Part 5

And, saying this, she left the astonished prince standing in the chamber like a statue. Recovering himself, he left the castle precipitately, without seeing the earl, biting his lips, and muttering curses against Ramorgny, who had deceived him, and Elizabeth, who had insulted him. As he proceeded on his way homewards, he bethought himself of the different characters Ramorgny gave the two ladies; and wishing to give him credit for having confounded the attributes applicable to each, he resolved to see Elizabeth Douglas; and, changing his course, proceeded in the direction of Castle Douglas.

His arrival at the residence of the old earl, who had contributed to place his family on the throne, brought into the mind of the prince some recollections which evolved feelings which were deeply planted in his nature, and only prevented from producing useful and amiable effects, by lawless habits borrowed from dissolute companions. With his mind elevated by noble aspirations, and high hopes of being one day an ornament to his country, which he sincerely loved, he was in an excellent mood for appreciating the virtues and beauty of a woman who could, as a consort, make him a better and a happier man, and, by a necessary consequence, a better governor, and subsequently a good king. He met Elizabeth Douglas at a distance from the castle, and introducing himself in the easy and elegant manner of which no man of his time was more capable, was delighted with her conversation, and inspired by her personal charms. Proceeding together to the castle, they were met at the gate by the old earl, who complimented Rothsay, as well as his daughter, by saying that all he had sighed for was that they should meet and be able to appreciate each other's qualities; for he was assured that one hour's conversation between persons so accomplished, actuated by such motives, and inspired with such sentiments, would do more to procure an attachment than a year's diplomacy and court intrigue.

Rothsay willingly remained for some time at the castle, and had frequent opportunities of conversing with Elizabeth alone, and of appreciating her noble qualities.

"I had got thee misrepresented to me," said the prince; "but I believe unintentionally, and by a transposition of names. What would Elizabeth Douglas think, if she were informed that she was likened to the wife of Socrates, and the slipper-castigator of Hercules?"

"I should conceive that the reporter did not know me," answered Elizabeth, "or wished to deceive. I am not an admirer of either of these ladies, of whom I have before heard; but I plume not myself upon any other quality than a wish to use my wealth and station for the benefit of those who, though better and holier than I am, have, by the force of dire necessity, been obliged to bow their necks under the yoke of poverty and misfortune. Yet I fear all I can take credit for is a wish to do good. My actions and my aspirations have not that accordance I could wish; but, by the blessing of God, I hope to improve in my self-discipline; and, in the meantime, I trust no one will be able to accuse me of injuring the humblest of God's creatures."

"How seldom do these sentiments reach the ears of royalty," said Rothsay, whose heart swelled with his genuine sentiments, long concealed, "and especially from the lips of nobility! Yet, pleasant as it is to contemplate goodness in mortals born of sin, it is difficult to estimate the extent of the influence of generous sympathy when it is found in the bosom of beauty. Do not pain me by saying I flatter thee. At present I am not the gay son of King Robert; but by the wand of enchantment changed for a season--would it were for ever!--into a sober reasoner on the rights and claims of suffering humanity."

"Report hath not belied thee, good prince, though it hath me; for I have ever heard that thy sentiments were generous--though, excuse my boldness, they were not allowed to be called forth into action by the scenes of common life. Believe a simple maiden, when she taketh the liberty humbly to suggest, that royalty itself may be more ennobled by one act of charity than by a glorious victory."

"Sweet maiden," cried the prince, seizing rapturously her hands, "thou shalt be my counsellor. Thy sentiments shall be enforced by thy beauty, and my heart and my exchequer be equally under the power of thy generous feelings."

By such conversations, Rothsay gained an insight into the heart of his mistress. He recurred frequently to the report of Ramorgny, and hinted to the earl that he had found his daughter the very reverse of what she had been represented to him. The earl paid particular attention to the hint, and seemed inclined to insinuate that Ramorgny might have had some cause to misrepresent Elizabeth. The duke, having proceeded so far, felt his curiosity excited to get an explanation of the earl's remark; and, upon further question, ascertained that, according to the earl's opinion, which had been corroborated by his daughter, Ramorgny had been inspired with a strong passion for Elizabeth, which showed itself in various forms, and was the cause of his protracted stay at the castle. This discovery changed, in a great measure, all the prince's feelings towards his old friend. He had thus convicted him of deception, practised with a view to his injury, and for the purpose of gratifying a passion cherished for the intended wife of his friend and his prince. Amidst all their departures from the rules of sober life, the prince had never himself been guilty, or patronised in his friend, any breach of truth and good faith; and this was the first occasion on which this great cementing principle of mankind had been sacrificed to private interest. Seriously, however, as he felt it, he resolved upon stating it to Ramorgny in such a way as might not produce his enmity; for he had seen enough of him, to be satisfied that he was more capable of forming a worse enemy than he was of becoming a true friend.

