Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/376

368 “I saw her yesterday; it was Alice who went this morning. Alice says she must have been weeping all night. She would not tell why: and she would not let Alice stay.”

“And as I passed the gate in coming away,” said Alice, “I saw the most unwelcome of all neighbours going up to the house, across the lawn,—Mr. Urrey.”

“She would not see him, of course.”

“But she did. That is, he entered the house; and he did not come away while I was in sight of it.”

“He went in to write me the news, no doubt,” said Harry. “I shall find a note on my table, containing the tidings I could tell him. He is so vehement that I never ask Henrietta to receive him as a guest. It is strange that he does not resent our neglect. Henrietta would surely have had spirit to refuse to receive him and his news.”

This was a mistake. When Harry entered his own house he saw more than surprise in the servants’ faces. Henrietta was prostrate on the sofa in the dining-room, sobbing as if her heart would break. Her husband tenderly raised her, and she seemed to find comfort for her trouble in his arms.

“O! love,” she sobbed. “I never thought to grieve in this way before you. I am so sorry you have caught me!”

“As if I would not know all your griefs!” cried Harry. “I hope that rude fellow Urrey has not been vexing you.”

“Mr. Urrey!” cried Henrietta, turning scarlet.

“You did not see him, surely,” said Harry. “It is being too complaisant to listen to his savage talk; but who but he could have shaken you so?”

“I have seen him,” Henrietta confessed, with her face hidden on Harry’s shoulder. “And he brought me such dreadful news!”

“About Lord Strafford? He might have left it to me,” Harry observed in great vexation.

“But Lady Carlisle tells me, too;” and in a mood of unwonted confidence, Henrietta put the letter into her husband’s hand.

It was very short. It told that she, Lady Carlisle, should never be happy again. She could not have conceived such misery. The King found, at the last moment, that he could not save his best friend, the most loyal of servants, the most incomparable minister, the man who was the glory and grace of the whole realm. The Queen herself assured the King that he had no choice. He had yielded everything! The parliament was to continue, however it might behave; and the King would never again intrude upon either House. It was shocking humiliation: but, O! what was that to this fearful sacrifice of the man who had been his main support in the conflict he had sustained with a turbulent people! Wretched as she was, Lady Carlisle said, she would rather be Lord Strafford’s friend than the enemies who had hunted him to his death. Sooner than be the cruel, vindictive Pym, or even the generous but over-strict Mr. Hampden, she would be the heart-broken Lucy Carlisle. In a P.S., she said that one consolation remained,—that of worshipping the memory of the King’s best friend, and cherishing eternal contempt and detestation of his persecutors.

“To be sacrificed in this way at last!” Henrietta exclaimed. “I am certain that no doubt of his life at least being safe ever entered his mind. O! I wonder what he said when they told him the news!”

“I can tell you,” said Harry. “He said: ‘Put not your trust in princes! ”

Henrietta started, and then said she did not believe it. He was too wise and good a man to imagine that the King would let him die, if it was possible to save him.

Harry afterwards repented answering this. The occasion was a weighty one, however; and the natural triumph took the form of warning to one not behind Strafford himself in loyalty. Henrietta was told, but concealed that she knew it, that Strafford had held the King’s assurance, on the word of a Prince, that he should not die. Harry further illustrated his warning to his wife not to trust this particular Prince by instance upon instance of breach of the royal word, since the troubles began.

“You make everything worse!” Henrietta complained. “As if it were not enough that the greatest man in the kingdom, the kind-hearted hero who has been so good to me, in the midst of his mighty affairs, and Lady Carlisle’s best friend, is—O! I cannot bear it! And you come to me at such a time, and tell me that the King is false, and the Queen a coward, and I a poor forsaken dupe!”

“Forsaken! while I am your husband, Henrietta!”

“And how did you become my husband but by promising to leave me to myself and my friends on these terrible affairs? And now you make me miserable in myself, and would spoil my dearest friendships!”

“How you mistake me!” cried Harry. “But I will not say another word. Events will speak for themselves only too soon. Shall I leave you, or tell you why your father sent for me?”

“O! leave me! Do not come near me till I can bear it better.” As he reached the door she raised her head to say, “If I have been unjust, Harry, it was you who made me.”

It did not console Harry to find, some hours later, that, while his wife could not bear his presence, she had given orders that if Mr. Urrey should call, anything he might convey should be at once brought up to her dressing-room; and that, if he wished to speak with her, she would see him in the dining-room. Urrey must be in some mischief, Harry thought, or was making sport of Henrietta’s notorious loyalty. He must be watched, and must know that he was watched.

Urrey, however, stood well with the stout men of Buckinghamshire at this time. When Harry went among them, as Mr. Hampden’s representative, to confer with them on the defence of the country, in case of the army being turned to an ill use, he found that Urrey had been before him everywhere, using much more exciting language, and proposing stronger measures. He would have thrown great difficulties in the way of Harry’s work, if Harry’s own frankness, and steady