‘You are ill, Mary,’ said she, ‘and worse than that, you are unhappy. What is it? there is something the matter!’
‘Nothing, madam,’ answered the other, looking up with a transparent effort at cheerfulness. ‘How can I be unhappy when I am at Holyrood, and near your Majesty?’
She did not say it in the complacent tone of a courtier, but with a warmth and sincerity that could not have been assumed, her large dark eyes moistening and shining in the lamplight. She thought she loved the Queen better than anything on earth, and so she did—save one.
‘I know you are fond of me, child,’ answered the Queen affectionately; ‘that does not make me the less anxious about you. I think of all my Maries you are the most dependent upon me. Have a care, my dear! there seems to be a fatality about Mary Stuart. Those who love me best seem ever to be the most unfortunate.’
She spoke mournfully, and in an abstracted tone. Was she thinking of her dead bridegroom who had worshipped her? of the mother who had doated on her? of the loyal and brave and the true already proscribed, banished, or disgraced? was it memory or foreboding, the sorrows of the past or fears for the future, that thus so often cast a gloom over her spirit, and damped her royal courage at her need?
‘Do you think that would not make me love you ten times more?’ exclaimed the other with a flash from her glorious eyes that lighted up her whole face. ‘Can there be love without sacrifice, madam? Nay,’ she added in a sadder voice, ‘can there even be love without suffering?’
‘You are very young to say so,’ answered the Queen, ‘two years younger than I am; and I remember how I used to think that sorrow was the especial heritage of the old. I have learnt otherwise now; but you, Mary Hamilton, you whom I have always watched and sheltered as a bird shelters its nestling under its wing, what can you know of suffering?’
The maid-of-honour looked wistfully at her mistress while she replied—
‘I never can know real sorrow, madam,’ she said, ‘nor real suffering; because I have a refuge more secure than even a queen’s favours, and to that refuge I betake me whenever grief becomes too heavy to endure. Ah! madam, they may take everything from us here, but they cannot rob us of that; this world is sometimes very dark and sad, but the light is always shining just the same, far away at home.’
The Queen looked at her with concern and surprise. What could it be, this engrossing sorrow which cast its shadow over a young life that ought to have shone so hopeful and so bright? The girl must be very unhappy, she argued, to be so devout. Alas! that it should be so; that religion, instead of the pride of the strong, should so often prove but the refuge for the weak. And yet it is but one more instance of that mercy which knows no limit. The happy and the pious, too, enjoy indeed a favoured lot, but human nature is so warped, that in the majority continuous prosperity produces hardness of heart, and for these it ‘is good to be in trouble.’ When they have lost all (it matters not what constitutes it, fame, wealth, or affection) they run for consolation, like a child in distress to a parent, where it never is denied; and which of us is there who does not know how unspeakably precious is the balm of kindness to a bruised and empty heart? A few there are on whom adversity has a contrary effect—rebellious spirits, not without force of character and capacities for happiness, who become froward and desperate under the rod. Woe be to them! What shall bring such as these back to the fold? Human forbearance would say ‘let them go in their wilfulness to destruction!’ but it is well for us that it is not with human forbearance we have to do.