Patricia at the inn

AGAIN the King adopted his favourite trick of clapping his hands to his ribs, and shouting his laughter.

“Too absurd, too absurd!” he said. “I protest, Farnham, you make me laugh. You can’t do it, hey? You can’t shoot your King. My dear Farnham, do you really hold that to be so remarkable? Confess, now, did you ever seriously for a moment think you could?”

“I did, Sire, and tried,” said Lord Farnham.

“What a pity you did not recognise your limitations sooner, Farnham,” said the King. “Think of the pother you would have spared yourself.”

“True, Sire,” said Farnham.

“That you should ever have thought that you could have slain your sovereign, my dear Farnham, is the most whimsical thing I ever heard in my life.”

“Not altogether, Sire,” said the young man significantly. “Your Majesty may recall instances of regicide.”

“You should have spared us that, Farnham,” said the King reproachfully. An almost human emotion seemed for once to be in his eyes. They were full of pain.

“I crave your forgiveness, Sire,” said the man in the bed. “I was a little carried away.”

“As you say,” said Charles, “there have been instances of regicide. But it is only the canaille who are guilty of that crime. I do not think gentlemen are addicted to it.”

The young man sank back in his pillows. Observing both him and his wife to be grievously overwrought by what had passed, the King withdrew from the chamber to talk to the landlord below. He promised to return soon.

When the door had closed upon him, and his steps had died away on the stairs, the unhappy young man whispered to the woman:

“My God, I fear I was stark mad!”

“Canst thou forgive me?” said the wife. “I, too, was mad. I did not know what I did, or where I was. I did but know he was the King, the most unfortunate King in all the world. I did but know he was hunted for his life, like some poor wild animal. And when I saw his face, and his eyes shone on me, I think I could have fallen dead in the agony of seeing him. Yes, mine own, I, too, was mad.”

“Curse him!” said the husband. “I would have slain him had I had the power. But when I looked into his face, even with the weapon in my hands, all the little strength within my body suddenly ran out of it. I could not slay him; he was the King.”

“Yes, the King,” said the wife, thrillingly. “Always the King—the most unfortunate King in all the world.”

“There is something about him,” said the husband, wildly; “whether it be his face, his name, his virtues, his vices, his father’s fate, or his own lamentable history, I know not, but there is something about him that even his bitterest enemies are unable to withstand. I was by his rein in Worcester fight, and twice I saw the blow levelled that was to deprive him forever of his kingdom, and twice it did not fall. I can see the look in the eyes of one grim Roundhead even now, as he stood with his pike poised within a foot of the King’s neck. And when, striking, he saw it to be the King, he stayed his weapon in mid-air and directed it upon another. I know not what quality it be within him.”

“It is because the name he bears,” the woman said, “is the noblest and the most ill-fated name that ever a king did bear.”

“Curse him!” said the husband. “I learnt to hate him before to-day.”

A demon was in the young man’s heart. It was probably the fact that his own life could ill-support a scrutiny which lent a poignance to his jealousy; and is it not he the least without taint who is the readiest to cast the stone? The consciousness embittering his spirit that he was in no sense worthy of the woman who watched over him so tenderly, caused him almost fiercely to resent the intrusion of another within her thoughts. He feared the security of his own position there. There is no form of this disease so acute as that which springs from the sufferer’s knowledge of his own inferiority. The King was nobler, handsomer, more alluring to the eyes of a woman than he. His misfortunes and his station made him dreadful in the eyes of a jealous man. He hated the King, not so much for what he had done, as for what he had it in his power to do. It seemed to the young man in the depths of his remorse that Charles had it in his power to bereave him of the only thing in life he cared for.

“Patsy woman,” he said, miserably, “I begged you to let me perish of that inflammation the other night. Oh, why did you not! It would have been better for us all. You know I am not worthy of you; you know I never can be worthy of you, weak fool as I am. It would have been more merciful to let me perish. I should not then have been condemned to lie here helpless in my bed and watch another steal away your love from me. He is a King, I know; but I cannot bear it.”

The woman returned to the bedside and replaced her hand tenderly within his own.

“Foolish child,” she said,—“foolish, jealous child! And yet mine is the blame. I should have ordered my susceptibilities better. He was our King, helpless and without a friend, driven from pillar to post, with never a place of security in which to soothe his weariness. It was the glamour of his unhappiness that overcame me. But, mine own, are you not my king also?”

“You cannot have two,” said the young man. “I would have you choose between us.”

“Then, since you will have it so,” said the woman eagerly, “you are the king I choose, mine own. The other is but the prince in the fairybook; the delicious unreality that obtrudes in the dreams of girls in the middle of the night. You are the true prince of flesh and blood; he, the vague shadow without an entity.”

The husband and wife were drawn together in a caress of reconciliation, when footsteps were heard upon the stairs. They were followed by the entrance of the King.

Now that their hearts were at peace one towards another, Charles’s friends were able to attend to the terrible situation in which all three found themselves. They both observed with something of a shock that, although the King knew his life to hang on a mere thread, he seemed wholly indifferent to his fate. It would have been superb had it not been too grievous to contemplate.

“I have been talking with our landlord,” he said, “and I must say I like him no better now I am his master instead of his servant. There never was a countenance of such a concentrated villainy, I think. I never saw such greedy, shifty little eyes as that man hath. I have been talking to him for half an hour, but never once have I got him to look me in the face. I am sure Judas Iscariot was a man of scruples by comparison.”

“Sire,” said the woman, “your only hope lies in immediate flight. You must go at once from here, Sire. That man, the landlord, is hungry to betray you, and probably hath already done so. Oh, flee at once, Sire!”

