Majesty hath forsaken me.”

The Prince of Parma took his right elbow in his left hand and put his right hand to his pointed chin.

“You speak too plainly, señor,” he said. His subtle mind disliked boldness of speech and action; he had always been annoyed by these qualities in Don Juan.

“I have done with pretences,” answered the Prince. “I think I must be dying, for I care very little what happens on earth–yet I have some curiosity; it is because of that I sent for you—” he paused gathering his strength. “Why hath the King forsaken me?” he asked intensely.

“Even if this were so,” said Alessandro Farnese, “how should I know it?”

“It is so and you know it,” replied Don Juan. “The King hath cast me down, and he is putting you in my place.”

The Prince of Parma lifted his dark, arched brows.

“The mind of your Highness is still bemused by your sickness,” he answered soothingly. “Any hour may bring a post from Madrid.”

Don Juan dropped from his elbow, and his head sank on the gold brocade cushions.

“I was lost when they killed Escovedo,” he muttered; “there went my last friend. It would have been more honourable to die on the battle-field—”

Farnese answered smoothly–

“Your Highness will win many battles yet.”

The Emperor’s son smiled up at him.

“What did Philip pay you to mislead me?” he asked.

The Italian’s shallow cheek flushed faintly, and a little quiver, it might be of rage or fear, ran through his sensitive frame.

“The fever returns on you, señor,” he said coldly.

Again Don Juan dragged himself into a sitting posture.

“No,” he answered with a terrible air, “my mind is very clear. I see what I have been all my life. Philip’s plaything–no more. And I dreamt to be a King! He used me till I climbed too high and then cast me away. And you, señor, are to take my place. It was never meant that I should leave the Low Countries. It was never meant that I should return again a victor to Madrid–as servant and as brother I have served the King well, and in his own fashion he hath rewarded me.”

He put his hands before his face and a shudder went through his body, for in that moment he thought of all the glorious past that had ended so suddenly and so terribly.

“I suffer!” he moaned. “Jésu and Maria, I suffer!”

He fell prostrate, face downwards, on the tumbled couch, and the strengthening sunlight played with a mocking brilliance on the scattered strands of his fair hair.

The Prince of Parma lifted the curtain before the door and spoke to one of his servants who waited outside, then crossed and knelt beside his general.

“Prince,” he said in a low tone, “the fever has turned your mind—”

Juan raised his head.

“I am no prince,” he answered. “I never was–but what I am your mother is, Farnese–you and I alike are tainted.”

A sickly pallor crept into the Italian’s cheek; he clasped his fingers together as if he prayed for patience.

“But you are too crafty to be deceived as I was,” resumed Don Juan faintly. “You would never dream as I dreamt of being ‘Infante’ of Spain, of being a King! Therefore Philip spares you, for you are a useful man, Farnese, and puts his foot on me because I dared too high–but we are both–his puppets.”

The Prince of Parma clenched his hands till the knuckles showed white through the dark skin.

“You–always–hated–me,” gasped Don Juan.

“Are you in pain?” asked Farnese gently.

“In the torments of Hell,” answered the sick man with a ghostly smile; “there is fire eating my heart, my blood, my brains.”

The Prince of Parma’s face changed in an extraordinary fashion; it was a slight change, yet one that transformed his expression into that of utter and satisfied cruelty.

But Don Juan kept his eyes closed, and did not notice this look bending over him.

Farnese spoke, and his voice was still very gentle.

“Will your Highness drink this potion?”

The Prince lifted his burning lids and saw his page advancing with a goblet of rock crystal, in which a pale gold liquid floated.

The boy gave this to the kneeling Farnese, who took it between his long, dark, capable hands.

“This draught has often soothed your Highness,” he said.

Don Juan dragged himself to a sitting posture; as he moved such a weak giddiness seized him that the clay walls, the rift of sky and the figure of Farnese swung round him like reflections in troubled water.

He set his teeth and put out his hot hands for the goblet; as he drank a sweet languor and a grateful cessation of pain swept over him; he drained the last drop and gave a little sigh as Farnese took the shining cup from his feeble grasp.