While the prince had thus been engaged in the south, Ramorgny had been in the north, enjoying his favourite pastime of hunting the red deer among the hills surrounding the water of Islay. The friends arrived in Edinburgh about the same time, ignorant of each other's motions--Ramorgny still labouring under the effect of the passion with which Elizabeth Douglas had inspired him, and for a partial relief from whose engrossing influence he had gone to the hills; and the duke smarting under the pain of a breach of confidence and friendship in one on whom he had so long placed his affections, and bestowed many favours.

"The hills of Scotland," said Ramorgny, "are exquisite renovators of a town-worn constitution. The roes of the Highlands supply the strength which has been wasted on the town hinds. Thou hadst better have been with me, exerting the powers of a master over the inhabitants of the forest, than stooping to the counsel of that grave batch of seniors appointed to advise with thee--that is, to dictate to thee--on the affairs of the state. Believe me, prince, thou shouldst cashier these greybeards. Thy own judgment, aided by mine, is quite sufficient to enable thee to govern this small barbarous kingdom."

"Thy advice," replied the prince, smiling, with some indication of satire, "if followed, by rejecting the counsel of my constituted advisers, would be an advice to reject advice contrary to thy advice; for my council recommend me to marry Elizabeth Douglas, and to reject the March. Dost thou think that any of the greybeards--Albany is too ambitious to marry again--have any private intentions on Bess of Dunbar. If I thought that, I would reject the Douglas, and betake myself to the March."

"And thou wouldst act sagely in so doing," replied Ramorgny, who did not yet see the prince's satire. "If any one of these counsellors act from such a motive--and I am not sure of Arran--he ought to lose his mistress and his head at the same time."

"Sayest thou so, Ramorgny?" replied the prince. "Is it thy heart that so speaketh, or thy judgment? Thou hast recommended me to the March, whom I have seen and conversed with, and well know, and hast endeavoured to terrify me from the Douglas, whom I have also seen, and can well appreciate. Art thou quite sure thy advice is purer, sounder, truer, and wiser, than that of my council?"

This question produced an evident effect upon Ramorgny. He endeavoured to escape the prince's eye; but he found that no easy matter. Rothsay kept looking at him intensely, and plainly showed that he was master of the secret purpose for which he had endeavoured to precipitate him into a connection that would have made him miserable for life. It was now, however, too late for Ramorgny to retreat; and, boldly facing his danger, he replied--

"Thy question carries with it more than meets the ear. If I depreciated Elizabeth Douglas, and overrated Elizabeth Dunbar, a spirit of liberal construction would give me credit for having been myself deceived."

"Stop!" said the prince, interrupting him. "I did not say that thou didst depreciate the one and overrate the other. Why take guilt to thyself?"

"By St Duthos," cried Ramorgny, who now saw he was caught, and resolved upon another tack, "it is time now to be grave! Will that cursed spirit of devilish frolic which I learned from thee cling to me, even after the dreadful apparition of the first grey hair, which this morning appeared to me in my glass? But thou art thyself to blame. A master of mirth thyself--the prime minister of Momus, as well as of King Robert, and my professor in the science of fun--wert thou unable to discover, in my outrageous and elaborate description of the two damsels, the traces of the pencil--for Momus could paint--of the laughing god? If thou wert not, didst thou not deserve the harmless deception? Say, now, good prince, condemn, if thou darest, thy scholar of a proficiency which thou hast taught. Struck by thy own sword of lath, wilt thou amputate the offending hand? Say, and if thou wilt, strike. A philosopher would laugh--what shall the merry-making Rothsay do?"

The bold, dashing, laughing manner in which Ramorgny delivered this speech, joined to a recollection of the high-flown and not serious account he had given of the two damsels, drove out of the duke's mind the suspicions roused by the communications of Earl Douglas, and with it his anger. The boisterous good-humour of his friend carried him along with him; and, answering the knight in his own way, he cried--

"Why, laugh too, perhaps, good Ramorgny. Thou hast certainly defeated me in the first instance, but I have conquered thee in the second. I found in the women what thou hast described them; only I was obliged to substitute the name of Elizabeth Douglas for Bess of Dunbar. That descendant of old Agnes is most certainly the devil, or at least his viceregent. What dost thou think she recommended to me, to increase the powers of my manhood? Why, milk and panado! The only woman, she thought, I would be safe in the keeping of was my mother Arabella; the age, of which she considered me a fair example, had retrograded from the days of the sacking of Roxburgh by her father, into a state of mature infancy; and as for our talents for war, she would scarcely allow us the mighty power of infanticide. In short, thy description of Elizabeth Douglas applied to her; and, when I say that thy description of her applied to the other, why should I say that I was charmed with the fair Douglas? Thou hast painted better than I can. She must be my wife; and I am glad that my council, my mother, and myself, thus agree on a point which they believe concerns the nation, but which I opine concerns only myself."

