LADY RUSSELL

IT happened that Lady Russell advised delay in the appeal to the king; she wished to wait for the results of the interview between his majesty and the three dukes. Surely no fair woman ever won greater mediators as quickly as did poor Lady Betty.

Lady Russell hoped little, however, from their efforts, though she said not a word of this to the distracted young wife but, instead, pointed out the advantages of waiting until they could appeal to William quite alone—as two women in distress—and with no connection with any political embroglio. Indeed, the older woman knew the king well enough to be sure that his heart might be touched by a woman’s grief, though in affairs of state he could be adamant. In spite of Betty’s impatience and misery, they waited, and Devonshire, Ormond, and Bedford, two great English peers and the greatest Irish one, went up to Kensington to save one young woman’s heart from breaking, caring little enough for the Jacobite earl himself.

It was during this season of delay, when despair and hope were mingled, that one of Devonshire’s gentlemen brought a packet from the Tower and gave it to Lady Clancarty with much elaborate courtesy. And she? She fled with it to her room—Lady Russell had insisted upon keeping her under her own roof—and she kissed and wept over it, before she opened it, although she knew that the Governor of the Tower had read it all before her, hard necessity!

It contained a ring, a letter, and the dried sprig of shamrock, and her eyes were half blinded with tears as she tried to read.

“My own dear wife,” it ran, “a gentleman from my Lord of Devonshire has just been with me and has told me of your noble devotion to me in this dark hour, of your efforts in my behalf. Dear heart, dear heart, how can I write all I feel, or tell my gratitude to the great duke for befriending you? To tell the truth, I have little hope that my pardon can be obtained, but I do hope and pray to see you once more! Ah, the separation, Betty, I did not know how hard it would be to bear—doubly hard now that I know you suffer, too. Bear up, brave heart, under the despair also; indeed, I know you will, for my sake, and afterwards—you will go to see my mother, who is, I know, broken hearted—and you will comfort her for me. Ah, I did not mean to write to you sadly, sweetheart, but the loss of you drives me to distraction. I see you constantly as you looked unconscious in my arms, and it wrings my heart. Dear love, I send you my ring and our bit of shamrock, and I will not believe that I shall not see you again—’twould be too cruel.

“Dear heart, sweet wife,—farewell!”

Poor Lady Betty, she wept over it and caressed it like a living thing, for he had touched it; and she hid the shamrock and the ring in her bosom.

In this distracted state she waited forty-eight hours longer, until she knew that the three dukes had obtained no definite promise from the king and that the Earl of Sunderland, who was supposed to command his majesty’s ear, was proclaiming everywhere his approval of Spencer’s deed. The cloud grew darker rather than brighter, and in her agony she would have gone alone to Kensington, for Lady Russell’s caution seemed to her only distracting delay.However, the older woman only lingered to take her steps more surely. She drew up, with Devonshire’s help, a formal petition to the king, not trusting to any verbal or interrupted statement of the case, and at last, just when the young countess was reduced almost to madness, she signified her readiness to accompany her to court.

The king was at Kensington and the two set out, a little before noon, in Lady Russell’s carriage, for the palace. Betty had worn her heart out with grief and impatience; she had not slept and she had scarcely tasted food, except under compulsion, and was a shadow of herself—but still a beautiful one. Lady Russell knew intuitively all that the younger woman had suffered, and when they were in the carriage, she laid her hand gently over Betty’s.

“My dear,” she said, “I know how cruel this delay has seemed, but, believe me, ’twas for the best. Our appeal must be quite distinct from that of the three dukes, and it must be only from our hearts—as two desolate women.”

Betty forced herself to speak with composure.

“You know the king, madam,” she said, “and I do not—or, at least, only slightly and, alas, he has ever seemed cold to me and unapproachable.”

“You truly do not know him,” Lady Russell rejoined gently; “I do not think, dear Lady Clancarty, that a great man is ever heartless, and this man is great.”

Betty, who looked at the Dutch king with thoroughly English eyes, raised her brows expressively but said nothing.

“Yes,” continued, the older woman, looking thoughtfully out of the carriage window, “after awhile the English people will do him justice. What other man could have held the coalition of European powers together against France? or could have raised England from the degradation into which his uncles had plunged her to her present dignity?”

Lady Betty sighed wearily; her heart was in the Tower.

“I know that I have heard him called the arbiter of Europe,” she replied, “but he is so very Dutch, dear Lady Russell, and so stern and cold in his way.”

“Not cold,” said Lady Russell, “but merciful. His uncle James was cold—look at the pleading of Monmouth, ’twould have moved a heart of stone—and Charles was often cruel.”“Alas! King William may turn as deaf an ear to me,” cried the young countess, with a quivering voice; “was ever fate more cruel? If he is beheaded I shall die!”

Lady Russell said nothing, but gave her so eloquent a look that Betty broke down.

“Forgive me!” she cried, “oh, forgive me! How selfish grief makes us; I forgot—”

“I lived,” said the widow quietly.

Betty fell to weeping silently.

“’Twould be worse to live!” she moaned.

“It is worse,” retorted Lady Russell; “grief eats into the heart like a canker; but I lived for his son!”

Betty’s head went lower down; sobs shook her from head to foot. The older woman put her arm around her.

“I know,” she said, “I know, but we are going to a great man—a great king. Dear child, let us hope. You do not know King William. Melancholy and personal misfortunes seem to be wrapped in the birthright of the Stuarts, but, ah, my dear, this man is descended also from the house of that great prince who set Holland free. Mercy belongs, of right, to mighty princes.”

“I love a great man,” said Betty, drying her tears.“So do all women,” replied Lady Russell; “it is born in us; we do not love littleness or weakness. This is a very solemn matter and we may not judge the king, or judge for him.”

Lady Clancarty did not reply, she could not; she was struggling to conquer her emotions, to prepare herself for the coming interview, and Lady Russell took her hand and held it in silent sympathy.

The agony of that hour of suspense was almost too much to bear; her husband’s life hanging in the balance, at the will of this stern, silent man; this man who seemed to her—as he did to many of the English, an unsympathetic, phlegmatic Dutchman—an alien in the land.

“Yonder is the palace,” remarked Lady Russell, in a strangely quiet voice, though her hand clasped tightly over Betty’s.

They both looked out on the palace and the green before it, the barrack buildings and the gates, at which a dozen or more emblazoned coaches waited, and they could see the sun flash on the arms of the guards within and without the gates.

The girl drew her breath sharply; she shook from head to foot.“Ah, madam,” she cried wildly, “if he says—‘no’!”

Lady Russell bowed her head, her lips moved; her thoughts went back to the dreadful days of the Rye House Plot; she thought of herself beside her husband at his trial, of his last hours; she seemed to see him in the coach, driven almost past his home on his way to die in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. She shuddered, too, but in a moment her serene sadness returned.

“We must put our trust in the King of kings,” she said gently, clasping her hands and looking upward.

Betty wept silently; at that moment every hope seemed to die in her heart.

Meanwhile, the coach rolled heavily and surely as fate itself along the High Street of Kensington, and at last through the palace gates.