As he sank back on his cushions he noticed that a drop of the liquid had fallen on the brocade cushion, and lay there like an amber bead holding a spark of sunlight.

The Prince of Parma rose silently, and beckoning to the page, left the sick man alone.

An exquisite lassitude crept over Don Juan; his limbs relaxed, his breath came easily, he became certain that there were long years of glorious and pleasant life before him; it was only necessary for him to regain his health–to defeat the heretics and return to Spain to confound that villain Perez.…

He was slipping out of consciousness; the blue sea of Italy began to rise before his eyes–an endless expanse of celestial colour over which sailed the galleys of Spain, Genoa and Venice bearing down on the infidel fleet.

The victor of Lepanto quivered with joy; he thought he was back in Naples, in Sicily; the warm scent of a thousand flowers floated round the rose and amber pillars of the heathen temples, and from the high windows of gold and painted palaces dark-eyed women looked, leaning on folds of glimmering tapestry and twisting wreaths of roses and laurels in gemmed fingers.

He saw the myrtle with the frail bridal blossoms, he saw the vineyards with the opulent grapes, he saw ladies in dresses stiff with jewels and heavy sleeves slipping from polished shoulders, he saw peasant girls with flushed faces and dusky hair.…

Then these pictures faded; he was in the dark silence of the Escurial; his terrible brother was speaking to him, caressing him; then Perez pulled a curtain back, and he saw his confidant Escovedo, lying mangled on a bier, bloody, with a fearful face.

Don Juan moaned and opened his eyes; he was light-headed; he beat his hands on the cushions.

“Escovedo!” he muttered. “Escovedo!”

The pigeon above, startled by his sudden movement, flew out over his head and away into freedom through the broken wall.

Juan of Austria shivered and blenched before the swift flash of the white wings as if an angel had passed him.

“I am a great sinner,” he said with trembling lips. He remembered how the Pope had embraced and blessed him after Lepanto; he hoped that, in case he died, God would remember it too, and how he had slain the infidel on the coast of Africa. His mind cleared, he looked round for Farnese, he called his secretary, his page, but no one came.

He lay quite still, thinking now of the great ambition, the great chimera of his life, the passionate desire to be recognised as royal, as a Prince, to one day be a King.

He had dreamt that he might be King of many countries, even King of England with Marie Stewart for wife, but he had never attained even recognition as a Prince of Spain.

All Philip’s promises, all Philip’s flatteries had amounted to nothing. While he was useful he was caressed; when he grew too great he was forsaken, left without arms, without money, without men, left with Farnese watching him night and day.

And they had killed the man he loved, his friend, his confidant Escovedo.

That fact rose up horrid, insistent, burning his heart with rage.

He could not forgive Perez; he could not forgive Philip.

In discomfort of mind and body he tossed from side to side. One of the gold cushions slipped from beneath him, and he was too weak to recover it; he lay with his eyes vacantly on it, and presently sat up with sudden strength and pointed at it with a quivering finger.

On the gold brocade was a round black hole where the stuff had been burnt away.

Don Juan began to laugh; he remembered the yellow drop of liquid that had gleamed on the rich fabric; he shouted for some one to come.

There was no answer; he supposed that they, thinking he suffered from the plague, would not through fear approach him.

He waited; his attention wandered from the cushion; he heard the trumpets without and smiled.

Presently a party of horsemen galloped past; he could catch a glimpse of them through the aperture in the wall; one carried his flag–a cross on the royal standard with the proud legend: “In hoc haereticos signo vici Turcos; in hoc signo vincam haereticos.” The heavy silk folds recalled these words to the Prince’s mind; he thought of his success at Gembloux.

“I could defeat them now,” he murmured, “if I was–on horseback–with a thousand men–behind me—”

The Lowland sun was creeping across the floor and glimmering in the armour in the corner, showing the dints and marks in it, the worn straps, the beautiful gold inlay and the long pure white plumes floating above the helmet.

