Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/208

 200 sovereign but a Saracen despot ought to impose on any noble gentleman.”

“But will you do it?” the Countess asked, grasping his arm, and gazing in his face.

“I know not,” he replied, in a voice of despair. “Never was man in such a strait! And she as blithe this day as an innocent child!”

“I think nothing of that,” said Bess. “She is no child, and knows nothing of innocence, and ought never to be gay at heart again.”

“Bess, you are so hard!”

“Ah! that is the old story! But am I not always right? Why is she blithe to-day, but because she believes herself Queen of England? And is she not all the gayer for the Pope’s bull having been set up on our own gate? That insult to us is the secret of the fine colour in her face this morning.”

“How should she know it?”

“That is a question for you to answer. Since you forbade me to trouble her with my presence, the guardianship has been yours. Whether you have done the duty better than I should, let this day’s events show.”

“Bess, there must be an end of disputing. A day like this is no time for altercation between us. Your husband’s honour and safety are at stake—”

“And what of the Queen’s? That is of somewhat greater concern, I imagine. I said once that women make the best gaolers. I say now that women make the most loyal subjects. While you are thinking of your own honour and safety, I am thinking of the Queen’s.”

“Leave me!” cried the irritated Earl.

“I will; and the more readily because the Queen’s service demands instant care. The Pope’s bull must be torn down from our gate.”

“It is done.”

“And from the church-door.”

“It is done.”

“And discovery made of the audacious hand which posted it.”

“It is done; and the man is arrested. Felton did it. There is proof which you can hear another time. Will you leave me?”

“When I have heard what you intend to do,” coolly replied the Countess, nodding towards the box which contained the perilous licence to destroy the Queen’s chief enemy.

“To-day I shall do nothing. I forbid you, Bess, to approach her. Let her have due service, and nothing more. In a few hours she must hear of the disclosure of the conspiracy, and of the desperate peril of her friends. Let her spirits fall by suspense, or the shock may kill her.”

“Can you wish that it should not?” the Countess asked: and her husband answered only by a shudder.

Hour after hour passed, and no news arrived to those who sat waiting for it. There were jests, at which Mary herself smiled, on the undignified reluctance of her hosts to inform her of her release. It was exactly like Bess of Hardwick, the ladies said, to suppress good news as long as possible. From the Earl they should have expected something different; but he was no doubt preparing to pay his duty with the greater state, and to conduct his sovereign through a country which he was raising in her honour. The number of horsemen who were heard and seen to depart in various directions gave some countenance to this idea. Father Berthon, however, became evidently uneasy as the day wore on: and at nightfall he could no longer refrain from seeking news. He did not return. The secretary refused to go in search of him, saying that it was his special duty to abide by the Queen. He feared detention, the ladies whispered to each other. Could it be that the Earl and Countess meant to resist the new order of things!—to resist the Pope, and France, and Spain, and the whole worthy part of the English nation? Such resistance could be but a brief folly.

As doors and windows stood wide, that warm autumn evening, when all were bent, mind and body, on listening, the gentle breeze brought the sound of bells. The church bells were certainly ringing. All spirits brightened, and Mary herself observed that it was cheering to hear some sounds of joy before the first day of her new reign should close. It was surely the strangest accession day that any sovereign of England had ever known.

“And here are other signs, even more sure than the bells,” her secretary, De Naon, observed. “If I mistake not, the people are building a bonfire in the meadow below.”

Polly, who had been gazing abroad through Father Berthon’s glass, now announced that there were bonfires on all the hills round, and cressets were already alight on every church steeple. The whole country would be aglow, as soon as it was dark.

It was this spontaneous illumination which brought the Earl to the Queen’s apartments now, instead of the next morning. He begged an audience, and would evidently not have taken a refusal. He desired to see her Grace alone, sending away even the secretary. The ladies persuaded themselves and one another that this reluctance to accept events was ungenerous, disloyal, every way unworthy; and pray Heaven! it might not be dangerous! Yet there was that in the Earl’s face, stern and colourless, which made them anxious to believe their own explanation of the mystery of this day.

“He looks not as a subject come to greet a new sovereign,” the ladies observed; and De Naon wished their mistress was fairly out of the Castle, and released from a host whose position was one of divided duty. He should not consider the Queen safe till she was among her people, with her nobles and their troops around her.

“Yet see how the country is lighting up,” said Lady Janet Hamilton. “Where were there ever signs of popular rejoicing, if not here?”

It was indeed a fine sight,—the kindling of the fires over a wide expanse of varied landscape. The Castle itself was illumined in all its prominent parts by the great bonfire in the meadow below. The flames disclosed the deep glades of the forest, and reddened the stems of the nearer trees; and the rushing Dove was like a river of fire. Crowds gathered in the meadows; and yet there were sounds from afar—shouts and singing which told