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

The terrified clerk of the chamber-door, astonished at the burst of resentment he had so unconsciously produced, dropped his staff of office from his hand, and gazed on the incensed Earl with a foolish face of wonder and terror, which instantly recalled Leicester to himself.

“I meant but to try if thou hadst the audacity which befits thine office,” said he hastily. “Come to Kenilworth, and bring the devil with thee, if thou wilt.”

“My wife, sir, hath played the devil ere now, in a Mystery, in Queen Mary's time; but me shall want a trifle for properties.”

“Here is a crown for thee,” said the Earl,—“make me rid of thee—the great bell rings.”

Master Robert Laneham stared a moment at the agitation which he had excited, and then said to himself, as he stooped to pick up his staff of office, “The noble Earl runs wild humours to-day. But they who give crowns expect us witty fellows to wink at their unsettled starts; and, by my faith, if they paid not for mercy, we would finger them tightly!” [See Note 6. Robert Laneham.]

Leicester moved hastily on, neglecting the courtesies he had hitherto dispensed so liberally, and hurrying through the courtly crowd, until he paused in a small withdrawing-room, into which he plunged to draw a moment's breath unobserved, and in seclusion.

“What am I now,” he said to himself, “that am thus jaded by the words of a mean, weather-beaten, goose-brained gull! Conscience, thou art a bloodhound, whose growl wakes us readily at the paltry stir of a rat or mouse as at the step of a lion. Can I not quit myself, by one bold stroke, of a state so irksome, so unhonoured? What if I kneel to Elizabeth, and, owning the whole, throw myself on her mercy?”

As he pursued this train of thought, the door of the apartment opened, and Varney rushed in.

“Thank God, my lord, that I have found you!” was his exclamation.

“Thank the devil, whose agent thou art,” was the Earl's reply.

“Thank whom you will, my lord,” replied Varney; “but hasten to the water-side. The Queen is on board, and asks for you.”

“Go, say I am taken suddenly ill,” replied Leicester; “for, by Heaven, my brain can sustain this no longer!”

“I may well say so,” said Varney, with bitterness of expression, “for your place, ay, and mine, who, as your master of the horse, was to have attended your lordship, is already filled up in the Queen's barge. The new minion, Walter Raleigh, and our old acquaintance Tressilian were called for to fill our places just as I hastened away to seek you.”

“Thou art a devil, Varney,” said Leicester hastily; “but thou hast the mastery for the present—I follow thee.”

Varney replied not, but led the way out of the palace, and towards the river, while his master followed him, as if mechanically; until, looking back, he said in a tone which savoured of familiarity at least, if not of authority, “How is this, my lord? Your cloak hangs on one side—your hose are unbraced—permit me—”

“Thou art a fool, Varney, as well as a knave,” said Leicester, shaking him off, and rejecting his officious assistance. “We are best thus, sir; when we require you to order our person, it is well, but now we want you not.”

So saying, the Earl resumed at once his air of command, and with it his self-possession—shook his dress into yet wilder disorder—passed before Varney with the air of a superior and master, and in his turn led the way to the river-side.

The Queen's barge was on the very point of putting off, the seat allotted to Leicester in the stern, and that to his master of the horse on the bow of the boat, being already filled up. But on Leicester's approach there was a pause, as if the bargemen anticipated some alteration in their company. The angry spot was, however, on the Queen's cheek, as, in that cold tone with which superiors endeavour to veil their internal agitation, while speaking to those before whom it would be derogation to express it, she pronounced the chilling words, “We have waited, my Lord of Leicester.”

“Madam, and most gracious Princess,” said Leicester, “you, who can pardon so many weaknesses which your own heart never knows, can best bestow your commiseration on the agitations of the bosom, which, for a moment, affect both head and limbs. I came to your presence a doubting and an accused subject; your goodness penetrated the clouds of defamation, and restored me to my honour, and, what is yet dearer, to your favour—is it wonderful, though for me it is most unhappy, that my master of the horse should have found me in a state which scarce permitted me to make the exertion necessary to follow him to this place, when one glance of your Highness, although, alas! an angry one, has had power to do that for me in which Esculapius might have failed?”

“How is this?” said Elizabeth hastily, looking at Varney; “hath your lord been ill?”

“Something of a fainting fit,” answered the ready-witted Varney, “as your Grace may observe from his present condition. My lord's haste would not permit me leisure even to bring his dress into order.”

“It matters not,” said Elizabeth, as she gazed on the noble face and form of Leicester, to which even the strange mixture of passions by which he had been so lately agitated gave additional interest; “make room for my noble lord. Your place, Master Varney, has been filled up; you must find a seat in another barge.”

Varney bowed, and withdrew.

“And you, too, our young Squire of the Cloak,” added she, looking at Raleigh, “must, for the time, go to the barge of our ladies of honour. As for Tressilian, he hath already suffered too much by the caprice of women that I should aggrieve him by my change of plan, so far as he is concerned.”

Leicester seated himself in his place in the barge, and close to the Sovereign. Raleigh rose to retire, and Tressilian would have been so ill-timed in his courtesy as to offer to relinquish his own place to his friend, had not the acute glance of Raleigh himself, who seemed not in his native element, made him sensible that so ready a disclamation of the royal favour might be misinterpreted. He sat silent, therefore, whilst Raleigh, with a profound bow, and a look of the deepest humiliation, was about to quit his place.

A noble courtier, the gallant Lord Willoughby, read, as he thought, something in the Queen's face which seemed to pity Raleigh's real or assumed semblance of mortification.

“It is not for us old courtiers,” he said, “to hide the sunshine from the young ones. I will, with her Majesty's leave, relinquish for an hour that which her subjects hold dearest, the delight of her Highness's presence, and mortify myself by walking in starlight, while I forsake for a brief season the glory of Diana's own beams. I will take place in the boat which the ladies occupy, and permit this young cavalier his hour of promised felicity.”

The Queen replied, with an expression betwixt mirth and earnest, “If you are so willing to leave us,