Ramorgny was at the moment well pleased to perceive that he had thus got out of the scrape; but to have his snare twisted round his own limbs--to have his description of his own lover adopted by a rival, in describing her perfections, and thus to have, in a manner, precipitated his own ruin--for he could not survive the marriage of Elizabeth Douglas with another--touched him, as an accomplished intriguer, on the tenderest parts of his nature. A second time deprived of the object of his affections by his own disciple in the art of love, he determined that, at least, there should never be a third opportunity for inflicting upon him such degradation. His revenge deepened, but his smiles and apparent good-humour quadrated with the increased necessity of concealing his designs. These and their fatal issue are unfortunately but too well known.

Untold to Rothsay, certain schemes had, in the meantime, been in agitation between the Earl of March and a party at court, the object of which was to get a match brought about between Rothsay and Elizabeth of Dunbar. These, for a time, wrought so favourably, that March, who never knew what had taken place between Rothsay and his daughter, entertained the strongest hopes of success. He had offered an immense dowry, which the great extent of his estates near the Borders enabled him to pay, as the price of the connection with royalty; and it would seem that he had received from head-quarters strong pledges that his wishes would be gratified. Ramorgny secretly joined the March party; but all their endeavours could not prevent the final triumph of the Douglas, who had also offered a large sum with his daughter, and who was, besides, backed by the queen, and by the secret wishes of Rothsay himself.

The nuptials of the prince with Elizabeth Douglas were celebrated with great rejoicings at Edinburgh. They were graced by the presence of the king and the queen, and all the principal nobility of the land. Among the rest were to be seen two persons destined to supply afterwards the materials of an extraordinary chapter in the history of Scotland; the shadows of which, if presentiment had thrown them before, would have wrapped the gay scene of the marriage in the gloomy mantle of the dismal Atropos. The first of these was Rothsay's uncle Albany, who, ever since he was displaced from his governorship by the faction who awarded to the young prince the lieutenantcy of the kingdom, had prayed fervently for the death of the royal stripling, that had, with precocious audacity, dared to compete with disciplined age in the management of the affairs of the kingdom. The other was Ramorgny, who appeared at the celebration of the nuptials, dressed in the gayest style, and wearing on his lips the fallacious smile of the treacherous courtier, while his heart was filled with rage and jealousy, and his fancy teemed with schemes of deadly revenge. The picture, to one who could have seen into futurity, would have presented the extraordinary foreground of an apparent universal joy, filling all hearts and making all glad; and, close behind, the grinning furies of revenge writhing in their agonies of a wild desire to break in upon the unconscious victims, and spread death and desolation where pleasure was alone to be found.

Ramorgny, who knew the volatile nature of the prince, waited patiently until the pleasures of the first moon were experienced and exhausted. He cultivated more than formerly the good opinion of one who retained no longer any suspicion of the treachery of his friend. Ramorgny knew the prince's sentiments of his uncle--that there existed between the two relatives an inimical feeling, amounting, on the side of the uncle, to a hatred which, derived from thwarted political ambition, would not hesitate at short and ready measures of removing the object to which it was directed, and, on that of the nephew, to a youthful impatience of the surveillance and restraint which his late governor had exercised over him, and was still ready to employ, when his selfish purposes required their application. That Rothsay, who, in reality, possessed a noble and generous spirit, would stoop to any base purpose to get quit of the authority and interference of his uncle, Ramorgny did not suppose; but he hoped so far to implicate the thoughtless prince in a scheme of his devising, as to make his act appear, by misconstruction, of such a nature to Albany, as would give his revenge the specious appearance of self-defence, and accelerate the fate of his victim.

In accordance with this scheme, Ramorgny continued, as he had done formerly, to fill the prince's mind with details of his uncle's inimical feelings towards him; which was of the more easy accomplishment, that the prince was already aware of his uncle's disposition. The choleric youth listened to these tales with impatience, and often allowed himself to be hurried into extravagant expressions of indignation, which a servant of Ramorgny's, a servile creature, ready to commit any crime for money, was instructed, when occasion offered, to note and remember. For a time, Ramorgny limited his details to such acts as occasionally occurred, and which the unrestrainable hatred of Albany furnished in such abundance, that he found no great necessity to have recourse to invention, unless it were, indeed, to add the colouring, which was generally of the most extravagant kind, and best suited to reach the heart of the prince, and influence his anger and indignation.

