The Portland Sketch Book Part 20

"What!--cheeks like new-fallen snow!--lips trembling like the aspen!--and eye-lashes heavy with tears!--how is this, child?--but we bethink us;--was it not some untoward affair of the heart which brought thee to our court? We have been too negligent;--tell us thy grief, and on the honor of a queen, if there be wrong we will have thee bravely righted--so speak freely."

"Oh, no, no!--not here!--_never to you_."

Here poor Ellen broke off and stood before the queen, her hands clasped, her lips trembling and her large supplicating eyes fixed imploringly on her face.

"Well, well," said the queen soothingly, "at some other time be it--but remember that in Mary Stewart her attendant may find a safe friend as well as an indulgent mistress," and shaking her magnificent tresses over her shoulders, the royal beauty composed herself for the operations of the toilette.

Ellen gathered up the glossy volumes of hair and commenced her task. Her limbs shook, a cold moisture crept over her forehead, and her quivering hands wandered with melancholy listlessness, through the ma.s.s of shining ringlets it was her duty to arrange. As she stooped forward in her task, one of her own fair curls fell down and mingled, like a flash of spun gold, with those of her mistress. As if there had been contagion in the touch, she flung it back with a smile of strange, cold bitterness, the first and last that ever wreathed her pure lips; for hers was a heart to suffer and endure, but never to hate; it might break, but no wrong could harden it.

While her toilette was in progress, Mary became nervous and restless, now pushing the velvet cushions from her feet, and then moving the lights about the dressing-table, as if dissatisfied with the arrangement of every thing about her. At length she fell back in her chair, buried her face in her hands, and fairly burst into tears. Ellen grasped the back of her chair, and bending her pale face to the queen's ear, murmured--

"Tears are for the deserted--why does the queen weep?"

Mary was too deeply engrossed with her own feelings to mark the exact words, or the tremulous voice of her attendant. She threw the damp hair back from her face, and dashing the tears from her eyes exclaimed--

"No, no! it is nothing--proceed--there! let that ringlet fall thus upon the neck--now our robe, quickly--we shall be waited for at the banquet."

Ellen brought forth the usual mourning robe of black velvet, laden with bugles; but a flush of anger, or perhaps of shame, overspread the queen's face, and with an impatient gesture she exclaimed--

"Not that, girl--not that--I will mock my heart no longer!--away with it, and bring a more seemly garment!--the proud Englishman shall not scoff at our widow's weeds again."

Ellen obeyed, and the queen was soon robed as she had desired. Few objects could have been more beautiful than this dangerous woman, when she arose from her toilette--the perfect, yet almost voluptuous proportion of her form betrayed by the snowy robe, her tapering arms banded with jewels, and her superb waist bound with a string of immense pearls, clasped in front by a single diamond, and terminating where the broidery of her robe commenced, in ta.s.sels of threaded pearls. A tiara of small Scotish thistles, crowded amethysts and rough emeralds, burned with a purple light among her curls, and the face beneath seemed scarcely human, so radiant was its expression, and so beautiful the perfect harmony of its features. Throwing a careless glance at the mirror--for Mary was too confident of her attraction to be fastidious--she took up her perfumed handkerchief and left the room.

Ellen Craigh gazed after her sovereign till the last graceful wave of her drapery disappeared; then drawing a deep breath, as if her heart had thrown off an oppression quite insupportable, she cast a glance almost of loathing around the sumptuous apartment, and entered the oratory.

Dropping on her knees by the chair which Bothwell had occupied, she laid her cheek on the cushion and wept long and freely, as if the contact with something _he_ had touched had a softening influence on her heart.

As she arose, the gleam of a handkerchief lying on the floor attracted her attention. She s.n.a.t.c.hed it up with a faint cry of joy, for on one corner she found embroidered an earl's coronet and the crest of Bothwell. Eagerly thrusting the prize into her bosom, she left the oratory and pa.s.sed into the open street.

It was midnight when Mary Stewart returned to her chamber. The lights were burning dimly on the table, and an air of gloomy grandeur filled the apartment. The queen was evidently much distressed; a deep glow was burning on her cheek, and her usually smiling eyes were full of a strange excitement. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the little golden call as if to give a summons, and then flung it down again, exclaiming--

"No, no--I could not brook their searching eyes," and with a still more disturbed air she paced the chamber, now and then stopping to divest herself of the ornaments she had worn at the amba.s.sador's festival.