Juan of Austria shivered at the sight of the pale sky, the pale sunlight; he longed passionately for the South, for all the purple heat, the violet shade, the soft hours of noonday silence in a marble chamber overlooking the sea, the glossy darkness of laurel and ilex.

“I will not die here,” he said in his throat.

Presently his confessor came, a slow-footed priest, and asked him if he would not make his will.

“No, for I have nothing to leave,” he answered, “so I am spared that trouble.”

Francisco Orantes then asked if he would have the canvas drawn over the broken roof and wall, for the sun was creeping very near his face.

He answered yes, and it was done; the barn was now only lit by the glimmer from the one small window.

“Father, I am not dying,” said Don Juan. “When I die it will be in Spain or Italy; tell the King so–tell him I know that he wants me dead–but that I will not die like this.”

The priest, seeing he was out of his wits, made no answer, but approached and felt his wrist and brow.

“Poison,” said Don Juan rapidly. “Poison–why not the sword–as with Escovedo? I have made my peace with heaven–but when shall Philip clear himself before God?”

The priest moved away silently as he had come; the sick man lay staring at the partial darkness; his blood was flaming with a returning agony.

“Philip!” he cried. “Philip! Will you bury me in the Escurial? If I die will you put me next my father? My father as well as yours, Philip! Hold my hand, some one–are you all afraid? This is not the plague. I have watched the heretics burning–I am burning now–I shall not go to Hell; I am absolved. Who will absolve Philip? Give me a little ease—”

The priest stood motionless beside the entrance, watching him; Juan dropped into silence, and then Francisco Orantes came again to his side and gazed as intently as the dim light allowed into the young, distorted and beautiful face.

The Prince was unconscious; the priest’s bloodless hand crept gently to his heart, which still beat, though reluctantly and faintly.

Farnese entered.

“He sleeps,” said Francisco Orantes.

The Prince of Parma made no answer; a slight convulsion shook him, and his face was swept with a look of limitless pride and ambition which distorted his fine features hideously.

The priest glanced up at him and shrunk away.

“This seems a foul end for one who loved life so,” he muttered.

Farnese fingered his long gemmed chain.

“You serve Philip,” he answered coldly.

Don Juan struggled back to consciousness, opened his eyes and looked up at the two bending over him; a sensation that he had never known before in all his life overcame him–a sensation of wild fear.

He fought with his weakness and dragged himself up.

“Is there no one to help me?” he implored. “To save me from Philip and Philip’s men! Jésu whom I served in Africa do not let me die this way!”

Farnese leant swiftly down and caught the Prince by the shoulder.

“Hush!” he said, “Hush!” and forced him gently back into the cushions.

Juan resisted him with all his feeble strength, his eyes glittering with terror.

“You are murdering me as Carlos was murdered–and Escovedo,” his voice was hoarse, broken, but tense with fear, “as you will be murdered when Philip is weary of you. I do not want to die–I–will–not—”

“Hush!” said Farnese again.

Juan dragged away from him and crouched back against the wall.

“I leave you heir,” he panted, “to all my honours, all my commands. Philip meant you as my successor. I leave you heir to my death of loneliness and exile. When did one of Philip’s servants escape this reward?”

The priest shivered and his figure bowed together, but Farnese listened patiently like a man waiting for the cessation of something that soon must end.

The Prince’s fear rose and swelled to a stronger passion, hate.

He thought that he saw in these two instruments of the King a symbol of the two things that had dogged his glory all his life, the powerful cruelty of his brother that had used his gifts, his successes, his popularity for his own ends, lured him with the promise of rewards and always withheld them, and the opinion of the world that the degradation of his mother equalled the splendour of his father and would always prevent him taking that last step into royal rank.

It had prevented him; he saw that now, he saw how hopeless his ambition had been from the first.…

“If I had my life again I would not serve Philip,” he muttered.

Then pain began to seize and grip him, and he became unconscious of everything save the physical agony; he fell on his face and clutched the rich mantles on which he lay, groaned and shrieked in blasphemous ravings.

