As he went home to his lodging Signior David talked to himself. ‘As well expect to weld butter and a knife, or Madonna and a fish-headed god of Egypt as the Queen with this absorbed self-lover. If she wed him not in a month she will kill him sooner than take him.’
And Des-Essars records in his Memoirs: ‘The prince pleased on horseback, whence he should never have descended. I suspect that he knew that himself; for he straddled his legs in the house as if to keep up the illusion and strengthen himself by it. He was a fine rider. But women are not mares.’
Nevertheless, Mary Livingstone had guessed, Des-Essars had guessed, the truth or near it. This ceremony of meeting was as good as a betrothal; though why it was so, was not for them to understand. The explanation is to be sought in the chasing, flying, starting life of the soul, hunting (or being hunted) apart in its secret, shadowy world. There come moments in that wild life when the ardours of the chase slacken and tire; when, falling down to rest, the soul catches sight of itself, as mirrored in still water. That is the time when enchantment may go to work to disenchant, and show the horrible reality. ‘What!’ might cry this girl’s soul: ‘this rumpled baggage a maid royal! This highway-huntress, panting after one man or the other, thrilling like a cook-wench because that man or this has cast an eye on you! Oh, whither are fled the ensigns of the great blood? Where hides the Right Divine? Where are the emblems of Scotland, England, and France? Not in these scratched hands, not behind these filmy eyes: these are the signs of Myrrha and Pasiphaë, and sick Phædra.’ Melvill had held up the glass, and she had seen herself toiling after Robert Dudley; Châtelard had wiped it, and behold her, trapped and netted, the game of any saucy master. So, in a passion of amendment, she lent to Harry Darnley all that she feared to have lost. He shared the blood she had made common: let him re-endow her. He was the prince she ought to have been. He came a-courting with the rest; but as royal suitors come—solemnly, with embassies, with treaties to be signed, and trumpets to proclaim the high alliance. To think of Bothwell’s beside this courtly wooing was an impossibility. Hardy mercenary, to what had she dared stoop? To a man—God forgive her!—who would hug a burgess-wife one day, and her—‘the French widow,’ as he would call her—the next. Ah, horrible! So horrible, so nearly her fate, she could speak to no one of it. Simply, she dared not think of it. She must hide it, bury it, and go about her business by day. But at night, when Fleming was asleep, she would lie staring into the dusk, her two hands at grip in her bosom, and see shadows grow monstrous on the wall: Bothwell and the wife of the High Street, and herself—Dowager of France, Queen of Scots, heiress of England—at play. She could have shrieked aloud, and whined for mercy: she seemed to be padding, like a fox in a cage, up and down, up and down, to find an issue. Harry Darnley was the issue—O Ark of Salvation! Why, she had known that the very night that Melvill came back. Afterwards, as night succeeded night, and her eyes ached with staring at the wall—she knew it was all the hope she had.
Then from her window, watching the shivering-out of Châtelard, she had seen the prince, before his credentials were presented—his beauty and strength and calm manège of his horse. Had he been pock-marked, like Francis of Alençon, his lineage would have enamelled him for her eyes. But he was a most proper man, tall and slim, high-coloured, disdainful of his company. He seemed not to know that there was a world about him to be seen. Securus judicat: Jesu-Maria! here was a tower of defence to a smitten princess who saw all the world like a fever-dream! Her own blood, her own name, age for age with her.
You see that she had her own vein of romantic poetry, that she could make heroic scenes in her head, and play in them, too, wonderful parts. She sat up in her bed one night, and shook her loose hair back, and lifted up her bare arms to the rafters. ‘My lord, I am not worthy. Yet come, brother and spouse! We two upon the throne—Scotland at our feet!’ Then, in the scene, he came to her, stooping his stiff golden head. Jove himself came not more royally into the Tower. She lay all Danaë to the gold. Trickery here. Thus body lords it over soul, and soul—the wretch—takes his hire. She knew pure ecstasy that night; for this was a mating of eagles, you must recollect. She bathed in fire, but it was clean flame. Bothwell, at any rate, seemed burnt out—him and his fierce arm, only one to spare for ‘the little French widow.’
So much explanation seems necessary of how she stood, in virginal tremor and flying cloudy blushes, white and red among her maids—to be chosen by her prince. She intended him to choose: for she had chosen already.
The prince sat at supper, late in the evening of his reception, with his light-haired Englishmen and grey-haired Archie Douglas. Forrest, his chamber-boy, with burning cheeks and eyes glassy with sleep, leaned at the door. His little round head kept nodding even as he stood. The young lord laughed and fed his greyhounds, which sat up high on their lean haunches and intently watched his fingers.
‘I shall take those horses of the Earl’s,’ he said. ‘I shall need them now. I shall have a stud, and breed great horses for my sons. See to it, Archie.’
‘By God, sir,’ said an Englishman, with hiccoughs, ‘your word may be the law and the prophets in this country, and yet no bond in England. They will ask you for sureties. Well! I say, Get your sureties first.’
My lord was not listening. He pulled a hound’s ear, screwed it, and smiled as he screwed. Presently he resumed. ‘Did you mark the greeting of Argyll’s wife, Archie Douglas? How she tried “Sir and my cousin,” and thought better of it? I made her dip, hey? A black-browed, saucy quean! What kindred to me are her father’s misfortunes?’