Perhaps for the first time in her life the agitated woman unrobed herself, and flinging back the crimson drapery which fell in heavy ma.s.ses from the large square bedstead, threw herself upon the gorgeous counterpane and buried herself in the folds, as if they could shut out the evil thoughts that burned in her heart; but it was in vain that she strove for rest--that she gathered the rich drapery over her head and pressed her burning cheek to the pillow; her thoughts were all alive and astray.

It was a mournful sight--that beautiful and brilliant woman yielding herself to the thraldom of a wicked man, and rushing heedlessly to that which was to throw a stain upon her memory, enduring as history itself.

Sin is hideous in every form--but when it darkens the bright and beautiful of earth, like a cloud over the sun, we reproach it for its own blackness, and doubly for the brightness it conceals.

As the misguided woman lay, with a hand pressed over her eyes, and one arm, but half divested of its jewels, flung out with a kind of desperate carelessness upon the counterpane, the murmur of an infant voice reached her from a neighboring apartment. She started up and tears gathered in her eyes.

"Woe is me!" she exclaimed, "this mad pa.s.sion makes me forgetful alike of prayer and child."

Folding a dressing-gown about her, she entered the room whence the sound had come, and reappeared with an infant boy pressed to her bosom. After kissing him again and again with a sort of despairing fondness, she bore him to a recess where a small lamp of chased silver burned before a crucifix of the same metal, and an embroidered ha.s.sock was placed as if for devotion. Had she been left alone in the holy stillness of the night, with her lovely babe upon her bosom, and the touching symbol of our Saviour's death before her, the evil influence which was hurrying her on to ruin might have been counterbalanced; but as she knelt with the smiling babe lying on the ha.s.sock, her eyes fixed on the crucifix, and the guilty glow ebbing from her cheeks, the door softly opened, and the Earl of Bothwell stole into the chamber. Mary sprang to her feet as if to reprove the insolent intruder, but a sense of modesty, which in all her follies seemed never to have left her, succeeded to her indignation, if indeed she felt any. She glanced at her dishabille with a painful flush, and hastily seating herself, drew her uncovered feet, which had been hastily thrust into a pair of furred slippers, under the folds of her dressing gown, and then requested him to withdraw, in a voice which betrayed as much of encouragement as of reproof.

Without even noticing her request, Bothwell lifted the boy from the ha.s.sock, and seating himself, addressed her in a low and gentle tone, which he knew well how to a.s.sume. The erring woman listened to the witchery of his voice, till the unnatural glow again died from her cheek, and she sat with her eyes fixed on his, as a beautiful bird yielding to the fascination of a serpent.

"But thy wife," she said in a low irresolute tone, when Bothwell pressed for a reply to what he had been urging, "much as Mary may love--much as she may sacrifice, she cannot thrust a young and loving woman from a heart she loves and puts her faith in."

"Young and loving!" repeated Bothwell, with a sneer curling his haughty lip, "young and loving!--truly your grace must have been strangely misinformed;--she who styles herself Countess of Bothwell nearly doubles the age of her unfortunate husband; and as for love, if she knows any, it is for the broad acres which own him as their master."

A scarcely perceptible smile dimpled the queen's mouth, as she heard this account of her rival, but she made no reply, and Bothwell resumed his tone of earnest entreaty. As he proceeded, his voice and manner became more energetic.

"Say that you consent," he said, "say but a word, and the breath of evil shall never reach you;--say but your hand is mine as a token of a.s.sent, and Bothwell will worship you like a very slave."

The queen raised her hand, and though it trembled like an aspen, she placed it in his.

"It is thy queen who is the slave," she murmured in a broken voice, as Bothwell raised the beautiful hand to his lips, and covered it with rapturous kisses.

As he relinquished her hand, it came in contact with that of the child.

