Patricia at the inn

by J. C. Snaith

“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.