The Touchstone of Fortune Part 26

"Your Majesty may at least rest easy so far as Hamilton is concerned,"

she returned.

"But I am glad that he is out of the country, and shall see to it that he doesn't come back," said the king.

His Majesty had talked too long, for Frances had learned that his suspicions of her love of Hamilton were not allayed, despite his pretense to the contrary.

"I care not where he be so long as he doesn't trouble me," answered Frances, sighing.

"But if it is not one it is another," said the king, ruefully. "I hear that the Duke of Tyrconnel is mad for love of you."

This was a welcome opportunity to Frances, and she quickly used it. "Yes.

At least, he says he is. What does your Majesty advise? Shall I marry him or not?"

"By all means, not!" returned the king, with strong emphasis. "He would take you from court. Do you return his love?"

"Well--" answered Frances, drooping her head and pausing to allow the king to fill the blank.

"But you shall not marry him," insisted the king.

"But you would not have me live a maid? Think of the humiliation of having graven on my tombstone: 'Mistress Frances Jennings, Age 85.' I'm going to marry the richest man that asks me."

"Odds fis.h.!.+ that's Tyrconnel!" exclaimed the king.

"I'll find a pretext for sending him to the Tower at once."

"If you do," returned Frances, laughing, "there is Little Jermyn. He will be rich and an earl when his uncle dies."

"I'll send him along with Tyrconnel," declared the king.

"And there is--" began Frances, laughing.

But the king interrupted her, "I'll send every man to the Tower that wants to marry you, if I depopulate the court."

"But here comes old Lady Castlemain," said Frances, turning to leave the king. "I can't quarrel with her, because I can't swear with her. May I take my leave, your Majesty?"

"I am sorry to grant it, but good-by," returned the king.

"Good-by, your Majesty, and thank you," returned Frances, grateful for much that the king did not know he had told her. Then she came to me and told me what the king had said, not omitting her conclusions based on what he had left unsaid.

Frances and I walked over to the park, where we stood for a time watching the Duke of York and John Churchill playing pall-mall, but the day growing cold, we soon continued our walk over to the Serpentine, where we found Tyrconnel and several other gentlemen riding. Tyrconnel dismounted and, leading his horse, came to us. He took no notice of me, but bowed to Frances, saying:--

"I hear it from the king himself that Mistress Jennings has been calling on her friend, George Hamilton, at his lodgings in the Old Swan."

"And if so, is it a matter of which you have any right to speak?" asked Frances, smiling.

"I have a right to withdraw the proposal of marriage I so foolishly made," he retorted.

"Yes, my lord," answered Frances, laughing softly. "But you need not be angry if I am not. How fortunate for me that I had not accepted." Then turning to leave and looking back at him: "May we not still be friends, my lord? You have friends at court who are as bad as I, even if what you say be true. You say it is true; the king says it is true; therefore it must be true. Two men so wise and honest could not be mistaken in so small a matter, nor would they lie solely for the purpose of injuring a woman. No, it must be true, my lord, and I congratulate you on your timely withdrawal."

We had not taken fifty steps till Tyrconnel gave his horse to a boy and came running after us, infinitely more eager to retract the withdrawal than he had been to withdraw his proposal. He protested by all things holy his total disbelief in the scandalous story, and begged Frances not to remember what he had said in jealous anger.

"Be careful, my lord. Do not make another mistake," said Frances, laughing in his face. "I did visit the Old Swan this morning, and the king told me less than thirty minutes ago that Master Hamilton lives there. It is said by those who claim to know that he is in France, but they must be wrong, and I must have seen him. The king says I did, and he can do no wrong. I neither deny nor affirm, though I fancy that my real friends will not believe me guilty of the indiscretion."

"I do not believe it," protested Tyrconnel. "I know you are all that is good."

"Thank you, my lord," returned Frances. "If I am good, I remain so for my own sake. As for the gossips, they may think what they please, talk about me to their hearts' content, and go to the devil for his content, if he can find it in them."

Seeing that Tyrconnel wanted to speak with Frances alone, I drew to a little distance for the purpose of giving him an opportunity to press his suit, in which I so heartily wished him success.

It is uphill work making love to a woman whose heart is filled to overflowing with love of another man, and I was sorry for poor earnest Tyrconnel as I watched him pleading his case with Frances. He was not a burning light intellectually, but he entertained a just estimate of himself and was wise enough not to take any one of the daintily baited hooks that were dangled before him by some of the fairest anglers in England. But manlike, he yearned for the hook that was not in the water.

