‘It is no question of that,’ she replied. ‘Our positions are so different. I only say to you, remember your own motto—“To the End.” If I were a man I think I could trust and hope for ever. I think I could be staunch and unselfish and true, in defiance of sorrow, suffering, opposition, nay, even of ingratitude and neglect I would prove to the woman whom I had chosen that at least she must be proud of my choice, that a man’s honest affection was no vacillating fancy, but an eternal truth; and even if she did not love me, I would force her to confess that it was her own inferiority of nature that could not mate with mine. But why should I talk thus to you?’ she added, breaking off with rather a bitter laugh. ‘You are a man: you cannot understand me; you will not believe in anything unless you can see it with your two eyes, and grasp it in your two hands, and be told by all your friends besides that it is there. If you had but one gold piece in the world, you must beat it out thin, and lacker it over your spurs, and your housings, and the hilt of your sword; you could not hide it away in your bosom, and keep it unspent and unsuspected next your heart!’
‘I know not,’ he said with a brightening face; ‘your words give me hope. I seem to see things differently since you have been speaking to me. You are my good angel. Help me; advise me; tell me what I had better do.’
‘In the first place, go and talk to somebody else,’ she replied, laughing. ‘You will scarcely advance the cause you have at heart by whispering with me in a corner. Looks of inquiry, if not displeasure, have been already shot this way; and although, perhaps, we are the only two people in this room who never could be more than friends, courtiers’ eyes are so sharp and their inferences so good-natured, that they have probably ere this made their usual grand discovery of that which does not exist. And so, good Master Ogilvy, my last word is, think of your motto and speed you well!’
Thus speaking, she made him a stately curtsey and withdrew towards the Queen; but Mary Carmichael was right, and their interview, short as it was, had been remarked by more than one interested observer.
Though it costs the animal many stripes and much vexation doubtless to acquire the accomplishment, we have seen a dog so well broke as to forego at his owner’s word a tempting morsel placed within his reach, licking his lips indeed and looking longingly after it, yet exhibiting, nevertheless, a noble mastery over his inclinations. But let another dog come by and snatch the bone thus ceded to a sense of duty, and all his self-restraint vanishes on the instant. Open-mouthed he rushes to wrest it from the intruder, and that which but a moment ago was an advantage he could philosophically resign, becomes immediately a necessity that he will break through all bounds to attain. So is it with mankind. We can give up, or rather we fancy we have given up, the one bright hope that gilded our existence. We see the dear face that used to make the very sunshine of our heart altered and estranged, perhaps cold and distant, perhaps turned scornfully away. We think we can bear our burden resignedly enough. There is a great blank in our lives, felt less in the time of sorrow than at those seasons when, were it not for our loss, we think we should be so contented, so happy. There is a sense of desolation, a consciousness of old age coming on and being welcome—a morbid inclination to receive adversity with open arms; but yet we man ourselves against the calamity, strong to oppose and constant to endure. We have not felt the sting yet. Whilst we are in the cold shade let the dear face beam upon another; let the tones, so cruel now and hard to us, fall with the well-remembered cadence on his ear; let him be the recipient of the thousand tender cares and winning ways that used to bring tears of affection into our eyes; then, and not till then, have we sustained the sharpest pain that life has to inflict; then, and not till then, do we feel that there is no sorrow like to our sorrow, and that it is well for us it is transient from its very nature, or heart and brain would give way under the stroke.
Mary Beton was well satisfied to receive the homage of her English admirer, and, in order to ensure it, was perfectly willing to discard her sincerer suitor. Poor Ogilvy might pine and sigh as he pleased, without gaining so much as a kind word or an approving glance; but this rigorous treatment was only to endure so long as she felt he was her property; the dog’s wages were to be given to the dog’s honest obedience and fidelity. It was quite a different matter when he appeared to have transferred his allegiance to another. Though she did not like him well enough to give up Randolph for his sake, she had no idea of losing him altogether. Even if she had no use for him, he had no right to belong to any one else, and it was with far more of anxiety and concern than usually overspread those calm features that Mistress Beton glanced continually towards the corner where he was whispering with Mary Carmichael, while she listened to the smooth phrase of the English ambassador with an absent air and a forced smile.
Nor was the stately maid-of-honour the only person in that noble assemblage who felt acutely the difference between the active and passive moods of the verb ‘to give up.’ Walter Maxwell, hurt, jealous, and indignant, had for long accustomed himself to look upon Mary Carmichael as one who was dead to him for evermore; had trained himself to meet her coldly and calmly when their respective duties brought them unavoidably together, and to shun her on all other occasions with scrupulous self-denial; nay, was beginning to find a certain gloomy satisfaction in the violence he was capable of doing to his own feelings, and a certain savage triumph in the reflection that he, too, could be as unkind and heartless and indifferent as a woman! But when he saw her thus engrossed with Ogilvy’s conversation, evidently of a mysterious and interesting nature; when he marked, as he did at a glance, the softened expression of her face and the wistful tenderness in her blue eyes, he experienced a sensation of pain once more, to which he had thought he was henceforth to be a stranger, and felt again for an instant as he had felt that well-remembered night when he came upon her so unexpectedly at her tryst in the Abbey garden.
The same cause produces strangely different effects upon different individuals. Whilst Mary Beton, under the influence of jealousy, was becoming restless, captious, and even irritable (much, it must be confessed, to the secret amusement of Mr Thomas Randolph), Walter Maxwell felt a fresh impulse given to that generosity, which prompted him to put an end to-night to his anxieties and misgivings once for all.
The Queen, in the meantime, seeking, in her innocence and gaiety of heart, to keep up the characteristic merriment of the feast, was unconsciously exciting the displeasure of her nobility, and unwittingly preparing the downfall of her versatile little favourite—the Italian Riccio.
Disregarding the coarser witticisms and grotesque antics of James Geddes, who indeed had become a duller fool day by day, since the shock his feeble intellect sustained on the morning of Chastelâr’s death, Mary had summoned her private secretary into the centre of the illustrious circle which surrounded her, and, with a familiarity exceedingly displeasing to the haughty Scottish barons, bade him improvise, after the manner of his country, for their amusement. Nothing daunted by bent brows and scornful looks, the glib foreigner, placing himself on a cushion at the Queen’s feet, commenced a lively tale, of which the incidents and the language, for it was related in French, were most displeasing to his audience. It turned upon one of those fables so popular at the time in Italy, and was, indeed, both in its details and its catastrophe, especially unsuitable to the practical nature and affected asceticism of the Scottish character at that period.