“I know not where to go,” said the King.

“Anywhere, anywhere away from this hateful house, Sire,” said the lady. “But you must go at once. Tarry an hour, and all may be lost.”

The King sat down in a chair, wearily. He yawned, and covered his eyes with his hands.

“I think not to-day, madam,” he said, in a voice whose diffidence hurt her like a blow,—“not to-day, I think. I have not the energy. Besides, how tired I am of it all, how utterly weary! The game is not worth the candle. My friends urge me to flee this way and that; they conceal me in ditches, up trees, behind secret panels, and in priests’ holes, day after day. They bring me food in the dark; paint my face; clap various disguises about me, each more hideous than the one before. They turn me about from pillar to post; head me, cut me off, send me back again; confound me with all manner of conflicting counsels. And for what? That I may still fall into the hands of my enemies. I am not now a yard nearer my freedom than I was when I rode from the field of Worcester. I am wearied to death by the whole business; I am tired; I yawn. I will take a day’s rest, the first for many a wretched month; I will take it in your society, madam, and see if I have a better inclination to continue this struggle of one unhappy man against overwhelming circumstance to-morrow.”

“There will be no to-morrow, Sire,” said the lady. “Tarry here in this accursed place till then, and you will be surely ta’en.”

Her voice had the fullest conviction in it. It was no leap in the dark, no idle prophecy. Too well did she know the man downstairs with whom she had had to deal.

The King shook his head and smiled bitterly. There was no banishing the melancholy indifference from his voice. He was bored by the whole affair, and he was such a wilful fellow, that he would not stir a finger to save his own life if he had not the inclination. He was tired and depressed and sick of heart. At this moment it suited him better to be the prey of melancholy and to give rein to his sad fancies. He preferred to utilise those misfortunes which made him so irresistible in the eyes of all, particularly those of women.

It might have been that the extreme beauty of this compassionate lady was working upon him to his own undoing. For certainly, now that the wilful young King found himself in her presence, the desire uppermost in his mind was to stay in it. His life hung on a thread, and with it the hopes of thousands of his countrymen and the destinies of nations; but because a beautiful woman had pitied him, for the nonce he preferred to sit still and bask in her tears. To-morrow the mercury might rise. He might then find the energy to save his neck, or to attempt to do so; but to-day his inclination was far otherwise. He was disposed to give the rein to his adorable melancholy; and to wrap his cold spirit warmly in a woman’s sorrow.

The woman, cut to the heart by the young man’s wanton disregard of his sacred duty, had, with the instinct that often is with those that possess a singular potency, divined one factor of it. Her heart stood still. The horror of the thought almost overcame her. That she, in her own person, should be the unconscious and unwilling means of her King’s destruction! Unhappy, wayward youth, that his blood should be upon her head! The thought was impossible to endure.

“Sire,” she said wildly, “thou canst not have considered of all thy dalliance means. The last person a king can think of is himself. His responsibilities are more than personal. Sire, you must indeed go. Consider the destiny of your race, consider your friends.”

The young King’s eyes sparkled at the noble passion of her countenance. He had never seen a face so glorious. However, it did but confirm the satisfaction he took from his present case. He was more than content. To-morrow would be soon enough to begin his irksome toils again.

He loved to hear the throbbing tones of the woman; he loved to gaze upon her face. The passionate tenderness that suffused her was like a great and aged wine, that lulled his blood and warmed it, and made it sweeter in the veins. Languid and indifferent as he was, sparks were kindled in his eyes, and they were there for all to see. The woman saw them. She shuddered, even as the prayer was on her lips. They seemed to stop the beatings of her heart.

The husband saw the King’s eyes, too. The old hatred and jealous rage were smouldering in him still. It would not call for much to fan them into flame. His hands were clenched once more on the coverlet, a red spot burned dully in the centre of his dead white cheeks. Involuntarily he added a prayer of his own to that of his wife.

“Go, Sire, go!” he cried; “go now, else thou wilt be surely ta’en.”

The husband’s tones, however, had the passion without the magnetic quality of the wife’s. They grated on the King’s ear. He looked up a little startled at the man in the bed, and then he smiled.

“The solicitude of our friends,” he said, “grows more and more remarkable. Never was a monarch encompassed by so much disinterestedness.”

The sneer was so slight as to be hardly perceptible, but poor Farnham felt ready to slay him for it. That young man, however, by his ill-timed interposition, had retarded rather than advanced the end he wished to attain. The King settled himself more snugly upon his chair. He even requested the permission of the lady to put his weary legs upon the settle standing beside the bed. He asked her to allow him to have recourse to tobacco. A spice of mischief had now been added to his inclination. He was more firmly resolved than ever that on this day he would take his ease in his inn, in congenial society. Let to-morrow come when it might; let the consequences be what they may.

The unhappy lady read the King’s doom in his demeanour. Everything was lost. Only too well did she know that the man downstairs would eagerly utilise each second the King tarried at his inn for his own profit. Despair seized her. There was nothing to be done in the face of his appalling indifference and his wilfulness. She knew, as surely as he set his legs on the settle and rested his back against her husband’s bed with something of a subtle, humorous mockery, that his fate was sealed. Her foreboding heart told her that, for the King, to-morrow would never dawn. God! he would be taken like a rat in a trap. He would be taken there, in her husband’s chamber.

And who had caused him to be taken there? Who had been the unwilling agent of his tarrying? The thought was too terrible to bear. She clasped her hands to her bosom, where lay the King’s image in miniature. Again the tears trembled in the woman’s eyes. The King remarked them and took them to himself.