A Ladder of Swords Part 15

"In truth, I do. My Lord Leicester, you have lived in the circle of her good pleasure, near to her n.o.ble Majesty, as you say, for half a lifetime. Have you not found a reason why now or any time she should cherish love and lovers? Ah, no; you have seen her face, you have heard her voice, but you have not known her heart!"

"Ah, opportunity lacked," he said, in irony and with a reminiscent smile. "I have been busy with state affairs, I have not sat on cushions, listening to royal fingers on the virginals. Still, I ask you, do you think there is a reason why from her height she should stoop down to rescue you or give you any joy? Wherefore should the Queen do aught to serve you? Wherefore should she save your lover?"

It was on Angele's lips to answer, "Because I saved her life on May Day." It was on her lips to tell of the poisoned glove, but she only smiled, and said:

"But, yes, I think, my lord, there is a reason, and in that reason I have faith."

Leicester saw how firmly she was fixed in her idea, how rooted was her trust in the Queen's intentions towards her; and he guessed there was something hidden which gave her such supreme confidence.

"If she means to save him, why does she not save him now? Why not end the business in a day--not stretch it over these long midsummer weeks?"

"I do not think it strange," she answered. "He is a political prisoner. Messages must come and go between England and France.

Besides, who calleth for haste? Is it I who have most at stake? It is not the first time I have been at court, my lord. In these high places things are orderly"--a touch of sarcasm came into her tone--"life is not a mighty rushing wind save to those whom vexing pa.s.sion drives to hasty deeds."

She made to move on once more, but paused, still not certain of her way.

"Permit me to show you," he said, with a laugh and a gesture towards a path. "Not that--this is the shorter. I will take you to a turning which leads straight to your durance--and another which leads elsewhere!"

She could not say no, because she had, in very truth, lost her way, and she might wander far and be in danger. Also, she had no fear of him. Steeled to danger in the past, she was not timid; but, more than all, the game of words between them had had its fascination. The man himself, by virtue of what he was, had his fascination also. The thing inherent in all her s.e.x, to peep over the hedge, to skirt dangerous fires lightly, to feel the warmth distantly and not be scorched--that was in her, too, and she lived according to her race and the long predisposition of the ages. Most women like her--as good as she--have peeped and stretched out hands to the alluring fire and come safely through, wiser and no better. But many, too, bewildered and confused by what they see--as light from a mirror flashed into the eye half blinds--have peeped over the hedge and, miscalculating their power of self-control, have entered in, and returned no more into the quiet garden of unstraying love.

Leicester quickly put on an air of gravity. "I warn you that danger lies before you. If you cross the Queen--and you will cross the Queen when you know the truth, as I know it--you will pay a heavy price for refusing Leicester as your friend."

She made a protesting motion and seemed about to speak, but suddenly, with a pa.s.sionate gesture, Leicester added: "Let them go their way.

Monsieur de la Foret will be tossed aside before another winter comes. Do you think he can abide here in the midst of plot and intrigue and hated by the people of the court? He is doomed. But more, he is unworthy of you; while I can serve you well, and I can love you well." She shrank away from him. "No, do not turn from me, for, in very truth, Leicester's heart has been pierced by the inevitable arrow. You think I mean you evil?"

He paused as though uncertain how to proceed, then with a sudden impulse continued: "No! no! And if there be a saving grace in marriage, marriage it shall be, if you will but hear me. You shall be my wife--Leicester's wife. As I have mounted to power, so I will hold power with you--with you, the brightest spirit that ever England saw.

Worthy of a kingdom with you beside me, I shall win to greater, happier days; and at Kenilworth, where kings and queens have lodged, you shall be ruler. We will leave this court until Elizabeth, betrayed by those who know not how to serve her, shall send for me again. Here--the power behind the throne--you and I will sway this realm through the aging, sentimental Queen. Listen, and look at me in the eyes--I speak the truth, you read my heart. You think I hated you and hated De la Foret. By all the G.o.ds! it's true I hated him, because I saw that he would come between me and the Queen. A man must have one great pa.s.sion. Life itself must be a pa.s.sion. Power was my pa.s.sion--power, not the Queen. You have broken all that down. I yield it all to you--for your sake and my own. I would steal from life yet before my sun goes to its setting a few years of truth and honesty and clear design. At heart I am a patriot--a loyal Englishman. Your cause--the cause of Protestantism--did I not fight for it at Roch.e.l.le? Have I not ever urged the Queen to spend her revenue for your cause, to send her captains and her men to fight for it?"