“He hath not much fortitude after all,” said Farnese, who had looked on suffering so often that no anguish could move him; his cold eyes had many times rested on men and women flaming at the stake with the same expression of cruel indifference with which they now rested on this man of his own blood, who had served his turn and was no longer useful to the policies of Spain.

“How long will this last?” asked the priest.

“I cannot tell,” answered the Prince of Parma. “He must have great strength.”

“He had until he used it in the delights of Italy,” said Francisco Orantes. “Such a life as his, señor, does not make for old age—”

“Escovedo! Escovedo!” moaned Don Juan. “Help me! Succour me! I am burning–burning to the bone, the marrow! Jèsu! Jèsu and Maria!”

“Ay, pray for your sins,” remarked Farnese sombrely, “or you will go to light the flames that burn to all eternity.”

“Nay, señor,” said the priest; “he confessed and received absolution.”

“Who shall absolve Philip?” murmured Don Juan, who had caught the sentence. “I wish I had not betrayed Don Carlos. How awful it is to die!”

Drops of sweat stood out on his forehead, and his fingers trembled on the brocade covering him.

“The war,” he whispered, “the war.”

He thought of the great armies sweeping to and fro over the Low Countries, of all the toss and turmoil of Europe through which he had moved so gaily, so splendidly, of the infidel smitten in Africa; he did not think of his childhood at all. Life seemed to have begun for him on the day on which he had first met the King in the green forest glade.

“Pray,” urged the priest, “pray, señor.”

He shook his head feebly; he was not at all afraid of God–only of Philip. Besides, he did not mean to die.

The dreadful pain was lessening in his veins; he turned over on his side and looked up at Farnese.

“Where shall we put your body when your soul has left us?” asked the priest.

The sick man’s eyes gleamed.

“The Escurial,” he muttered. “Philip, remembering Lepanto might give me that–if not, then Our Lady of Montserrat–but I am not dying,” he added. “My life is not finished–you must see that–my life is–not–finished.”

An extraordinary feeling of peace came over him; he wondered at it and closed his eyes; he again saw the blue Sicilian seas encompassing him and heard their lapping waves in his ears.

“I will sleep now,” he thought, “and when I wake I will plan a victory–life is so long and I am so young—”

He smiled, for all the agony had ceased, and he was no longer conscious of his body; his head sank to one side so that his face was turned towards the wall.…

Francisco Orantes rose from his knees.

“He died very gently,” he said; “his soul passed as lightly as a bird to the bough.”

Farnese made the sign of the cross, and his figure dilated with pride, ambition and power; he went to the armour in the corner and picked up the dead man’s bâton of command.

Philip buried his brother in the Escurial near the great Emperor who was their father.

THE POLANDER

The Polander was a very innocent fellow who came out of Germany to enter the service of my lord Conningsmarke, a Gentleman of a great Quality at this moment in London.

He had taught the Polander some while ago at the instance of Captain Vratz, who was an old retainer of his, and who gave this youth a good character, especially for dressing Horses after the German Fashion. The Polander knew nothing of my lord Count Conningsmarke, and nothing about England, for he was very simple and ignorant, being but of Peasant birth, but the Captain he knew and loved, for this man had brought him out of Evil Days in Poland, and his heart held little else but a deep Affection for this Captain Vratz.

On a Friday he came to London and inquired for the Governor of my Lord at the Academy of M. Flaubert and this gentleman sent for the Count’s Secretary; and there the Polander lay on Saturday night feeling very strange in this new City and constantly praying that he might meet with Captain Vratz soon, who had been to him such a Benefactor.

The next day being the 11th of February and bitter cold, Mr. Hanson, the Governor of my Lords, the young Counts of Conningsmarke, came to the Polander and bid him make ready to be carried to the Lodging of my Lord Charles.

This Governor seemed in a great Confusion of mind; he went over words twice when he spoke, which was in the German language (for the Polander knew not English) and the colour was up and down in his Face and his hands a-tremble.

The Polander stood before him, very tall and strong and humble, with his blue eyes clouded with Bewilderment and Disappointment; for he hoped he would be taken to Captain Vratz, and presently dared to say as much, very timidly.