Chapter VII: Uncle Algernon's Last Story

Some hours after my incursion into the Palace of Hampton Court, I was wandering about under the chestnut-trees in Bushy Park. I had been loitering there all that hot summer afternoon, watching from a distance the brightly-dressed group that had emerged from the Palace grounds, and crossed over the grass towards the piece of water at the south side of the park. I knew that it was Queen Mary and her ladies taking their usual afternoon stroll; and though I did not venture so near as to see their faces, there was a certain silver-grey gown and carnation-coloured petticoat which I recognised directly, and which I gazed upon with intense interest. They hovered about by the water-side for a while, and then strolled back again over the grass, and re-entered the great iron gates which separated the Palace gardens from the park. I watched them intently until they were out of sight; and then, turning away, wandered through the trees once more, until I came to the water's edge where they had been standing. There I stood, staring absently down at the bright blue sky, dotted with soft flakes of cloud, like pink shells, which lay reflected in the water beneath me. I was thinking of the curious stolen interview with my wife, which I had so long set my heart upon obtaining, and which, after all, had been so short, hurried, and unsatisfactory. Not that I had been disappointed in her--no, indeed, far from it! Oliver's description had in some degree prepared me for her unusual beauty. I remembered, too, how Sir Harry used to prophesy that she would some day be a lovely woman; and the first glance told me that his prophecy had been a true one. Among all the many lovely faces that I had seen at the Hague, at St. Germains, even at the Court of Louis XIV. himself, not one was there which I thought so beautiful as hers. Besides the clearly cut features, the sparkling, mischievous hazel eyes, and brilliant yet delicate complexion, there was a peculiar expression, arch, bright, and what the French would call _malin_, and yet at the same time very sweet and thoughtful--a look which I had never seen in any other face but that of my friend Oliver. No, it was not that I was disappointed in Frances, but that I wanted to have seen more of her--to have found out what her real wishes were, and whether they went with those of her father or of her brother. That question was a very difficult one to answer; for she had spoken but little, and the anxiety which she had shown on account of my peril, and the tears that rose in her eyes as she listened to my story, were doubtless simply because I was the friend of her favourite brother. How could I expect her to feel anything like cordiality towards a husband whom she had seen but once in her life, and that for a single day, more than eleven years ago? a husband, too, without home or fortune, who was living with a sword over his head, and to be rid of whom was well known to be the heart's desire of her father? I stood pondering these things on the water's brink till the sun had set; and when I roused myself at last, I was quite amazed to find that the statue of Diana on the fountain in the middle of the water had become only a dusky outline against the sky, and the wreaths of rose-coloured cloud had turned into one heavy leaden bank upon the horizon. It was clearly time to turn my steps towards Kingston, where I had been lodging for the last few days.

'So I sauntered leisurely towards the nearest gate of the park. A dark figure was moving about under a clump of chestnut-trees close at hand; but, as I came near, it vanished suddenly, and I passed on, thinking that it was most likely a startled deer. But just as I was turning out of the gate, there was a stealthy footstep behind me, and I paused to look back. One moment more and a hand was laid upon my shoulder, and I heard the fatal words:

'"You are arrested in the King's name."

'My hand was on my sword in an instant, but I had not time to draw it. Several more figures had already rushed through the gateway. My arms were held down, my sword unfastened, and I was dragged out of Bushy Park a prisoner.

'I need not say how bitter and desponding were the thoughts that filled my mind that night during our dark voyage up the Thames, on our way to the Tower. In a few hours I was about to pass through the Traitor's Gate; and I knew well, when I considered my case soberly, how very slender was my chance of leaving the Tower again, except for the scaffold. There was only one person in England who might perhaps speak a word in my behalf; and even if for her brother's sake she should take the trouble to speak it, was it likely that her petition would be of any use? Would not her father throw all his power into the opposite scale? Besides, I felt that my offences against King William were far too great and too notorious to be forgiven. My fate was sealed, and through my own desperate rashness.

