The Touchstone of Fortune Part 12

I had come to look for a speedy accomplishment of my cousin's good fortune, and also to regard Hamilton as my dearest friend among men.

Still I was helpless to remedy these evils if they really existed. What I did at the time was to insist, first, that Frances regain her senses as soon as possible, and second, that she say nothing of her intention to leave Whitehall for at least ten days. To my first request she replied that she had never been so completely in possession of her senses as at that present moment, and my second, she positively refused to consider.

The best of women want their way, at least in part, so I said, "I abandon my first request as unreasonable."

She looked up to me, hardly knowing whether to laugh or to frown, but she chose the former, and I continued, "And as to my second suggestion, I amend it to, say, five or six days."

"Three!" she insisted. So we let it stand at that, each with a sense of triumph.

We returned to the palace, and soon I had an opportunity to ask the king for a word privately. He graciously consented, and led me to his closet, overlooking the River Thames. From this closet, on the second floor, a privy stairs led down to a door which opened on a small covered porch at the head of a flight of stone steps falling to the king's private barge landing at the water's edge. When I noticed the narrow stairway, I had no thought of the part it would one day play in the fortunes and misfortunes of Frances, Hamilton, and myself.

On the king's command, I sat down near him, and he asked:--

"What can I do for you, baron? I do not remember your having ever solicited a favor of me, and I shall be delighted to grant what you ask, if I can."

"I seek no favor, your Majesty," I returned. "I simply want to tell you that my cousin, Mistress Jennings, has just informed me of her intention to leave Whitehall, and I wonder--"

"No, no," cried the king, interrupting me. "She shall not go! Why is she discontented here?"

"I am not sure that I can tell your Majesty," I answered evasively. "I am loath to see her go, and, knowing well your kindliness, hoped you would be willing to urge her to remain."

"Gladly," replied the king. "She is the most beautiful ornament of our court, and we must not lose her. I don't mind telling you for your own ear that I suspect the cause of her sudden resolution and respect it."

He laughed, and after a long pause, continued:--

"I forgot that she was fresh from the country, and that she still retained part of her prudish ideas, so while walking with her yesterday on the Serpentine, I offered her a pension, to which she is justly ent.i.tled, adorning our court as she does. But I fear she took my honest efforts at gallantry too seriously. My dear baron, the girl shall have her pension without the slightest return on her part save one of her rare smiles now and then. Say to her, please, that the king sends his apology and eagerly awaits an opportunity to offer it in person."

"I thank your Majesty," I answered, rising and bowing, "and feel sure you have done all that is needful to keep my cousin at court. She has certain prudish standards which I fear are too easily shocked, and is as self-willed as--well, as a beautiful woman--"

"Ought to be," interrupted the king, laughing and finis.h.i.+ng my sentence.

I wanted him to suspect that his gallant speeches would be repeated to me, hoping that the knowledge might temper them.

After talking a moment longer with him, I asked permission to withdraw, and at once sought Frances. When I found her in the parlor of the d.u.c.h.ess, I drew her to one side and told her of my interview with the king.

"You have tamed the lion," I said, "and you may accept the pension without harm to your sensitive dignity. But please don't make a fool of yourself again by taking such a matter seriously. Keep your head, keep your heart, keep your temper, and thrive. Lose either, and have the whole court laughing at you. I'm sorry Hamilton is so fixed in your heart that you cannot dislodge him, but this good may grow out of the evil: you may judge other men dispa.s.sionately."

A great sigh was her only answer.

* * * * *

Frances took my advice, along with the king's pension, and soon learned that as good wine needs no bush, so true virtue needs no defence.

A brief account of Frances's triumphs and adventures at court is necessary before this history can be brought to the point of Hamilton's return; that is, to the time when I knew he was in London.

Her first great triumph was over the heart of the king, to whose lovemaking she learned to listen and to smile; not the smile of a.s.sent, but of amus.e.m.e.nt.

Soon our august monarch became silly with love of the new beauty, and with her help often made himself ridiculous. On one occasion, a few months after Frances's installation as maid of honor, he left a love note in her m.u.f.f which she pushed out at one end as she thrust her hand in at the other. She was careful to do this little trick in such a manner that those who saw the king place the note in her m.u.f.f should see it fall out.

It was picked up by an inquisitive soul, reached the hands of the "lampooners," and appeared in biting verse in the next issue of the _News Letter_.