She raised her head in interest, and her lips murmured, "Ah, yes, I know you did that."

He saw his advantage and pursued it. "See, I will be honest with you--honest at last, as I have wished in vain to be, for honesty was misunderstood. It is not so with you--you understand. Ah, light of womanhood, I speak the truth now. I have been evil in my day--I admit it--evil because I was in the midst of evil. I betrayed because I was betrayed; I slew else I should have been slain. We have had dark days in England, privy conspiracy and rebellion; and I have had to thread my way through dreadful courses by a thousand blind paths.

Would it be no joy to you if I, through your influence, recast my life--remade my policy, renewed my youth--pursuing principle where I have pursued opportunity? Angele, come to Kenilworth with me. Leave De la Foret to his fate. The way to happiness is with me. Will you come?"

He had made his great effort. As he spoke he almost himself believed that he told the truth. Under the spell of his own emotional power it seemed as though he meant to marry her, as though he could find happiness in the union. He had almost persuaded himself to be what he would have her to believe he might be.

Under the warmth and convincing force of his words her pulses had beat faster, her heart had throbbed in her throat, her eyes had glistened; but not with that light which they had shed for Michel de la Foret. How different was this man's wooing--its impetuous, audacious, tender violence, with that quiet, powerful, almost sacred gravity of her Camisard lover! It is this difference--the weighty, emotional difference--between a desperate pa.s.sion and a pure love which has ever been so powerful in twisting the destinies of a moiety of the world to misery, who otherwise would have stayed contented, inconspicuous, and good. Angele would have been more than human if she had not felt the spell of the ablest intriguer, of the most fascinating diplomatist of his day.

Before he spoke of marriage the thrill--the unconvincing thrill though it was--of a perilous temptation was upon her; but the very thing most meant to move her only made her shudder; for in her heart of hearts she knew that he was ineradicably false. To be married to one const.i.tutionally untrue would be more terrible a fate for her than to be linked to him in a lighter, more dissoluble bond. So do the greatest tricksters of this world overdo their part, so play the wrong card when every past experience suggests it is the card to play. He knew by the silence that followed his words, and the slow, steady look she gave him, that she was not won nor on the way to the winning.

"My lord," she said, at last, and with a courage which steadied her affrighted and perturbed innocence, "you are eloquent, you are fruitful of flattery, of those things which have, I doubt not, served you well in your day. But, if you see your way to a better life, it were well you should choose one of n.o.bler mould than I. I am not made for sacrifice, to play the missioner and s.n.a.t.c.h brands from the burning. I have enough to do to keep my own feet in the ribbon-path of right. You must look elsewhere for that guardian influence which is to make of you a paragon."

"No, no," he answered, sharply, "you think the game not worth the candle--you doubt me and what I can do for you; my sincerity, my power you doubt."

"Indeed, yes, I doubt both," she answered, gravely, "for you would have me believe that I have power to lead you. With how small a mind you credit me! You think, too, that you sway this kingdom; but I know that you stand upon a cliff's edge, and that the earth is fraying 'neath your tread. You dare to think that you have power to drag down with you the man who honors me with--"

"With his love, you'd say. Yet he will leave you fretting out your soul until the sharp-edged truth cuts your heart in twain. Have you no pride? I care not what you say of me--say your worst, and I will not resent it, for I will still prove that your way lies with me."

She gave a bitter sigh, and touched her forehead with trembling fingers. "If words could prove it, I had been convinced but now, for they are well devised, and they have music, too; but such a music, my lord, as would drown the truth in the soul of a woman. Your words allure, but you have learned the art of words. You yourself--oh, my lord, you who have tasted all the pleasures of this world, could you then have the heart to steal from one who has so little that little which gives her happiness?"

"You know not what can make you happy--I can teach you that. By G.o.d's Son! but you have wit and intellect and are a match for a prince, not for a cast-off Camisard. I shall ere long be lord-lieutenant of these isles--of England and Ireland. Come to my nest. We will fly far! Ah, your eye brightens, your heart leaps to mine--I feel it now, I--"

"Oh, have done, have done," she pa.s.sionately broke in. "I would rather die, be torn upon the rack, burned at the stake, than put my hand in yours. And you do not wish it--you speak but to destroy, not to cherish. While you speak to me I see all those"--she made a gesture as though to put something from her--"all those to whom you have spoken as you have done to me. I hear the myriad falsehoods you have told--one whelming confusion. I feel the blindness which has crept upon them--those poor women--as you have sown the air with the dust of the pa.s.sion which you call love. Oh, you never knew what love meant, my lord. I doubt if when you lay in your mother's arms you turned to her with love. You never did one kindly act for love; no generous thought was ever born in you by love. Sir, I know it as though it were written in a book: your life has been one long calculation--your sympathy or kindness a calculated thing.

