The Highwayman Part 25

Come, did you tell Sir John you were going?"

"No. But he would guess. He is so clever about me. Like you."

"Humph. If he guesses you're a woman, it's all he does. And, damme, I suppose it's enough. So your curious s.e.x bade you go and pry. Well, and what did you see in Mr. Harry Boyce?"

"I suppose you are scolding me," said Susan placidly.

"With all my heart."

"Oh. Why do you ride that horse?"

"Damme, miss, don't wriggle. You had no business at Highgate!"

"He looks as if he had the gout."

Mr. Hadley grinned. "But as you went, let's hear what you saw."

"I always loved Alison."

"Your business is to love your father, Susan--till some other man asks you."

"I love her better now. She is so happy."

"d.a.m.n her impudence," said Mr. Hadley.

"Why did you lose your temper with her?"

"I never lose my temper with any one but you."

"Well. You made my father lose his."

"Ods life, Susan, don't you know it's a man's right to tell women how they ought to live? Dear Alison wouldn't listen."

Susan laughed. "She has made you look very foolish."

"If she has I'll forgive her."

"Oh. You do then," said Susan.

"On your honour, miss, what did you think of Mr. Harry Boyce?"

"I wondered Alison should love him."

"Ods life, yes. But what's this you're saying?"

"He is so quiet and simple."

"Simple! Damme, the fellow's an incarnate mask."

"Oh. I think I know all about him. I never thought I knew all about Alison. She wants so much."

"And she hasn't got all she wants, eh?"

"Yes, I believe," said Susan, after a moment.

"Pray G.o.d you're right."

"Oh. I like to hear you say that. You have been so"--for once her placid words stumbled--"so sordid about this."

"Damme, Susan, don't be a saint." Mr. Hadley grinned. "They die virgins."

CHAPTER XV

MRS. BOYCE

It was a time of wild plots. The long war of Marlborough had left England impregnably triumphant, and France ambitious of nothing but peace. No fear remained that foreign arms would carry James, the Pretender by right divine, to his sister's throne. Who should reign when Anne's growing weakness ended in death was for England alone to decide, and English law gave the succession to Prince George of Hanover. But there was a party, or at least the leaders of a party, who saw more profit to themselves in importing the Pretender.

Harley and Bolingbroke, they had thrust out of the Queen's confidence and the government the friends of Hanover. They had undermined the authority of Marlborough at home and abroad, and were now ready, honourably or dishonourably, to put an end to the war which made him necessary. If he were dispatched into ignominy or exile, there could be no one strong enough, they believed, to prevent them driving England the way they chose. What that way would be no one clearly knew, themselves, perhaps, least of all. But together and singly they set going many strange secret schemes which were to make a new king, a new England, and new magnificence for themselves, singly or together. All which the ma.s.s of England watched with shrewd, incurious eyes. It could not long be a secret that plots were afoot. To shoulder out of power all who were committed friends of the lawful order was a confession of designs against it. As if that were not enough, Bolingbroke and Harley so managed their business that everything they did was wrapped in a mist of trickery and intrigue. And yet, though they were vastly mysterious over what could have borne the light without much shame, they contrived to let the agents of their deeper treachery blunder into notice and fill the air with rumours of untimely truth. Still England gave no sign.

"Under which King"--Hanoverian or Pretender--perhaps there were few in England who cared. If the Pretender was bred French and a Papist, Prince George was a German born. Some of those who had joined heartily in driving out his father began to put it about that the son would be a better king for that lesson. George of Hanover had the right of law, but the Parliament of to-morrow might undo what the Parliament of yesterday had done. Who could be ardent for the right of an unknown foreigner over England? And few were ardent, but there were many who, caring nothing for Pretender or Hanoverian, had a solid resolution that England should not be torn in the cause of either. Whatever was done, must be done quietly and in good order. Since it seemed that the Hanoverian had no need to change anything in law or State or Church, best that he should be king.

As for the devious politics, the tricks, and the mystery of Harley and Bolingbroke, they were of no account to plain men.

There was yet another party not content to watch and wait till the plotters lost themselves in their own mysteries. The men whom Harley and Bolingbroke had driven from power had no mind to submit to impotence.

They well knew what they wanted: the Hanoverian, the lawful, limited king upon the throne and themselves as his ministers. They were not delicate about the means they used. Since there were treason and plots, they too turned their hands to plotting and with a vigour and ruthless resolution of which the other camp was innocent.

So the wise and eminent were busy while Harry Boyce and his Alison made trial of their marriage. Harry lived in a dream of bewildered happiness.

