Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/96

 88 evening before. The wind had been so high that the horses could not have been heard, even if there had been no snow on the ground. It was certainly after dark; and the fugitive Queen might well be so fatigued as to keep close to-day. Several curious neighbours had been prying about; and some had invented reasons for knocking at the castle gates; but the porter was surly. He would not tell when the cavalcade arrived, nor what the Queen of Scotland looked like, nor whether the train of Yorkshire and Derbyshire gentlemen stayed or rode away.

While the women’s tongues were rattling about this, and the players were shouting and wrangling over their game,—every cry reverberating from the opposite rock,—all were startled into silence in a moment by an apparition appearing from behind a promontory of the forest which stretched into the road. There was a pair of horsemen abreast. Then there were threes and fours, to the number of a score or upwards. Then there was a group of ladies,—six, riding two and two, with horsemen beside them. More gentlemen followed; and a company of grooms closed the procession. The gossips had a good opportunity for gazing, as soon as they had collected their wits; for one of the ladies checked her horse, and was evidently asking questions of the Earl. The whole cavalcade stopped: the players were desired to throw a cast or two; and the Earl’s servants in the rear were beset with inquiries by their village acquaintance.

In a few minutes the signal was given to move on; and the cavalcade wound up the steep road to the castle gates.

That was the Earl, certainly; but how was it? Had they been for a ride after dinner? Or had they not arrived yesterday, after all? The game was broken up by the general curiosity, though one young man did his best to induce his party to conquer their antagonists while light enough remained.

“He is thinking of nothing but the game,—that Sampson Rudd,” observed Polly Chell to her father's lodger, the itinerant parson who was here to preach for a week or two. “He would not stop his ball-play to look at a queen.”

“He has everything to learn about the royal and noble persons,” replied the priest, Dr. Pantlin. “What should he hear of the affairs of England while he was learning to weave in Switzerland, and getting his head filled with the stiff notions that Calvin’s followers mislead our English youth by?”

Polly thought Sampson Rudd must remember enough of England to feel English people’s interests. He had been absent only twelve years; and he came back now, very learned about silk-worms and silk fabrics, but apparently not knowing a queen from a milkmaid, or a popish princess from a Bible-reading sovereign.

The Reverend Dr. Pantlin doubted whether Sampson was so indifferent about the popish part of English affairs. Polly would see what the lad had to say.

“It is too dark for more play, Sampson,” said she, walking where he was kicking the ball on the ice for his own amusement.

“Then where are the lights?” he added. “I remember when we played a dozen years ago, we did not leave off for night coming on. Don’t you remember the cressets on the pond bank? Why not have them now?”

“Because we are all thinking of something else, I suppose,—all of us but you. Come! do let that ball alone for a minute, and tell us what you think of the popish queen.”

“I suppose she looks as queens do look,” said Sampson, carelessly. “I dare say they are all nearly alike.”

“All nearly alike!” exclaimed Polly, who had once seen Queen Elizabeth on a journey, and could now, therefore, compare two queens who had not exactly the air of twin sisters.

“Now you see how Calvin’s influence works,” observed the preacher.

“Why should they be all alike, Sampson?” asked Polly.

“It may be the habit of ordering everybody,” he replied. “They naturally get into a haughty way, and speak loud, as this one did just now. And if they are broad and fat, and ride like men, and halloo to the grooms, it is from their loose way of living, naturally.”

“Broad and fat! and hallooing!” exclaimed Polly.

“He does not know a queen from a countess, as you expected,” declared Dr. Pantlin.

And Polly explained to Sampson that he had mistaken Bess of Hardwick for Mary of Scotland.

“The poor queen looked very gentle,” she said. “She smiled about the game; but it was such a sad smile!”

“She is ill, no doubt,” said the preacher. “The party were obliged to stop at Chesterfield, last night, they say, because she had such a pain in her side that she could not sit her horse any further. I believe it is true—I mean that they lodged at Chesterfield; for I saw both Felton and Stansbury in her train.”

“Do you mean that you doubt of her illness?” asked Polly.

“One need not say that,” replied the priest. “However full she may be of art and wiles, she may well have pain of heart enough to ache in every part of her body. She may have been ill, but she looks—”

“O! so sweetly!” exclaimed Polly.

“Very much so,” Dr. Pantlin assented. They had all heard that it was so.

“Did you really not see her, Sampson?” said Polly; “that graceful, downcast, beautiful lady”

“Was that lady the Queen of Scots?” asked Sampson, for the first time really interested. “I wonder whether I should know her again.”

“I am afraid you lost your opportunity, looking at Bess,” observed Polly.

“I did not look much at either,” replied the youth. “Queens are not much in my way; and if I cared for any, it would not be a popish one, whose relations afflict the godly in France, and who has had three husbands, and would not be sorry, they say, to take a fourth.”

“It appears you do know something about queens,” Dr. Pantlin observed.