Farther Ramorgny could not venture for a long time to go. The generous youth sometimes got wearied with the recital of his uncle's indignities; and, willing to leave him to his own heart, kept on in the tenor of his own path; which, however, was none of the straightest--his aberrations after his marriage being, as before, the result of every new fancy which such men as Ramorgny, acting on an excited and irregular imagination, chose, by their consummate arts, to introduce into his mind. This did not suit Ramorgny. He required stronger materials to work with, and did not hesitate to use them. It is easy to work for evil in a heart originally corrupt; but to corrupt, and then to seduce, is a work of time; and it is to the credit of human nature that virtue is often strong enough to maintain its place against the attacks of the most insidious schemers.

It was now Ramorgny's effort to rouse the suspicions of the prince as to his personal safety from the designs of his uncle. He invented a story of a conversation which had been overheard between Albany and a ruffian often employed by him to execute his purposes of revenge. The import of this conversation was, that Albany, having been superseded in his office of governor, had resolved upon acquiring it again, and that he could not succeed in that resolution so long as the prince was alive--that he accordingly hinted to the ruffian that it would be pleasant to him if he heard that the duke no longer lived--and that, for such information, a reward would be given sufficient to stimulate the most scrupulous executioner that ever aided an unhappy man across the Stygian stream. All this was communicated to Rothsay by Ramorgny in a whisper, and with an appearance, tone, and manner suited to the awful nature of the intelligence. The duke believed the story, and, bursting forth into an extravagant sally of indignation, cried--

"It is time that princes of the blood-royal should exert the power in defence of themselves, which is intrusted to them for the defence of others, when villains, in broad day, lay schemes for their lives. I can plainly see, and have long seen, that this man and I cannot live in the same age. Scotland is too narrow for us; and the viceroyal chair must be polluted with blood! Yet shall age supplant youth? Is it meet that time should go backwards, and that, by force and through blood, the order of nature should be changed? It shall not be so! If one is to fall, nature herself points out the victim--and that victim is Albany!"

These words, uttered in anger, and intended merely to indicate the injustice of Albany's scheme, and the necessity of self-defence, in the event of its being attempted to be carried into execution, were carefully noted by Ramorgny's creature, who was in hearing. They were plainly capable, however, of another construction by a person who did not hear the rest of the conversation, and understand their application. They might mean that Rothsay intended to get his uncle out of the way--a construction which did not ill accord with the feelings which existed in the prince's mind against the disturber of his peace, if these had been formed in another bosom, but unjustified by the prince's noble disposition, which would have despised any underhand scheme to rid himself of his bitterest enemy. The words were, however, uttered, and noted, and remembered; and they were not uttered in vain.

Ramorgny having thus procured evidence of the prince's designs against the life of his uncle, repaired to Albany, and narrated to him the statements made by the duke, and referred him, for corroboration, to his servant. Albany wished nothing more ardently than this communication; and, even without it, he would have been glad to have joined Ramorgny in any scheme for the removal of his rival. Other enemies were brought into action. Sir William Lindsay of Rossie, whose sister the duke had loved and deserted; and Archibald Douglas, the brother of Elizabeth, piqued by some private feeling, were willing to aid in the death of one who had courted the relative of one of them to desert her, and married that of the other to treat her with neglect. That the prince was unkind or unfaithful to his wife, who bore a reputation of being so fair and amiable, has been treated by some historians as a mere fable, resorted to by the unnatural earl, her brother, as a palliative of conduct which it was not suited to render in the slightest degree less revolting. There is reason, however, to suppose that Lindsay had some cause for his resentment in the desertion of his sister, who loved the duke, and never recovered from the effects of his unfaithful conduct.

The first project of these conspirators was worthy of the talents of the individuals who had determined to prostitute the best of the gifts of God to destroy one of his creatures. It was resolved to work upon the king in such a way as to procure from him some token of his disapprobation of the conduct of his son. It is difficult now to ascertain how this was effected, as there is no doubt that Rothsay still held a strong claim on the affections of his father. The result, however, shows that the means must have been of an extraordinary nature; for King Robert was got to sign a writ for the confinement of the prince. It is very probable that nothing more was intended by this than to show the king's displeasure, which would gradually relax as the slight punishment wrought the expected amendment. It has been doubted whether such writ was ever truly signed by the king; and surely it is not difficult to suppose that the men who, holding the gates of the palace in their hands, could admit or deny whom they chose to the royal presence, would not stop at forgery which they could conceal, if they had made up their minds to murder, which has seldom or ever been successfully concealed. But it matters not, in so far as regards the fate of the prince, whether the writ was genuine or not. It was acted upon, and the unfortunate son of a king was seized by his enemies, Douglas and Ramorgny, lashed in his royal robes to the back of a sorry horse, and hurried through Fife, to a prison adjoining to the palace of Falkland.