"They quarrelled, did they?" said Ramsay of Newburn, with a smile. "Doubtless they'll be better friends as men. And now, tell my man to give you a draught of strong waters, but don't let it make you forget to deliver my message to your lord."
"No, no, sir; no fear of that," answered the man, and withdrew.
When he was gone, Ramsay writhed upon his bed, as if in pain, and he murmured to himself, "Ay, that bitter cup is quaffed; but I'll make those who have forced it upon me taste a bitterer. But how--but how? I shall never have strength to wield a sword like a man again. The villain has crippled me for life. I can fire a shot, though; and, my good lord of Gowrie, I will not forget you."
Then he fell into thought again, and meditated in silence for nearly half an hour, while various changes of expression came over his countenance, all dark, but of different shades. At length some thought seemed to please him, for he laughed aloud. "Ay," he said, "that were better. Then, however matters go, I am the gainer. He has made me truckle to his leman. I'll try if I cannot make him bend his haughty head before those who once already have trampled on the necks of Ruthvens. Let him beware both of words and actions, for he shall be sharply looked to. The proud peat! Let him stay in London with the crooked old Englishwoman. I'll be in Scotland before him, and he shall find her protection blast rather than save him. If I know my cousin John aright, I can so work these ends together as to make this earl regret having done shame to a Ramsay. What I have not strength to do boldly, I will try to do shrewdly, and there will be some pleasure in seeing him help to work out my objects against himself. There is Stuart, too; if we can once get him mixed in the affair, the king will not be long out of it. Then, Gowrie, look to yourself, for James never forgives those whom he fears."
He continued thus muttering to himself for some time longer; but what has been already detailed will be sufficient to show that Ramsay entertained that sweet and gentlemanlike passion of revenge, which was at the time exceedingly dear and pleasant to most of his countrymen. It is so, indeed, with all nations in a semi-barbarous state, and in such a state was Scotland undoubtedly at that time. Torn by factions, frequently a prey to civil strife, when not actually a prey to anarchy, ruled by the strongest and the readiest hand which could clutch and hold the reins of government, she had long seen her children rising to power and wealth on each other's heads, and the pathway to honours marked out by a stream of blood. Ambition went hand in hand with revenge; and the terrible rule seemed fully established in the land, "to forget a benefit as soon as possible, but never to forgive an injury."
CHAPTER XIX.
I must pass over, with a very brief and general statement, the events which occurred to the personages connected with this tale during several months. There is always in tale-telling, unless the action be compressed within a very short space, a period during which the interest would flag, if the regular passing of each day was noticed, and the small particulars detailed. Were life filled with those striking events which move and interest the reader, with those passions to which the sympathetic heart thrills, with those grand scenes of action which excite the imagination, or with those lesser incidents which amuse and entertain, the human frame, like an over-sharpened knife, would be ground down upon the whetstone of the world, and existence be curtailed of half its date. It is my belief, that patriarchal age was secured to the earlier inhabitants of earth as much by the long intervals existing between the periods of intense excitement, to which they were sometimes subjected, and by the calm and careless ease of the intervening periods, as by any of the many other causes which combined to extend the space between birth and death to well nigh a thousand years. True, they were not close pent up in cities--true, they were continually changing air and scene--true, that excess in anything was little known--true, that they were nearer to the great architype, fresh from the hands of his God, and framed for the immortality of which sin deprived him--true, that long centuries of vice, folly, contention, and misfortune had not then brought forth the multitudinous host of diseases continually warring against the mortal body, diminishing its powers of resistance from generation to generation; but still I believe that the want of excitement, which can only be known where men are spread wide and far apart over the face of the earth, was absolutely necessary to that vast prolongation of life. The mind and body did not mutually grind down each other. Still, the more peaceful periods in any man's history are those which the least interest his fellow-men, and during the time which elapsed between Gowrie's departure from Paris and his arrival in Scotland, no adventures or impediments occurred which can justify much detail. That departure was delayed for a day or two beyond the period which he had at first fixed; and though the weather was now becoming sharp and cold, yet those few days produced a favourable change, and rain and fog gave way to clear skies and broad sunshine. The days, however, were brief, and the journeys necessarily short; so that a week elapsed between his departure from Paris and his arrival at Calais. Four days more brought him to Loudon, and now a new scene opened upon him.
