Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/150

 142 hope to see him on his horse again in two or three weeks.”

The Earl sighed: the Countess exclaimed. The physician repeated his words, adding that patience was, in some cases, the best physic.

“And the hardest to get,” the Earl observed. “If money could buy it—”

The physician remarked, cheerfully, that he saw a good deal of it in dwellings where there was no money to spend in physic.

The Countess offered several suggestions; and some of them, in regard to diet, were agreed to: but the physician was not to be moved from his decision that repose of body and mind was the essential thing.

When the Countess returned from her consultation with him in the next room, she declared that another physician must be called in. The Doctor was a very good man; but he was slow. He wanted energy; and he could not excite the energies of his patients. He did not understand the necessity of some cases.

“He does not see, as perhaps I do,” said the Earl, “that something has happened to irritate you with my illness. Is it so, Bess?”

“If it be, he ought to have discovered it before you did.”

“Discovered it!” exclaimed the Earl, raising himself suddenly. “Bess, where is her Grace? Tell me at once!”

“Her Grace is writing her letters in her own apartment.”

The Earl sank back on his pillows, the pulsation of his ruff showing his agitation.

“Her Grace may well be trusted in my care,” the Countess observed. “I am no lax guardian of such a charge: and perhaps she may be better watched when you are here than when you are by her side.”

The Earl gently remarked that, in the sense in which his lady spoke, this was no doubt true: but that it should never be forgotten that one chief method of keeping their charge safe was to render her situation as easy as possible. Every little irritation was an incitement to her to desire to place herself in other hands. After any little ruffle with her hostess, she would naturally have many thoughts of the past, and every present trouble would sink deep.

“O yes!” said the Countess. “I know very well how she sits and broods over trifles.”

“So would’st thou, Bess, if any one made a caged bird of thee.”

“I do not deny it: but no cage should hold me long. Ay, I say so, though I have just boasted of my power to hold her. The truth is, there is but one Bess of Hardwick; and, gaolor or prisoner, Bess will always have her own way.”

“In things possible,” the Earl interposed. “Even Bess of Hardwick cannot make her husband well at pleasure. You smile. You are thinking that you would be well in a trice if you were the patient.”

“Perhaps I am,” she said. Then she startled her husband by flying to the window on hearing the tramp of horses, and shouting to the grooms. She quickly drew in her head, and observed that she must hasten away. Her Grace chose to ride nearly an hour earlier than usual this afternoon; and there was only a moment to equip and attend her.

“Hasten, then,” said the Earl. “But tell me in one word whether anything is wrong. What did you mean about ‘the necessity of the case’? Is there any new necessity?”

“I suppose you will fret more if I keep it from you,” said Bess, drawing from her bosom a large letter with a large seal.

The colour left the sick man’s face as he read the address. “From the Queen!” he said. “And already opened? How is this?”

“I read it, to see whether it was necessary for you to be troubled with fresh orders,” declared Bess, hardily.

“Go, now,” said her husband, sternly. “And come to me as soon as her Grace shall be again within her apartment. Remember!”

“I shall not waken you if you are asleep.”

“I shall not be asleep.”

“You will have enough to think about for the rest of the day,” said the unflinching wife. “Perhaps that letter will set you on your horse again sooner than the Doctor imagines.”

Instead of infusing vigour into the sick man, the letter prostrated him. He could have no attendant present while he read; and he did not afterwards touch the bell which was beside his couch. He would have died sooner than let any one see the tears trickling down his hot cheek.

“These women are so hard!” he thought to himself, as his excuse to himself: “the one Bess and the other! Between them I have need of all my manhood; and I am but poor in manhood while this fever wastes me.”

The letter was in the handwriting of Lord Shrewsbury’s old friend, Mr. Secretary Cecil; but the style showed that it was in fact from the Queen. The Queen was surprised to hear that Lord Shrewsbury was now, or had lately been, at Buxton, for the benefit of the waters, whereof no intimation had reached her Majesty from himself. If he were out of health, her Majesty must be satisfied as to what order had been taken for the due custody and entertainment of the Queen of Scots. Two things lay near the heart of her Majesty. The first was that the Queen of Scots should lack no honourable and gracious attendance which could be given to any queen. The other was that the report still grew louder and more frequent about the needless opportunity afforded to her Grace of Scotland for troubling the peace of the realm, which it lay with his Lordship of Shrewsbury to see was not so disturbed. The resort to her Grace was not less frequent than before the last warning sent to the Earl, but only more cunning; and the plots of the strangers were so many throughout the country that there was no assurance who might or might not be drawn into them. The Earl, as trusted beyond any other of her Majesty’s subjects, ought to feel the weight of the honour of the Queen’s confidence, and to act as if her wishes were known to him by the power of his devotion to her. By that state of his mind he must now be aware that he must in no wise