When the king complained to Frances of her ill-treatment of his note, she declared, with a great show of astonishment, that she had not seen it, which was literally true, since she had only felt it. She said that it must have fallen to the ground as she took up her m.u.f.f, and tried to make it appear that she was greatly disappointed.

"I would not slight so great an honor as a letter from my king," she said demurely.

"No, no," returned his Majesty, laughing. "Our most devoted subject would not slight her king's message. I believe you did it intentionally."

"In which case your Majesty will leave no more notes for me in public,"

answered Frances. And the king's choice lay between taking offence and looking upon the affair as a jest. He was too far gone in love to take offence, so he chose to laugh.

On another occasion, at the queen's ball, the king asked Frances to walk out to the garden with him.

"It is dark, your Majesty, and I fear the dark," she replied. "Let us walk there in the daytime, so that every one may see how graciously my king honors me."

He could not coax her out, so he said: "Very well, my prudish Miss Solomon. Have your way and break my heart."

"To do either would please me," she retorted. "I like to have my own way, and there are few women who would not be delighted to break a handsome king's heart."

Frances having captured the king, every other man at court was her admirer. She could have had her choice of a husband from among the n.o.blest and richest men of the land, but she showed no one especial favor. If one imagined that she smiled with marked graciousness on him, he soon learned that others were equally fortunate, and after a time each accepted his smile from her and took it for granted that his failure to receive greater favor was because of the king's success. All praised her discretion, though many believed that she was concealing adroitly what she would not have the world suspect. With all her circ.u.mspection, it soon became the common talk at court that she was the king's new favorite, though there was no reason given for the rumor save the belief that the king was not to be resisted.

* * * * *

The d.u.c.h.ess of York and I knew the truth concerning Frances, but all Westminster and London talked of the new star at Whitehall who was outs.h.i.+ning Castlemain, Nell Gwynn, Stuart, and the host of other luminaries who had scintillated with scandal ever since the king's return to Britain's throne.

One morning, shortly after the king's last-mentioned conversation with Frances, she met Nell Gwynn in the palace garden, and was surprised when Nelly addressed her as "Little Solomon."

"Where did you learn the name?" asked Frances.

"From its author, the king," answered Nell. "Come home with me and I'll tell you all about it."

They took Nell's barge and went to Westminster water stairs, where they walked across the park to her house in Pell Mell.

Frances cordially hated Lady Castlemain and the king's other brazen friends, but, after having met Nelly several times, she had learned to love the sweet, profane, ignorant girl because, despite her apparently evil life, there was honesty, kindliness, and truth in Nelly's heart.

When the two young women were seated in Nelly's cozy parlor, she began to open her heart to Frances.

"Yes, the king told me how he invited you to go to the garden with him one evening, and how he dubbed you 'Little Solomon' when you refused."

"Ah, did he?" asked Frances, surprised at the king's willingness to speak of his rebuff.

"Yes," returned Nelly, surprising Frances still further by a soberness of manner rarely seen in the laughing girl.

After a long pause, Nelly continued: "Do you know, I hate the fat Castlemain woman. And the bow-legged Stuart hussy! She seems to be proud of her crooked shanks and exhibits them on every possible occasion. There is something about extreme ugliness that drives it to exposure, on the principle, I suppose, that murder will out. And there's ugly Wells! I hate her, too! Her charm, like that of the Puritan's face, lies wholly in her d.a.m.ned ugliness. I hate them all, though I do not fear them, but oh, Mistress Jennings--" Here she leaned forward and grasped Frances's wrist almost fiercely, "The human heart is a strange thing, at least mine is, for I love you, but oh, I fear you!"

"No, no," cried Frances, at a loss just what to say.

"Yes," continued Nell, insistently. "Let me tell you! Of late I can neither eat nor sleep because of the dread that you will rob me of the king's love. I can do nothing but pray and swear. He does love me more than he loves all the world, because he knows I am true to him! And his love is meat and drink and life itself to me! If you could see but one little part of my love for him, if you could know that I wors.h.i.+p him, G.o.d help me! as I should wors.h.i.+p only my Maker, if you could understand that if you were to steal him from me, you would take my life, my very soul,--if so poor a thing as I can have a soul,--you, who may choose and pick men at will, would leave his love to me!"

"You need not fear, you need not fear," said Frances, soothingly.