CHAPTER VI

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!

On the evening of the fourth day after the defeat at Beachy Head, the Queen, who would abate none of her state during this time of anxiety, but rather kept it more splendidly, as a besieged general will hang out all his flags when his garrison becomes scant, so as to defy and deceive the enemy, held court in the most sumptuous gallery of Whitehall.

The land was full of panic, of terror, of mistrust, but the spirit of the people had risen to the need. The city of London had responded finely to the Queen's appeal; a hundred thousand pounds had been paid into the treasury, she had to-day reviewed the train-bands in Hyde Park and received an address assuring her of the loyalty of the capital.

The spirit she showed made her suddenly popular. The distant King and the Dutch were viewed with more favour. Hatred of the French was an emotion powerful enough to overcome all lesser dislikes, and the whole nation, Whig and Tory, Protestant and Catholic, shook with rage at the part Lord Torrington had made the British navy play.

It was apparent to all the world that he, irritated by orders he conceived were devised by his rival Russell, had sacrificed the Dutch, whom he believed were so unpopular that no outcry would be raised at their destruction, to the English.

Admiral Evertgen, the admiral of the States, had, with heroic valour, fought his ships all day long against the overwhelming armament of France, while the English fleet looked on, and only came forward at nightfall to tow the disabled Dutch hulks away and destroy them at Plymouth.

Popular fury rose high. The London crowd would gladly have torn Torrington limb from limb. Mary sent him to the Tower and dispatched a special envoy to the States with the best and most flattering apology she could devise; her very blood burnt with shame that her husband's people should be thus sacrificed and her own behave so basely; she ordered the wounded Dutch seamen to be tended in the English hospitals, and wrote a letter of compliment to the gallant Evertgen.

She had, in every direction, done what she could, and the spirit of England had responded; but the situation was still acute, might yet turn to utter disaster, and though people might shout for her in the street, there was little but enmity, jealousy, and opposition among those by whom she was personally surrounded.

Even her own sister was under the influence of the Marlboroughs, her enemy, and the Catholic Queen Dowager had no love for her; it was these two women she was watching as she sat in her lonely weariness beneath a candelabra of fifty coloured candles.

Anne, beautiful, but stout and sullen, lacking all vivacity and charm, was making knots near the gilt chair of the little dark Portuguese lady who had been the wife of the second Charles.

Catherine very seldom came to court, and would not have been there now, as Mary reflected with a swelling heart, had the last news been of victory instead of defeat.

The Princess, who lost no opportunity of vexing her sister, was attired in the free and gorgeous costume of the last two reigns, in defiant contrast to the decorous modes the Queen had made fashionable, and Catherine of Braganza wore a stiff farthingale of brown brocade sewn with pearls.

Presently Anne, becoming aware that Mary was watching her, broke into challenging laughter, which rang false enough at this juncture.

Mary hung her head; it seemed terrible that the wretched family divisions to which she had been forced to be a party should be increased by this breach between her only sister and herself. On a sudden impulse she sent her new maid of honour, Basilea de Marsac, with a message requesting Anne's company.

The Princess tossed her head and came reluctantly; she was at no pains whatever to conceal her rebellious attitude towards the throne.

Mary greeted her gently.

"It would be more fitting if you would give me some of your company, Anne; Queen Catherine's sentiments are well noised abroad--you need not--laugh--with her at such a time."

Anne sank down on the other end of the settee; the ladies behind the Queen withdrew, leaving the sisters alone; the musicians were playing a monotonous little march in the gallery.

"We should display a united front now," continued Mary unsteadily.

"I don't know what you mean, Madam," answered Anne almost insolently; she never used any manner of respect to the Queen; she considered that she was of as much importance; she never ceased to flaunt that she was the mother of the child who would be the future King of England.

Mary gazed at her pouting, overblown comeliness with sad eyes.

"You will not understand," she answered. "You take a pleasure in doing everything contrary to what I do----"

Anne smoothed her grey satin skirt with a plump white hand.

"Our tastes are different," she said.

