“Love her? I know that I do love her. As for marrying her, I own that I have no mind to put a gaoler’s niece in my mother’s honored place, or to give my children, old Lukens, the turnkey, for an uncle. But I tell you on my word that this woman would no more stoop to be less than my wife than the Queen’s Majesty herself. Bess Lukens came into the world—a rough and briery place for her, poor girl—with a natural virtue that nothing can impugn. And ’tis a very robust virtue too; I make no doubt she has clipped many a rude fellow over the head as she clipped me. But in general, men are afraid of her, and in spite of her beauty, I fancy she has but little trouble in making them keep their distance.”
“And Hugo? Tell me all of him.”
Roger’s face darkened, but he told all he knew of Hugo, and likewise all he designed to do to his half-brother when God gave him the chance.
It was late in the afternoon before they returned to the inn. There they found a letter from Berwick.
Mr. Egremont,—The King hath signified his pleasure to see you as soon as you are prepared to come. This evening, at seven of the clock, I shall be in attendance on his Majesty, and shall have pleasure in presenting you. Pardon this scrawl.
Yr. obt. svt., Berwick.
“But I am not dressed like a gentleman,” cried Roger. “I do not mind that I have not a laced coat and hat, but I cannot present myself unseemly before my King!”
The resources of Madame Michot’s inn were ample, however, to fit Roger out for one night; and in a velvet coat not his own, and faded satin knee-breeches, and a pair of Dicky’s black silk stockings, he presented himself at the château of St. Germains on the stroke of seven.
He was met by Berwick, who conducted him to the King’s closet. On this their second meeting Berwick and Roger greeted each other like friends of long standing. The King’s closet, like most things about the palace, was gloomy. King James, lean, wrinkled, broken, but still wearing something royal in his aspect and manner, received Roger graciously. The Queen, poor Mary Beatrice, still young, still beautiful, her dark Italian eyes still beaming with light, was more gracious yet. Berwick remained and the King desiring to know all that had happened to Roger, he began and told his story from the day the troopers of William of Orange had surrounded Egremont, and its master had said farewell to it. His tale was pitiful enough, and it lost nothing in the telling. Roger had the natural gift of the story teller; his hardships seemed the harder from his relation of them. He told all that had befallen him, except one thing—the story of Red Bess, the gaoler’s daughter. He was guarded in his allusions to his half-brother, on Berwick’s account; yet he could not forbear, out of the stress and storm within him, speaking of Hugo as “my half-brother, Hugo Stein, the son of my father’s sin.”
King James winced at that. Berwick suddenly turned his face the other way, and the red blood dyed his face and neck; but he showed no abatement of good-will toward Roger.