“Have you come to stay at Louvain, sir?” she asked, timidly.
“Nay, love, the place is too quiet for me. I could not stay in a town that is given over to learning and piety. The sound of their everlasting carillon would tease my ear with the thought, ‘Lo, another quarter of an hour gone of my poor remnant of days, and nothing to do but to doze in the sunshine or fondle my spaniel, fill my pipe, or ride a lazy horse on a level road, such as I have ever hated.’”
“But why did you tire of England, sir? I thought the King would have wanted you always near him. You, his father’s close friend, who suffered so much for Royal friendship. Surely he loves and cherishes you! He must be a base, ungrateful man if he do not.”
“Oh, the King is grateful, Angela, grateful enough and to spare. He never sees me at Court but he has some gracious speech about his father’s regard for me. It grows irksome at last, by sheer repetition. The turn of the sentence varies, for his Majesty has a fine standing army of words, but the gist of the phrase is always the same, and it means, ‘Here is a tiresome old Put to whom I must say something civil for the sake of his ancient vicissitudes.’ And then his phalanx of foppery stares at me as if I were a Topinambou; and since I have seen them mimic Ned Hyde’s stately speech and manners, I doubt not before I have crossed the ante-room I have served to make sport for the crew, since their wit has but two phases—ordure and mimickry. Look not so glum, daughter. I am glad to be out of a Court which is most like—such places as I dare not name to thee.”
“But to have you disrespected, sir; you, so brave, so noble! You who gave the best years of your life to your royal master!”
“What I gave I gave, child. I gave him youth—that never comes back—and fortune, that is not worth grieving for. And now that I have begun to lose the reckoning of my years since fifty, I feel I had best take myself back to that roving life in which I have no time to brood upon losses and sorrows.”
“Dear father, I am sure you must mistake the King’s feelings towards you. It is not possible that he can think lightly of such devotion as yours.”
“Nay, sweetheart, who said he thinks lightly? He never thinks of me at all, or of anything serious under God’s sky. So long as he has spending money, and can live in a circle of bright eyes, and hear only flippant tongues that offer him a curious incense of flattery spiced with impertinence, Charles Stuart has all of this life that he values. And for the next—a man who is shrewdly suspected of being a papist, while he is attached by gravest vows to the Church of England, must needs hold heaven’s rewards and hell’s torments lightly.”
“But Queen Catherine, sir—does not she favour you? My aunt says she is a good woman.”
“Yes, a good woman, and the nearest approach to a cypher to be found at Hampton Court or Whitehall. Young Lord Rochester has written a poem upon ‘Nothing.’ He might have taken Queen Catherine’s name as a synonym. She is nothing; she counts for nothing. Her love can benefit nobody; her hatred, were the poor soul capable of hating persistently, can do no one harm.”