'There was an end now of the meeting in Queen Mary's Bower, which I had forced Frances, half against her will, to promise me. I wondered when she would hear of my arrest. For one moment the doubt crossed my mind whether she might not already know it--whether it could indeed be possible that she had betrayed the secret of my visit to the Queen. But no, I knew that it could not be so. Was she not Oliver's sister? Had she not Oliver's truthful eyes, and frank, honest smile? Far more likely that my pretty little acquaintance of St. James's Fair, the lively, sparkling Lady Beatrice, had been babbling to some of her companions of the matter--perhaps to the Queen herself. Or, after all, might not the discovery have been made most easily through the page who had admitted me into the Palace? or that old Lady Derby, who so very nearly caught me in Frances' room? Her suspicions might have been roused, and then doubtless she would soon manage to come to the bottom of the whole story. But Frances had not betrayed me; or, if she had, it was involuntarily, not through treachery. I could have staked my life upon that. No; I had no right to blame any one but myself. I had been madly reckless, and I must abide by the consequences.

'Ten days had gone by, and I knew what the price of that morning's recklessness was to be.

'My trial was over, and my dark foreboding was coming to pass. Three more days I was to spend in the Tower, and then I was to die upon the scaffold. Not a word had I heard of Frances since the night that I was taken prisoner; but her father had been in court on the day of my trial, and the same night I had received a letter from him, in which he offered to use all his interest with the Government to gain my pardon, but upon one condition. I must give him my promise to agree that my marriage with his daughter should be dissolved. We were now both of age, and at liberty to break it off by mutual consent. His reasons for wishing this, he said, were of course clear enough to me; and he doubted not that I should agree without hesitation to take a course which was plainly the best for his daughter's interests, and the only one which gave me a hope of escape. But Sir Bernard said nothing of his daughter's wishes on the subject. If Frances really was as anxious as himself to dissolve the marriage, surely he would have laid as much stress as possible upon that argument. Perhaps he meant her to have no voice in the matter; or did he take it for granted that her wishes were the same as her father's? I rather wondered that Sir Bernard should have chosen to interfere at all with my fortunes. I was sentenced to death, and if I died, his daughter, whether she was my wife or not, would of course be free.

'When the sentence was pronounced, I had not felt for a moment the slightest expectation that a pardon was to be procured on any terms, and had made up my mind to meet my fate as became a soldier. Still, it seemed very hard to die so early--harder now, I fancied, than it would have been a month ago. Yet if my only hope of life was to give up all claim to be Frances Dalrymple's husband!---- No; I could not bear to think of being released from my engagement merely to save my own head from the scaffold. Honour and pride alike forbade that. So I wrote in answer to Sir Bernard's proposal, that if my wife could truthfully say that it was her own unbiassed wish that the marriage should be broken off, I was ready to give my consent; but upon that condition alone. I did not allude to the hopes he had held out of using his interest with the Government on my behalf, nor did I say anything of Oliver's friendship with me; for somehow I shrank from the least approach to what I considered the ignominy of pleading for my life. But when the letter was despatched, and day after day passed on without a word of news having reached my ears concerning my wife or any of her family, I must own that I felt intensely sick at heart. I had been in peril of death over and over again, but never before had it seemed so close and so real as now. Pain and death are not so fearful when one only looks forward to them vaguely, as possible at any time. It is knowing the exact moment--feeling that it will inevitably come, and cannot be put off by any human power whatever--this is the ordeal which is hard to pass through with unfaltering courage.