Furnished with letters from Sir Henry Neville to the principal statesmen of the court of Queen Elizabeth, he was received with every demonstration of respect and esteem in the English capital, and two days after was presented to the queen herself. I find little record in history of what followed; but one historian, whose views, it must be remarked, were strongly biassed by peculiar feelings of partizanship, declares that the honours shown by the English sovereign to the young earl were of the most marked and extraordinary kind. It is sometimes, in the present day, not easy to account for the course of policy pursued by Elizabeth in her conduct to the subjects of the neighbouring crown; but we must not doubt well-authenticated facts because we cannot penetrate their motives. The writer whom I have mentioned states, in speaking of the Earl of Gowrie, that the queen "ordered that guards should attend him, that all honours should be paid him which were due to a Prince of Wales and to her first cousin, and that he should be entertained at the public expense all the time he should remain at her court."
I can scarcely imagine that this account is not exaggerated. We find that she showed no such honours to others, who stood much in the same degree of affinity to herself as he did; and unless she wished needlessly to alarm the King of Scotland, no cause can be supposed for such conduct. That she treated Gowrie with great distinction, however, is undeniable, and even marked her favour for him more strongly than her old affection for his grandfather could account for. This course was very dangerous to the young earl himself, for the court of England at that time was thronged by spies of the Scottish monarch; and even the most familiar friends and counsellors of Elizabeth conveyed information to James of all that could affect his interest, to the most minute circumstances. The natural desire of what is called currying favour, of course, gave some degree of colour to the accounts transmitted; and there is every reason to believe, from an examination of the State Paper Office, that such intimations alone were given as had a tendency to put the monarch on his guard, without discouraging his hopes or diminishing his energies. The way for his advent to the throne had been prepared long beforehand; whether from the general considerations of policy, from personal ambition, or from avarice, such men as Cecil had chosen their course, and were determined to remove or overawe all competitors, and to insure the accession of the King of Scotland. I am inclined to believe--without considering them as anything more than mere mortals--that the purest spirit of patriotism inspired those who thus acted. Every man of common sense must have seen that most important ends were to be obtained by uniting the crowns of Scotland, Ireland, and England upon one head; nor could any one doubt that--apart from all considerations of the personal character of the man--the means of maintaining his claims, of crushing all competitors, and of establishing his power upon a firm and secure basis, were more completely in the hands of the King of Scotland than of any other person who could aspire to the English throne. His faults were all personal, which never enter sufficiently into the calculations of politicians; his advantages were those of position, which almost always have too much weight with those who influence the fate of empires. By personal character, no man was ever less fitted to fill the throne of a great country, or to unite discordant races under one sway, than James I.: by political position, no one could compete with him in pretensions to the throne of England. Happy had it been for Great Britain had such not been the case, for the vices of the man more than compensated the advantages of the prince, and the weakness of his successors consummated what his own wickedness began; but no one can blame those who chose according to the lights they possessed, and who smoothed the way for that which naturally appeared the best for the whole nation at the time.
The reports which reached Scotland of the honours shown to the Earl of Gowrie in the English capital, generated, in a jealous and irritable mind, covetous of extended and despotic rule, a feeling of doubt and dread most dangerous to its object; and the busy and gossiping spirit of a small court did not fail to increase the unpleasant impressions thus produced, by a thousand rumours, which had no foundation in truth. Reports were circulated and credited, that Queen Elizabeth had actually designated the Earl of Gowrie as her successor, and even that, in order to unite two great claims to the crown which she held, she had made all the arrangements for a marriage between that nobleman and the Lady Arabella Stuart; one who, like himself, was not very remote from the direct succession. These facts have been omitted altogether, or slurred over by modern historians, in noticing that part of history in which this young nobleman appears; but that such rumours existed in England and Scotland can be proved from contemporary authorities; and we can easily conceive the feelings with which such a man as James was thus prepared to view one whose influence was already redoubtable, on his return to his native land.