Mary was silent. Anne kept her languid eyes downcast, then jerked out--

"I have writ to the King for the vacant Garter for my Lord Marlborough. I hope Your Majesty will use your influence?"

Mary coloured hotly.

"You have writ to the King in Ireland on such a matter?"

"And so hath the Prince. It is allowable to write to the King, I hope?"

"You should have spoken to me first," answered Mary, with trembling lips. "I have no mind that the King should be vexed with these things. I do not think he meaneth the Garter for Lord Marlborough."

Anne flung up her head with a force that set her huge pearl earrings quivering.

"And who better deserveth it, I should like to know? I suppose it is meant for Lord Portland, or some other Dutchman?"

"Anne, you are infatuate to speak so. The services of my Lord Marlborough have been well rewarded."

At that Anne burst out with what had evidently been her secret grievance.

"He is slighted on every possible occasion--'tis he who should have reviewed the militia this afternoon!"

Mary turned angrily.

"This is my Lady Marlborough her doing; she put this into your head, Anne, and it is too much."

"Yes, it is too much," answered Anne, "that Your Majesty should have such a dislike to my friend."

"Her insolence," exclaimed Mary, "is beyond all bearing. I have it on good report that she hath spoken of the King with great disrespect."

"She ain't the only one if she hath," retorted Anne. "His Majesty ain't so popular----"

"I command you stop," said Mary, in a cold tone of deep anger.

Anne submitted sulkily.

"La, I meant no harm."

"You go too far," answered Mary in a low controlled tone. "His Majesty thinketh it ungenerous to quarrel with a woman, or your behaviour would have been put a stop to before. I, perhaps, shall not be so long enduring. I cannot and will not take the defiance of my Lady Marlborough--no, nor your incivility either, Anne."

"I don't suppose Your Majesty would hesitate to clap me up if you dared," said Anne, lashed by the attack on her favourite. "There is one of your relations in the Tower, and where the uncle is the sister may follow; but I warn Your Majesty that I have the Parliament behind me----"

Again Mary interrupted.

"Leave me until you can command yourself."

Anne hesitated, but the music that had screened their talk had ceased, and beyond a point Mary always quelled her. She rose, courtsied haughtily, and withdrew to the other end of the gallery, where Lady Marlborough--a gorgeous blonde shrew with a vulgar voice--was playing comet with Prince George for partner.

Mary closed her eyes for a second. This sordid quarrel with her sister, mainly based on demands for money, was the last bitterness of her position; she had tried every means of conciliation in vain. Lady Marlborough's hold on her puppet was too firm, and Anne but took advantage of any kindness from the Queen to press for an addition to her already huge allowance.

The violins played a gavotte. Mary sat motionless, listening to the subdued volume of talk by which she was surrounded, and thinking of that far-distant day when she had danced with her husband in this very room--a week or so before her marriage.

She recalled how she had enjoyed dancing, and wondered to think how dead that passion was.

"I used to think," she thought, "that a dance measure would lure me from my grave, and now the gayest melody written will not move me."

She gazed over her shoulder at her reflection in the tall mirror against the wall to the left; she beheld a fair image, in yellow silk and diamonds, with a very proud carriage. A Queen, young and beautiful--the description sounded like a favoured creature from one of those fairy tales she used to read; she knew the reality--a tired woman, unutterably lonely, estranged from all her family, childless, and forlorn.

Queen Catherine came to take her leave.

"No news yet from Ireland?" she asked, in her awkward English.

Mary courteously rose before the woman who had been Queen in Whitehall when she was a child.

"None, Madam."

The Queen Dowager hesitated a moment, then said--

"I have not failed of late to put up prayers for His Majesty's good success."

"I thank you, Madam."

Catherine of Braganza pulled at her curling feather fan and laughed.

"We are both in a strange position, are we not?"

"The positions God put us in," said Mary coldly. She wondered why the other woman paused to talk.

The Queen Dowager continued to smile over her fan.

"I think to go back to Portugal."

"That must be as Your Majesty pleaseth."

"England is no longer the same to me."

Mary's hand tightened on the rich back of the settle. She read perfectly well the scorn of the Stewart's wife for the usurper and the Protestant.