I followed Frances and Tyrconnel back to the palace, and when they parted at the King's Street Gate, he asked me to go with him to the sign of the King's Head and have a tankard of mulled sack and a breast of Welsh mutton right off the spit.

Tyrconnel's speech was made up of an amusing lisp grafted on the broadest Irish brogue ever heard outside of Killarney. It cannot be reproduced in print; therefore I shall not attempt it. But it was so comical that one could never rid one's self of a desire to laugh, be his Lords.h.i.+p ever so earnest. As a result of this amusing manner of speech, his most serious words never produced a thoughtful impression on his hearers. It is said that the king once laughed when Tyrconnel, in tears, told him of the death of his Lords.h.i.+p's mother.

Arriving at the King's Head, Tyrconnel chose a table in a remote alcove of the dining room. After the maid had brought us the mulled sack and had gone to fetch the mutton, his Lords.h.i.+p began earnestly, but laughably, to tell me his troubles, and I did my best to listen seriously, though with poor result.

"I want to marry your cousin, baron," he said. "Yes, yes, go on. Laugh! I don't mind it. I know you can't help it. But listen. I want to marry her because she is beautiful and because I know she is good. But if she is in love with Hamilton, as report says she is, I should not want to inflict my suit upon her. I know that at best I am no genius, but I am not so great a fool as to seek an opportunity to make myself appear more stupid than I am. Of course she can never marry Hamilton, but a hopeless love clings to a woman as burning oil to the skin and is well-nigh as impossible to extinguish. Therefore I beg you tell me. Shall I beat a retreat and take care of my wounded, or shall I continue the battle?"

"I should not trouble myself about the wounded," I answered, reluctant to evade the truth, for he was an honest soul, very much in earnest.

"But do you speak honestly?" he asked, mopping the perspiration from his face with the tablecloth. "She laughs when I speak seriously, but I have hoped that it was because of my d.a.m.nable manner of speech rather than my suit. Tell me, what do you think about it? Is she in love with Hamilton?"

His appeal was hard to resist, but I answered evasively in the spirit if not the letter of a lie: "Thus much I know. My cousin has seen very little of Hamilton--so little that it appears almost impossible for one of her sound judgment and cool blood to have fallen in love with him. I can swear that she has not, nor ever has had, a thought of marrying him.

She had better kill herself."

"Ah, that's all true enough," he answered. "And now that he is in disgrace, with a noose awaiting him on Tyburn, it is of course impossible for her to marry him. But you see, my dear fellow, she may love him.

Nelly Gwynn says she does."

"Yes," I replied. "Nelly set the story afloat. Her tongue is self acting.

But she had no reason to do so save in her imagination and her love of talking. Half the troubles in life are caused by your automatic talkers."

I then told him of my cousin's visit with Nelly to the Old Swan, laying emphasis on Frances's refusal to recognize Hamilton, but saying nothing of the fight that followed.

"I am glad to learn the truth, if it is the truth," lisped his Lords.h.i.+p, musingly.

"If you would know the real danger to Frances, you must look higher,"

I said, cautiously refraining from being too explicit. "There is one whom my cousin scorns, but from whom she is in hourly peril. There is no length to which he would not go, no crime, however dastardly, he would not commit to gain his end. I watch over her constantly, and although my fear may be groundless, still I believe that her only safety is to marry at once and to leave court with her husband."

"But you say she despises him?" he asked.

"Yes, she even hates him. Still she is in great danger; perhaps in danger of her life. We all know that crimes have been committed by this person-- crimes so horrible as to be almost past belief. You remember the parson's daughter who jumped from a high wall and killed herself to escape him."

"You are her guardian, baron. Let me be her watchdog," said Tyrconnel, leaning eagerly across the table toward me. "And if I am so fortunate as to win her love by constant devotion, she shall be my wife."

I offered my hand as a silent compact, and we finished our mutton almost without another word.

Two days after my interview with Tyrconnel, George Hamilton's _News Letter_ appeared, containing a vicious attack on the king, which angered his Majesty greatly and seemed to arouse anew his suspicion that Hamilton was not in France, some one having told him on a mere suspicion that George was the editor of the _News Letter_. His Majesty accused Frances of falsehood in having told him that she had not seen Hamilton and that she believed he was in France, but she becoming indignant, he again apologized.