He had grown blotched, fatter in the face. His lower lip hung down; there were creases underneath his angry eyes. Excess of all sorts, but mostly of liquor, was responsible for the thickening of what had never been fine, and made him his own parody. He still held up his head, still straddled his legs and stuck out his elbows; he still had the arrogant way with him, and still appeared a fool when he was most in danger of becoming a man. He knew that his mere neighbourhood made her sick, and what reason she had—cheapened by him as she had been, held for a thing of nought, driven to feel herself vile. Knowing all this, and resenting in her her knowledge of his degradation, he was blusterously sulky; but knowing further that she had sent for him because she was afraid of what he might do against her, he was ready to bully her. If there is one baser than he who takes heart to do wrong from his wife’s tenderness, it is, I suppose, the man who grows rich upon her dishonour. There is mighty little to choose.
After a constrained greeting and uncomfortable pause, she began the struggle. Directly she touched upon the rumours, whose flying ends she had caught, he flamed out, wagging his finger at her as if she had been taken red-handed in some misdeed. Ah, if she considered that he could be taken up and cast aside, lifted, carried about like a girl’s plaything, it was a thing his honour could not brook. Let her reflect upon that. He knew very well what his own position was—how near he stood to the two thrones, how his child’s birth made his title stronger. He had had to think for himself what he should do—with his friends, since those who should naturally be about him chose to keep away, or could not dare be near him. He had plans, thoughts, projects; had not made up his mind: but let her take notice that he was about it. It was not to be thought that a prince of any spirit could suffer as he suffered now.
‘Ah, sir,’ she said here, putting up a hand, ‘and think you not whether I have suffered, or whether I suffer now?’
He glared at her.
‘You have friends, madam, a sufficiency—ah, a redundancy, in whose commerce I cannot see you engage without suffering. You keep them from me—perhaps wisely. There is my lord of Moray: with him I might have a reckoning. But no! You hide him in your gown.’
‘How availed my gown to David?’ She was stung into this.
He squared his shoulders. ‘The man paid dearly for what he had. He should have counted the cost. So should others count. Let my lord of Bothwell figure out his bill.’
‘No more of that, my lord,’ she cried in a rage. ‘You little know what my gown hides, if not that it shelters yourself. Do you know, sir, from what I am screening you?’
‘You screen me, madam! You! But I cannot suffer it. It is to abase me. I cannot suffer it. But it’s all of a piece—I am shortened every way. My friends are warned off me—my father a suspect—my means of living straitened—I have no money, no credit. I, the King-Consort, the father of the Prince! Oh, fie, madam, this is a scandal and crying shame. Where are my rights—where is one of them? Where is my right to be by your side? Where are my rights of a husband?’
‘They are where you put them—and as you have made them.’