THE KING MAKES A FRIEND
“Oh, good sir,” he gasped, dabbing with his kerchief the merry tears from his smiling eyes, “you had better do as this lady urges, for, by St. George! she employs the most irresistible logic.”
Evander and Brilliana, blown apart, as it were, by the breath of the King’s merriment, regarded the monarch with very different feelings. Though he stood upon the edge of peril’s precipice, at the threshold of death’s temple, Evander could not scrutinize without vivid and conflicting emotions the face of the man because of whom the solid realm of England seemed to be dissolving into anarchy. This was the King of ship-money, the heart’s-brother of Buckingham, the betrayer of Strafford, the doer to death of Eliot, the would-be baffler of free speech, the baffled hunter after the five members. To Brilliana he was simply the King, not even the whole hero and half-martyr King for whom she had held Loyalty House so sturdily, but simply the only man living graced with power to save the man she loved. She turned to him at once with a petulant expression of impatience.
“Your Majesty,” she sighed, “I wish you would speak to this proud gentleman. I cannot make him listen to reason.”
The almost infantile simplicity of her address stirring the King to renewed merriment, served her cause better, in its very inappropriateness to the situation, than the most impassioned or the most calculated appeals to pity or to justice. The audacity with which the Loyalty lady coolly enlisted the King as her advocate against the King’s interests seemed to the sovereign so exquisite, so grotesque, as to merit calling irresistible.
“Truly,” he said to her, smiling that sweet Stuart smile which made all who ever shone in it adore him, “the man must be named Felicissimus who is loved by such a lady.”
Then he turned his gaze upon Evander, and the smile grew graver, the eyes more imperious.
“So, sir,” he said, “you are so certain sure of the righteousness of your side in this quarrel that you cannot, for your life’s sake, for your love’s sake, consent to stand neuter and look on, Captain Infallibility?”
Evander faced the slightly frowning interrogation bravely. He saluted soldierly, conscious of the subtle Stuart charm, understanding it would conquer men and women, glad to find himself unconquered.
“Your Majesty,” he said, “let me answer you as I answered this dear lady. If one of those gentlemen, those Cavaliers who rallied to your flag at Nottingham and drew their swords for you at Edgehill, were made prisoner of the Parliament, and accepted his life on the condition that he stood aside and left you to fight without his aid, would you count him a loyal subject, would you call him a faithful friend, could you admit that he was an honest soldier?”