[CHAPTER XXV.]
One half the world does not know how the other half live, is an old English proverb, and a true one; but there is something more to be said upon the subject than even that,--not one-millionth part of the world know what the rest are doing. Happy were it for them if they did; for how many a base and criminal design would be frustrated; how many an anxious and careful thought would be avoided; how many a wise and prudent scheme would find success; how many a good man, struggling with poverty, would meet relief and honour; how many a great man, crushed under the cold obstruction of circumstances, would be taken by the hand, and led up to the high places of the world, if the actions of all were open to the eyes of all!
The days passed sweetly with Arabella Stuart and William Seymour, for the time during which the Countess of Shrewsbury permitted him to stay. They laid out their plans; they made their arrangements; they talked over the future; and imagination, that pleasant painter, represented the coming days in all the glittering colours of hope and light. Even when he had left Malvoisie, and was deprived of the society of her he loved, still the sweet recollection and the bright expectation gladdened the present, and cheered him while he made all the preparations which were necessary for the execution of his scheme. But, in the meantime, the views and designs of others, with little, if any reference to himself, were proceeding on a course calculated to frustrate all his hopes for a time, if not for ever; and while he, in total ignorance that such things were taking place, was rejoicing at the near approach of happiness, a hand was stretched out to snatch it from him, just as the cup was being raised to his lip. Oh! could he but have seen the events that were occurring at the Court of England; could he have heard the words that were spoken, and divined the plans that were formed, he might have found matter for anxiety and apprehension, it is true, but love would certainly have found some stratagem to frustrate those purposes, which now marched calmly on to their accomplishment.
We nave said that the designs and views of which we have spoken had little direct reference to Seymour, and to the schemes for his escape with Arabella. The eyes of the King and his courtiers had been completely blinded by the precautions he had taken; his visit to Malvoisie had not been even whispered amongst the scandal-mongers of the Court; and although the preparations which he had been making after his return to London were not altogether unnoticed, the tongue of calumny had assigned to them a very different motive from the real one, and most unintentionally favoured his purposes, by screening the truth under a falsehood. The suspicion which had been so strongly entertained of the attachment existing between Arabella and himself had almost altogether died away; and rumour had falsely attributed to him some tender connexion in the native land of intrigue--Italy, which was supposed to be once more leading him away from the shores of his own country.
In the meantime, the King's favourite, Rochester, was pursuing, with all the vehemence of strong and overpowering passion, the guilty course which he had entered upon with the beautiful fiend who had got him in her toils. His criminal intimacy with Lady Essex was no longer whispered with a smile, or pointed at in an epigram. It was the open talk of the whole Court, the subject of grave and painful reprehension to the few good and wise who were admitted to the royal circle, and of laughter and merriment to the gay, the unthinking, and vicious multitude which thronged the palaces of James I.
To one of those, however, who could not be classed amongst the most strict in their notions of morality, his open and daring violation of even common decency was a subject of bitter and anxious thought. Sir Thomas Overbury could not shut out the conviction, that this disgraceful connexion might prove a serious obstacle in the way of his favourite project, of allying his patron to the Blood Royal of England by a marriage with Arabella Stuart; and every jest he heard upon the subject came painfully to his ear. Sometimes he thanked heaven that Arabella was absent, and hoped that Rochester's passion would be as short-lived as it was fierce; but when he saw that, on the contrary, it became every day more and more ardent and outrageous, he asked himself if it might not be better to hurry on the marriage with Arabella without any farther delay; and, by engaging the King to exercise his full authority, to carry it through as rapidly as possible, in order to bind her for ever to Rochester, before she had such good cause to allege for refusing him her hand.
Doubts and perplexities, indeed, surrounded him; for although Carr still talked to him on the subject of his marriage, and, in order to blind his friends to the designs which he knew Overbury would oppose, affected to look upon his union with Arabella, whether he loved her or not, as a thing absolutely necessary to his security and advancement, yet he showed himself occasionally cold and captious, reserved and insincere, towards one who, for a long period, had possessed his fullest confidence, and guided him at will.
Many a deep and anxious fit of thought did all these considerations cause Sir Thomas Overbury; and he resolved, after a long deliberation, to try whether, by art, he could not establish a new hold upon the favourite, more firm and tenacious than that of mere gratitude.
"I must have some power over him," he said; "I must have something in my hands to give, in order that I may demand that in return which might be otherwise denied, notwithstanding all the services I have rendered him."
Such were his thoughts and feelings at the period when the Court removed from Hampton; and we shall now proceed to show the manner in which he endeavoured to effect his object, premising that for some months he had been labouring to bring the King's mind to the particular tone he wanted.