"I find Whitehall a little dull," continued Catherine, with a malicious twist of her lip. "Geneva bands and black coats are a strange sight in these halls----"

"Certainly they were not seen here in the days of my Lady Portsmouth," flashed Mary.

The little Portuguese winced slightly, but ignored the thrust.

"I do not blame Your Majesty," she said. "You are not so fortunate in your court as I was; the Dutch," she raised her thin shoulders in a shrug, "do not make the best of courtiers----"

"No," answered Mary impetuously; "but they make good husbands, Madam."

Catherine made no attempt to turn this hit. She put her hand to her dark throat, and her large melancholy eyes filled with tears. She answered the thought and not the words.

"I cared as much as you do, all the same;" she said, "and I shall always be a Jacobite for his--worthless--sake."

"Forgive me," murmured Mary instantly. "I had no right. But do you be charitable. I am in great trouble, Madam, and very much alone."

Catherine lifted her small olive face with a kind of defiant brightness.

"We have that loneliness in common, Madam. If you or I had an heir it would have all been different. I shall say a mass for your husband his safety. Good night, Your Majesty."

She swept her grave foreign courtsey and retired, followed by her silent duennas. Mary stood pressing her handkerchief to her lips, and felt the whole pageant of people, lights, speech, music, swing past her like reflections on troubled water--broken, scattered without substance or meaning.

No news came.

She dismissed the Court presently and went to her rooms; it was late, long past ten o'clock, yet she would not go to bed, but sat in her cabinet writing to the King. Sheet after sheet she covered with news, hopes, fears, love, entreaties for God's blessings--all her heart indeed laid out before her one confidant.

The candlelight hurt her eyes, weaker of late with work and tears, and at last she folded up the letter unfinished. The express did not go till the morning, and she hoped that by then she might have the long-looked-for news from Ireland.

When she rose from her desk she was utterly tired, yet could not rest--there was so much to do.

Her letter to Admiral Evertgen, which she had written with great pains in Dutch, had been returned as unintelligible, and now she must write again in English, which language the Admiral understood perfectly, it seemed. There was the question of the command of the Fleet on her mind; Russell and Monmouth had been met at Canterbury by the news of the disaster of Beachy Head, and now were back in London, hot against Torrington; Mary feared that the King would be vexed with her for having let them leave the council, yet she must again send some one to the Fleet, now without a commander. Her choice had fallen on Pembroke, who was an admiral, and Devonshire, whom she could trust, and thereupon Caermarthen had taken umbrage, and it had been a weary work of tact and sweetness to prove to him that he was indispensable in London and could not be spared--yet perhaps she had been wrong, and she should have let him go.

All these lesser anxieties crowded on her weary soul, aching with the desire for news from the King, and, as she left her cabinet and came into her bedchamber, a profound melancholy overthrew her gallant spirit.

Only two of her ladies were up--Madame de Marsac and Madame Nienhuys. Mary told them to go to bed, and cast herself into the window-seat and pulled the curtains apart from before the windows open on the warm soft night.

"It is Your Majesty who should go to bed," said Madame Nienhuys firmly.

Mary shook her head.

"I cannot. I cannot sleep until I get a letter."

"You neither sleep nor eat," protested the Dutch lady.

"I am very well," smiled Mary sadly. "Go to bed, like a good creature----"

"Indeed, Madam, I will not leave you in this state."

"Have you been with me so long that you become disobedient? Very well, put out some of the candles--the light hurts my eyes."

Basilea de Marsac rose softly and extinguished all the candles, save those on the mantelshelf. The large rich chamber was full of grateful shadow. Mary's yellow gown gleamed secretively like gold through a veil.

She took the diamonds from her neck and arms and gave them to Madame Nienhuys. She pulled off her rings slowly, and dropped them into her lap, looking the while out on to the July dark, that seemed to her to be painted with the menacing forces of war, flags, banners hanging bloody to their poles, the hot, smoking mouths of cannon, the glitter of armour through the dust--her husband's army and her father's struggling together to the death.

She rose so suddenly that the rings fell and rolled all over the floor.