As if an adder had stung her, she drew it back, and then with a sudden gush of feeling s.n.a.t.c.hed the boy to her bosom and covered it with tears and kisses. Bothwell dreaded the influence of the pure maternal feeling thus expressed. Gently forcing the young prince from her embrace, he whispered--

"Trust him to me, dearest--trust him to one who would spill his heart's blood, rather than give pain to mother or child," and pressing her hand again to his lips, the arch-hypocrite left the room with the same cautious tread he had entered it with.

In a few moments after, he placed the young prince in charge with a creature in his confidence, saying--

"See to it, that none of the Darnley faction get possession of the brat,--keep him safe, or strangle him at once."

On the next day the Earl of Bothwell left Sterling, and it was whispered that he had been banished from court through the influence of the English amba.s.sador; but conjecture was lost in astonishment, and when, two days after, the court at Sterling was broken up, and the queen, while on her way to Edinburgh, was met by Bothwell, with a force of eight hundred men, and conveyed to Dunbar by seeming violence, men stood aghast at the news; but those who had marked their queen closely during the few preceding days, concurred in the belief that she privately sanctioned the disgraceful outrage.

It was a gloomy and ancient pile--that in which Bothwell had left his deserted wife. In one of its apartments, beside a huge fire-place, in which a few embers smouldered in a sea of ashes, sat an old and wrinkled woman, spreading her withered palms for warmth, and occasionally turning a wistful look to the narrow windows, against which the rain and sleet were beating with real violence. As she listened, the tramp of approaching horses was heard in the court below, and before she had time to reach the door, it was flung open, and the Countess of Bothwell, dripping with wet and tottering with fatigue, flung herself into the arms of her old nurse.

"Sorrow on me," exclaimed the good woman, striving to speak cheerful, "how the child clings to my neck!--look up, lady-bird, and do not sob so--I know but too well how thy journey has speeded--may the curses of an old woman rest----"

"Oh, Mabel, Mabel, do not curse him--do not--we cannot love as we will,"

exclaimed the poor countess, clinging to the bosom of the old woman, as if to bribe her from finishing the anathema.

"Hush, darling, hush," replied old Mabel, pressing her withered lips fondly to the pure forehead of her foster-child--"he who could help loving thee----but hist, what is all this tramping in the court?--sit down, and I will soon learn."

The old woman divested the trembling young creature of her wet cloak and proceeded to the hall. After a few minutes absence she returned dreadfully agitated; her sunken eyes glowed like live coals, and her bony fingers were clenched together as a bird clutches her prey.

"My own darling," she said in a voice which she vainly strove to render steady, "I had thought not to have given his cruel message, but----"

"Speak on," said the poor young creature, raising her large eyes with the expression of a scared antelope, "I can bear any thing now."

But she broke off with a sudden and joyful cry, for the door had been cautiously opened, and her long absent husband stood before her.

Forgetful of his estrangement--of his unkindness--of every thing but his early love--she sprang eagerly to his bosom and kissed him again and again, with the abandonment of a joyful child. It must have been a heart of stone which could have resisted such unbounded tenderness. For one moment, and but for one, she was pressed to her husband's heart, and then he put her coldly away.

"How is it that I find your lady here, after my express command to the contrary?" he said, sternly addressing the old nurse, while he forced the clinging arms of the countess from his neck.

The poor young creature shrunk from his look, like a flower touched by a sudden frost. Mabel threw her arm around her, and forced her to confront her angry husband.

"Why is she here!" shouted the old woman fiercely, "why is she here, in her own home!--because I could not, would not kill her with her base lord's message!--What! break her heart, and then thrust her forth to die?--Villain!--double-dyed and cowardly villain!--may the curses of a----"

Before the old woman could finish her anathema, the enraged Earl had stricken her grey head to the floor. The frightened countess fell on her knees beside her; but, with a terrible imprecation, Bothwell commanded his attendants to bear his victim from the room, and sternly ordered his trembling wife to remain.

"As you are here," he said, "it is not essential that we meet again; your signature is necessary to this paper; please to affix it without useless delay."

The countess took the paper, which was a pet.i.tion to the Commissariot-Court for a divorce from her husband. Before she had read the first line, every drop of blood ebbed from her face. She did not faint, but with a degree of energy foreign to her character, she grasped the paper in her hands, as if about to tear it. The Earl seized her wrist, and fiercely demanded her signature.