Kenilworth, Walter Scott [children's books read aloud txt] 📗

to grasp his hand, until, with an effort at calm decision, he was able to articulate, “Be it so—she dies! But one tear might be permitted.”

“Not one, my lord,” interrupted Varney, who saw by the quivering eye and convulsed cheek of his patron that he was about to give way to a burst of emotion—“not a tear—the time permits it not. Tressilian must be thought of—”

“That indeed is a name,” said the Earl, “to convert tears into blood. Varney, I have thought on this, and I have determined—neither entreaty nor argument shall move me—Tressilian shall be my own victim.”

“It is madness, my lord; but you are too mighty for me to bar your way to your revenge. Yet resolve at least to choose fitting time and opportunity, and to forbear him until these shall be found.”

“Thou shalt order me in what thou wilt,” said Leicester, “only thwart me not in this.”

“Then, my lord,” said Varney, “I first request of you to lay aside the wild, suspected, and half-frenzied demeanour which hath this day drawn the eyes of all the court upon you, and which, but for the Queen's partial indulgence, which she hath extended towards you in a degree far beyond her nature, she had never given you the opportunity to atone for.”

“Have I indeed been so negligent?” said Leicester, as one who awakes from a dream. “I thought I had coloured it well. But fear nothing, my mind is now eased—I am calm. My horoscope shall be fulfilled; and that it may be fulfilled, I will tax to the highest every faculty of my mind. Fear me not, I say. I will to the Queen instantly—not thine own looks and language shall be more impenetrable than mine. Hast thou aught else to say?”

“I must crave your signet-ring,” said Varney gravely, “in token to those of your servants whom I must employ, that I possess your full authority in commanding their aid.”

Leicester drew off the signet-ring which he commonly used, and gave it to Varney, with a haggard and stern expression of countenance, adding only, in a low, half-whispered tone, but with terrific emphasis, the words, “What thou dost, do quickly.”

Some anxiety and wonder took place, meanwhile, in the presence-hall, at the prolonged absence of the noble Lord of the Castle, and great was the delight of his friends when they saw him enter as a man from whose bosom, to all human seeming, a weight of care had been just removed. Amply did Leicester that day redeem the pledge he had given to Varney, who soon saw himself no longer under the necessity of maintaining a character so different from his own as that which he had assumed in the earlier part of the day, and gradually relapsed into the same grave, shrewd, caustic observer of conversation and incident which constituted his usual part in society.

With Elizabeth, Leicester played his game as one to whom her natural strength of talent and her weakness in one or two particular points were well known. He was too wary to exchange on a sudden the sullen personage which he had played before he retired with Varney; but on approaching her it seemed softened into a melancholy, which had a touch of tenderness in it, and which, in the course of conversing with Elizabeth, and as she dropped in compassion one mark of favour after another to console him, passed into a flow of affectionate gallantry, the most assiduous, the most delicate, the most insinuating, yet at the same time the most respectful, with which a Queen was ever addressed by a subject. Elizabeth listened as in a sort of enchantment. Her jealousy of power was lulled asleep; her resolution to forsake all social or domestic ties, and dedicate herself exclusively to the care of her people, began to be shaken; and once more the star of Dudley culminated in the court horizon.

But Leicester did not enjoy this triumph over nature, and over conscience, without its being embittered to him, not only by the internal rebellion of his feelings against the violence which he exercised over them, but by many accidental circumstances, which, in the course of the banquet, and during the subsequent amusements of the evening, jarred upon that nerve, the least vibration of which was agony.

The courtiers were, for example, in the Great Hall, after having left the banqueting-room, awaiting the appearance of a splendid masque, which was the expected entertainment of this evening, when the Queen interrupted a wild career of wit which the Earl of Leicester was running against Lord Willoughby, Raleigh, and some other courtiers, by saying, “We will impeach you of high treason, my lord, if you proceed in this attempt to slay us with laughter. And here comes a thing may make us all grave at his pleasure, our learned physician Masters, with news belike of our poor suppliant, Lady Varney;—nay, my lord, we will not have you leave us, for this being a dispute betwixt married persons, we do not hold our own experience deep enough to decide thereon without good counsel.—How now, Masters, what thinkest thou of the runaway bride?”

The smile with which Leicester had been speaking, when the Queen interrupted him, remained arrested on his lips, as if it had been carved there by the chisel of Michael Angelo or of Chantrey; and he listened to the speech of the physician with the same immovable cast of countenance.

“The Lady Varney, gracious Sovereign,” said the court physician Masters, “is sullen, and would hold little conference with me touching the state of her health, talking wildly of being soon to plead her own cause before your own presence, and of answering no meaner person's inquiries.”

“Now the heavens forfend!” said the Queen; “we have already suffered from the misconstructions and broils which seem to follow this poor brain-sick lady wherever she comes.—Think you not so, my lord?” she added, appealing to Leicester with something in her look that indicated regret, even tenderly expressed, for their disagreement of that morning. Leicester compelled himself to bow low. The utmost force he could exert was inadequate to the further effort of expressing in words his acquiescence in the Queen's sentiment.

“You are vindictive,” she said, “my lord; but we will find time and place to punish you. But once more to this same trouble-mirth, this Lady Varney. What of her health, Masters?”

“She is sullen, madam, as I already said,” replied Masters, “and refuses to answer interrogatories, or be amenable to the authority of the mediciner. I conceive her to be possessed with a delirium, which I incline to term rather HYPOCHONDRIA than PHRENESIS; and I think she were best cared for by her husband in his own house, and removed from all this bustle of pageants, which disturbs her weak brain with the most fantastic phantoms. She drops hints as if she were some great person in disguise—some Countess or Princess perchance. God help them, such are often the hallucinations of these infirm persons!”

“Nay, then,” said the Queen, “away with her with all speed. Let Varney care for her with fitting humanity; but let them rid the Castle of her forthwith she will think herself lady of all, I warrant you. It is pity so fair a form, however, should have an infirm understanding.—What think you, my lord?”

“It is pity indeed,” said the Earl, repeating the words like a task which was set him.

“But, perhaps,” said Elizabeth, “you do not join with us in our opinion