He had counted on nothing but the need of his pa.s.sion, hoped for nothing but its ecstasy in her beauty, and at its wildest the strain of gloom in him had bade him dread what lay beyond. She gave him a miracle of mad delight. A new force of life was born in him while he enjoyed her joy. It was a discovery of intoxicating power that he could wake that rare, consummate creature to such eager exultation as his own. In those wonderful hours it seemed that they pa.s.sed out of themselves into a world where every part of their being was one and in the happiness of unbounded strength. So pa.s.sion and she kept faith with him and something more. But the miracle of pa.s.sion in her arms had less enchantment than the joy of the quiet hours. It was with this that she bewildered him. Before she yielded to him, he would have jeered at the hope that she might bring the gift of peace in her bosom. As the first days of marriage pa.s.sed he learnt that all his placid loneliness had been the mere endurance of hunger. He had stayed himself with the husk of life. She satisfied him with the fruit. For she too could be calm, delighting in the little daily things, utterly happy with nonsense. To share all that with her was to find in it a strange, lulling enchantment of content.

His fortune seemed too good to be real. For he possessed all that ever fancy had pretended was worth coveting: his life was a perfect happiness.

No doubts from within, no troubles from without, had power to a.s.sail him.

All the old, reasonable, practical fears were become ludicrous cowardice, only remembered for Alison to tease with. As for other people, and what they said and thought and did, some folks were kind and were welcome, no folks were of account. He and she deliciously sufficed themselves. And there was no dread of change, save in age and death, infinitely distant and insignificant--no matter but to glorify the power of life. Sometimes he was aware that the wonder of pa.s.sion must grow faint and fail, but he saw nothing which could take from him the quiet, exquisite, daily joys.

Was it real, or a charmed dream, this perfect fortune of content? Indeed, nothing was real in those days but the delight in being with her.

Alison had her share. He did not deceive himself. She had her ecstasies and her exultations, she thought herself even madder than he was. And in these days, perhaps, her pa.s.sion was deeper and stronger than his. She was satisfied, she felt herself accomplished, and gloried in her new power with a more profound, a more secret delight than his. She had given him eagerly all that she had, and in the giving found herself more than ever her own. For all the union, the deepest, truest self in her stood aloof in a mystery. It was not of her will, for she desired to deny him nothing. She did not reckon him weak in failing to take all of her. This must needs be the way of life. No man's pa.s.sion could be stronger than his. Doubtless he too had his secret soul apart. And indeed it was glorious not to lose self in love, to stay always, through the ecstasies, aloof, to give always anew of will and choice--never to merge helpless in some unknown double being and become only half a body, half a soul, capitulating always to the rest, to the other.

This self-glorious pride of hers gave her for a while that zest in all the trivial common things which made her a companion so delightful to Harry's temper. But she enjoyed them in a spirit different from his. All the bread-and-b.u.t.ter business of living was to him delightful in itself and for itself. He was born to want no better bread than is made of wheat. She played with it, made a dainty mock of it, amused herself with it, and at the back of her mind despised it.

So they lived, and you imagine Mrs. Weston's dim, wistful eyes watching them with a great tenderness. For she understood them no better than they themselves.

It was Alison who first grew tired. Not of love or pa.s.sion, but of the trivialities and the quiet life at Highgate. She had ambitions, or thought she had. It had been just rediscovered that women could be leaders in the world--at least in politics and the tricks of statecraft.

Women were the fiercest partisans and their voices powerful in the warring parties. It was a woman, his termagant d.u.c.h.ess, who had given Marlborough his ascendancy in England, made him dominate all Europe. It was a clever woman who had contrived Marlborough's downfall and given his enemies the government of England. It was a woman--another d.u.c.h.ess--who beat Swift. You need not suspect Alison, who had some humour, of imagining Harry Boyce a Marlborough. But he did believe him able to make a noise in the world, and coveted much the sensation of owning him while the world listened. She did not see herself controlling queens and kings and parties, but she was well aware of her beauty and its power, and had a mind to use it widely. She was hungry for excitement.

So Mrs. Alison determined to set her man upon a larger, busier stage. The decree went forth that old Tom Lambourne's house in the Lincoln's Inn Fields was again to be inhabited. Harry was asked for his advice afterwards. Perhaps he would have been wiser if he had begun their first quarrel then. But he was enjoying her too much to deny her her ways or her whims, and he only laughed at her. He was not pleased, to be sure. He had a taste, which cannot have come from his father, for copse and field. He never found anything in the town which was worth the living in other folk's smoke. He disliked crowds and in particular crowds of fine ladies and gentlemen. So with some horror he saw before him a vista of polite splendours, and said so.

"Oh Lud, sir," says she, "if I had wanted to sleep my life away I should not have married you. And if you wanted to sleep out yours you should not have married me."