'I stood at the window of my prison, gazing out on the river below. Escape was utterly out of the question. My exploit two years ago, when I triumphantly bore off my friend Will Delamere from the Tower, was too well remembered to leave the remotest chance for me of repeating that feat on my own account! Besides, I had no fellow-conspirator outside the walls. Will could never have done it alone. Oh, if Oliver did but know of my danger! Not that he could really have done anything to help me, but I should at least have had one friend to stand by me during these last few days of my life. But Oliver would hear nothing of my fate till all was over. This trouble must be gone through unflinchingly, without one soul who cared about me to say a word of sympathy or comfort. I was still gazing abstractedly at the river, absorbed in these melancholy thoughts, when footsteps outside the door and the well-known jangle of keys aroused me. I looked round, rather expecting to see the chaplain, who had promised to pay me a visit in the course of the day. It was not the chaplain, however, who stood before me, when, after sundry clicking of locks and grating of bolts, the heavy door was pushed open at last. The two figures upon whom I gazed, with dazzled, astonished eyes, were those of Oliver and Frances Dalrymple. For a moment I stood overwhelmed and speechless with surprise, and Frances also was silent. Her face was half concealed by her hood, and her hand was trembling on her brother's arm.

'"Algernon," cried Oliver, grasping my hand eagerly, "who would have thought of our next meeting being here?"

'"Who indeed?" I gasped out, still in a trance of bewilderment. "In sooth, Oliver, I little thought of our ever meeting again at all; but----" I paused and glanced at the graceful little figure clinging to his side.

'"Come, Fan, speak to him. Tell him the good news yourself," urged Oliver, looking down at her with a half smile, and trying to draw her nearer to me. "Nay, child, he shall not hear a word from me. You have the best right to tell it; and he will welcome it more from his wife's lips than----"

'"Oliver, how can you be so cruel?" she burst out impetuously. "He shall not be kept in this suspense. My Lord Desmond, you are saved. The King has granted you a pardon, and you are free to leave the Tower whenever it pleases you."

'A tumult of mixed feelings came rushing over me when I looked into her sweet, eager face. She had left her brother's arm, and stood before me with a beautiful crimson flush on her cheeks, and her dark eyes glistening with tears, as they had done on that morning of our last, meeting in the Palace.

'"Saved! and on Sir Bernard's conditions?" I stammered out, hardly knowing what I said, while a cold pang of doubt and fear shot across me. But I did not need Oliver's emphatic "No, no; Sir Bernard has naught to do with it. 'Tis Fan who has managed all;" for Frances' reproachful eyes had answered my question, and before her brother had done speaking, her hands were clasped in mine, and the promise so lightly spoken in those childish days at Horsemandown was solemnly repeated now. Frances and I were husband and wife, until death us should part.

* * * * * * * * * *

'A few weeks after, my wife and I were sailing out of the mouth of the Thames, on board a vessel bound for Altona, and Frances, for the first time in her life looked out upon the sea. It was with very wistful eyes that she watched the shores of England growing fainter and fainter to her sight, for she had never left them before; and now she was an exile's wife, and might possibly wander over half the countries of Europe before she saw her native land again. The pardon which she had striven so hard to obtain had not been granted without the proviso that her husband should leave the country at once, and for ever; and without hesitation she had agreed to leave her own home and kindred and to share the future--which to her had once looked so brilliant--with a man whose prospects were already sufficiently blighted, but which without her would be hopelessly dreary indeed.

'Sir Bernard was very loth to let her go; but as the marriage could only have been annulled by our mutual consent, he had no choice but to be reconciled to it. He and I parted good friends; and he showed far more affection for his daughter, and sorrow at bidding her farewell, than I had ever believed him capable of feeling. But perhaps the hardest matter to both of us was the saying good-bye to Oliver, who, on his unexpected return from Holland high in the King's favour, had done a great deal towards overcoming his father's dislike to our marriage. Very many years passed by before we saw his face again.

'It was not until late in Queen Anne's reign that the sentence of my banishment was reversed, and my forfeited estates restored.

'Need I say that the first days of our return to England were spent with Sir Oliver Dalrymple, now the master of Horsemandown, where Frances and I smiled over the remembrance of our first meeting, and knelt together once more in the little parish church which had been the scene of our wedding so very long ago?'

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