Mary dropped the curtain and walked about the room a little. Then she went to the still open desk and took up the remaining letter—that of the Prince.
With it in her hand she stood thoughtful, thinking of her father in France, of all the extraordinary changes and chances which had brought her to this situation, face to face with a dreaded difference from anything she had known.
She went on her knees presently, and rested her head against the stool, worked by her own fingers in a design of beads and wool, and put the letter against her cheek, and desperately tried to pray and forget earthly matters.
But ever between her and peace rose the angry, tragic face of her father and the stern face of her husband confronting each other, and a background of other faces—the mocking, jeering faces of the world—scorning her as one who had wronged her father through lust of earthly greatness.
CHAPTER XVIII
BY THE GRACE OF GOD
The Princess's boat, with her escort of Dutch warships, rode in the Thames at last. The frost had broken, and she arrived not long after her letter to Lord Danby had scattered that statesman's party, and frustrated his hopes of placing her on the throne. The Prince having soon after declared his mind to the lords in council, that he would accept no position dependent on his wife's pleasure or the life of another (for there had been talk of a regency, leaving the King the nominal title), made it clear that if his services were to be retained, if he was not to abandon them to the confusion, strife, and disaster from which his presence alone saved them, he must be King. All parties uniting, then, on what was now proved to be the winning side, the Convention voted the offer of the crown to the Prince and Princess jointly—the sole administration to rest with him.
The succession, after naming the direct line, was left vague to please the Prince, who was free to flatter himself that he could choose his own heir.
This news had come to Mary before she left The Hague, and she knew that the day after her landing there would be a formal offering and acceptance of the crown of Great Britain. She beheld the prospect with extraordinary sensations as, passing Gravesend, and leaving her vessel and escort at Greenwich, she proceeded in a state barge to the more familiar reaches of the river, Rotherhithe, Wapping, and presently the Tower, rising golden grey in the chill spring sunshine, by the bridge with the deep crazy arches through which the water poured in dangerous rapids. Crowded with houses was this old bridge, and in the centre a little chapel with a bell, now ringing joyfully.
Mary remembered it all—the long busy wharves, now taking holiday; the barges, boats, and compact shipping now hung with flags; Galley Key, where the slaves in chains unlade the oranges, silks, and spices from the East; the houses, on the side of Surrey, among which rose the spire of the great church at Southwark; the merchants' houses built down to the water's edge, with pleasant gardens filled with poplar trees and set with the figureheads of ships in which some adventurer had sailed his early travels long ago in the time of Elizabeth Tudor; and the distant prospect of the city itself shimmering now under an early haze of sunshine.