Good-nature, emotion you may have had, but never the divine thing by which the world is saved. Were there but one little place where that Eden flower might bloom within your heart, you could not seek to ruin that love which lives in mine and fills it, conquering all the lesser part of me. I never knew of how much love I was capable until I heard you speak to-day. Out of your life's experience, out of all that you have learned of women, good and evil, you--for a selfish, miserable purpose--would put the gyves upon my wrists, make me a p.a.w.n in your dark game--a p.a.w.n which you would lose without a thought as the game went on.

"If you must fight, my lord, if you must ruin Monsieur de la Foret and a poor Huguenot girl, do it by greater means than this. You have power, you say. Use it then; destroy us, if you will. Send us to the Medici: bring us to the block, murder us--that were no new thing to Lord Leicester. But do not stoop to treachery and falsehood to thrust us down. Oh, you have made me see the depths of shame to-day! But yet"--her voice suddenly changed, a note of plaintive force filled it--"I have learned much this hour--more than I ever knew. Perhaps it is that we come to knowledge only through fire and tears." She smiled sadly. "I suppose that sometimes, some day, this page of life would have scorched my sight. Oh, my lord, what was there in me that you dared speak so to me? Was there naught to have stayed your tongue and stemmed the tide in which you would engulf me?"

He had listened as in a dream at first. She had read him as he might read himself, had revealed him with the certain truth, as none other had done in all his days. He was silent for a long moment, then raised his hand in protest.

"You have a strange idea of what makes offence and shame. I offered you marriage," he said, complacently. "And when I come to think upon it, after all that you have said, fair Huguenot, I see no cause for railing. You call me this and that; to you I am a liar, a rogue, a cut-throat, what you will; and yet, and yet, I will have my way--I will have my way in the end."

"You offered me marriage--and meant it not. Do I not know? Did you rely so little on your compelling powers, my lord, that you must needs resort to that bait? Do you think that you will have your way to-morrow if you have failed to-day?"

With a quick change of tone and a cold, scornful laugh he rejoined, "Do you intend to measure swords with me?"

"Oh no, my lord," she answered, quietly, "what should one poor, unfriended girl do in contest with the Earl of Leicester? But yet, in very truth, I have friends, and in my hour of greatest need I shall go seeking."

She was thinking of the Queen. He guessed her thought.

"You will not be so mad," he said, urbanely, again. "Of what can you complain to the Queen? Tut! tut! you must seek other friends than the Majesty of England."

"Then, my lord, I will," she answered, bravely. "I will seek the help of such a Friend as fails not when all fails, even He who putteth down the mighty from their seats and exalteth the humble."

"Ah, well, if I have not touched your heart," he answered, gallantly, "I at least have touched your wit and intellect. Once more I offer you alliance. Think well before you decline."

He had no thought that he would succeed, but it was ever his way to return to the charge. It had been the secret of his life's success so far. He had never taken a refusal. He had never believed that when man or woman said no that no was meant; and if it were meant he still believed that constant dropping would wear away the stone. He still held that persistence was the greatest lever in the world, that unswerving persistence was the master of opportunity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "IT WAS THE QUEEN'S FOOL"]

They had now come to two paths in the park leading different ways.

"This road leads to Kenilworth, this to your prison," he said, with a slow gesture, his eyes fixed upon hers.

"I will go to my prison, then," she said, stepping forward, "and alone, by your leave."

Leicester was a good sportsman. Though he had been beaten all along the line, he hid his deep chagrin, choked down the rage that was in him. Smiling, he bowed low.

"I will do myself the honor to visit your prison to-morrow," he said.

"My father will welcome you, my lord," she answered, and, gathering up her skirt, ran down the pathway.

He stood, unmoving, and watched her disappear.

"But I shall have my way with them both," he said, aloud.

The voice of a singer sounded in the greenwood. Half consciously Leicester listened. The words came shrilling through the trees:

"Oh, love, it is a lily flower, (_Sing, my captain, sing, my lady!_) The sword shall cleave it, Life shall leave it-- Who shall know the hour?

(_Sing, my lady, still!_)."