"I think I will go to bed after all," she said faintly.

They undressed her in silence and left her wide-eyed in the great crimson bed, canopied and plumed and enriched with the arms of England.

When they had gone she lay for a while quite still. There was no moon, and she could not distinguish a single object in the room, and only uncertainly the dim spaces of the window.

All that had seemed small, petty, and wretched in the daytime seemed a thousand times more mean and unworthy now. She was haunted by the stiff little figure of Queen Catherine, whose personality had suddenly flashed out on her, by the fair sullen image of Anne, and the vulgar enmity of Lady Marlborough. She was tortured by the idea that she had done everything wrong....

She sat up in bed and locked her hands over her heart.

"I must not despair--God will not let me despair," she clung to that word, "God--ah, He knoweth best--He seeth what man cannot see--therefore He did not give me children, knowing I could not have endured this if their safety had been at stake."

The Palace clock struck one. Like an echo came the bell of the Abbey Church, then the dead silence again.

The Queen rose from her bed and made her way lightly to the dressing-table. After a little fumbling she found the tinderbox and struck a light.

The silver table, the enamel, jade, and gold boxes glittered into points of light. In the depths of the mirror she saw her own face lit by the little flame she held.

It flared out between her cold fingers. She struck another and lit one of the tall candles in the red copper stands.

By the dim wavering light she found her scarlet shoes and a little mantle of fox's fur that she put on over her muslin night-dress. She then took up the candlestick, which was so heavy that it made her wrist shake, and quietly left the room, which opened into the cabinet.

Here she paused at the red lac desk, unlocked it with the gold key she wore round her neck, and took out a packet tied with orange ribbon.

These were the letters she had received from the King since his departure. She looked at them tenderly, took up her candle again, and passed on through an antechamber to a private door that led straight into the chapel.

Her feeble light gave her glimpses of the lofty walls panelled in cedar wood, the majestic altar of white marble gilt, and the great painting brought from Italy--all heavenly blue, and deep crimson, and angelic faces breaking from rosy clouds.

Mary went to the altar steps, set the candle on the topmost one, then fell on her knees with her letters pressed to her heart.

As she prayed she bent lower and lower till her beautiful head touched the marble, and there it rested while she sobbed out her humble prayers for her husband, her father, for England, for her own poor tired soul.

She grew cold as she lay across the altar steps, and peaceful in her heart. She thought God was not so displeased with her; a confidence rose in her bosom that he would not let His cause fail though her weakness....

A gentle confusion came over her senses, and she fell into a kind of swoon; when this passed she found that her candle had burnt to the socket and gone out, and that a blue dawn was lighting the glowing arms of England in the painted glass windows.

She got to her feet, shivering but calm, and went back stealthily through the vast silent rooms, filled with the early sun, and so reached her bed; and, for the first time for weeks, fell placidly asleep. Next morning when she woke she was very silent; but, as her ladies thought, more at ease.

She had hidden her letters under her pillow, and when she was dressed slipped them into her gown.

As she left her apartments on the way to the chapel she was met by Lord Nottingham.

The news from Ireland at last!

"The King is safe, Madam," said my lord, in pity of her face.

She stood speechless; those about her were little less moved. The silence hung heavy.

"His late Majesty is also safe," added my lord delicately.

She spoke then.

"I--I thank you."

She tore open her letters, but could not read them.

"Oh, tell me, sir," she said hoarsely.

"Madam, the King hath had a great victory at Boyne Water. Ireland is conquered."

Even as he spoke the bells broke out from a thousand steeples and the guns of the Tower boomed triumph.

"The news is just abroad," said Nottingham.

Mary flushed into a glorious exaltation.

"The _King_ hath redeemed us all!" she cried, with inexpressible pride. "The _King_ hath saved us!"

"Not the King alone, Madam," answered my lord, with a flush on his shallow face--"listen to these----"

From without came the sound of wild joyous murmurs from the crowd that had gathered to hear the news. As it sped from mouth to mouth a frenzy of relief and triumph shook the people. They burst into one shout that drowned the cannon and the bells--

"Long live the Queen! God save and bless the Queen!"