Winsor, Kathleen (131 page)

"Your
Grace does me too much honour. I'm sure it's more than I deserve."

The
Duke was suddenly brisk again. "We'll dispense with the bowing and
nodding. As you know, madame, if I like I can help you—in your turn, you may be
of some use to me. My cousin made the mistake of thinking that all her business
was done for her in bed and that it made no difference how she carried herself
otherwise. That was a serious error, as no doubt she understands by now—if she
has wit enough to see it. But
that's all water under the bridge and need not
concern us. I admit to you freely, madame, I've made a lifelong study of his
Majesty's character and flatter myself I know it as well as any man who wears a
head. If you will be guided by me I think that we might go near to molding
England in our own design."

Amber
had no design for molding England and no wish to invent one. Politics, national
or international, did not concern her except in so far as they affected the
course of her personal wants or ambitions. Her intrigues did not
extend—intentionally, at least, beyond the people she knew and the events she
could observe. She was inclined to agree with Charles that his Grace had
windmills in the head—but if it pleased the Duke to imagine himself engaged
upon great projects she saw no reason to argue with him about it.

"Nothing
could please me more, your Grace, than to be your friend and share your
interests. Believe me for that—" She lifted her glass to him, and they
drank together.

Frances
Stewart was not long satisfied with her life in the country. She had always
lived where there were many people, balls and supper-parties, hunting and
plays, gossip and laughter and a continual rush for petty excitements. The
country was quiet, days passed with monotonous similarity, and compared with
the Palace her great house seemed lonely and deserted. There were no gallants
to amuse her, flatter her, run to pick up a fan or help her down from
horseback.

Her
husband spent much of this time in the field and when he was home he was too
often drunk. The steward managed the house—which she had never been trained to
do anyway— and the idle hours bored her desperately, for no one had ever
encouraged her to learn to be happy alone. She did not like being married,
either, but of course she had not expected to like it.

She
had married because it had seemed the only way that she could be an honest and
respected woman—and that had been the wish of her life. No doubt the Duke
really loved her and was grateful she had married him, but he seemed to her
dull and uncouth compared with the well-bred gentlemen of Whitehall who had a
thousand amusing tricks to make a lady laugh.

And
love-making revolted her. She dreaded each night as it began to grow dark, and
invented many small illnesses to keep him away. She had a horror of pregnancy
which sometimes made her actually sick, and more than once she experienced all
the symptoms without the actuality.

Constantly
she thought of the Town and Court and the fine life she had had there—which she
had not valued at a great
price then but which now seemed to her the most pleasant and desirable
existence on earth. She spent endless hours dreaming of the balls she had
attended, the clothes she had worn, the men who had gathered around her
wherever she went to fawn upon and compliment her; she lived over again and
again each small remembered episode, feeding her loneliness on them.

But
more than anything else, she thought of King Charles. She considered now that
he was the handsomest and most fascinating man she had ever known, and she had
found to her dismay that she was in love with him. She wondered why she had not
been wise enough to know it sooner. How different her life might have been! For
now that she had her respectability it seemed much less important than her
mother had assured her it was. What else could a woman need—if she had the King's
protection?

She
longed to return to London; but what if he was not ready to forgive her? What
if he had forgotten he had ever loved her at all? She had heard of his most
recent mistresses: the Countess of Northumberland, the Countess of Danforth,
Mary Knight, Moll Davis, Nell Gwynne. Perhaps he had lost all interest in her
by now. Frances remembered well enough that once people were out of his
sight—no matter how well he might like them—he promptly forgot their existence.

She
tried to take an interest in painting or in playing her guitar or in working a
tapestry. But those things did not seem entertaining to her, done alone. She
was thoroughly, wretchedly bored.

Finally
she coaxed the Duke to return to London, and at first her hopes ran exuberantly
high. Everyone came to her supper-parties and balls. She was as much courted
and sought out as she had been after her first triumphant appearance at
Whitehall. She knew perfectly well that everyone now expected the King would
soon relent and make her his mistress, and for the first time she was almost
ready to accept that position with its advantages and hazards. But Charles,
apparently, did not even know that she was in town.

That
went on for four months.

At
first Frances was surprised, then she became angry, and finally hurt and
frightened. What if he intended never to forgive her? The mere thought
terrified her, for she knew the Court too well not to understand that once they
were convinced he had lost interest they would flock away, like daws leaving a
plague-stricken city. With horror she faced the prospect of being forced to
return to her life of idle seclusion in the country—the years seemed to spin
out in an endless dreary prospect before her.

And
then, not quite a year from the day she had eloped, Frances became seriously
ill. At first the doctors thought it might be pregnancy or an ague or a severe
attack of the vapours—but after a few days they knew for certain that it was
smallpox.
Immediately Dr. Fraser sent a note to the King. The resentment Charles had felt
against her, his cynical conviction that she had deliberately played him for a
fool, vanished in a flood of horror and pity.

Smallpox!
Her beauty might be ruined! He thought of that even before he thought of the
threat to her life—for it seemed to him that such beauty as Frances had was a
thing almost sacred, and should be inviolable to the touch of God or man. To
mar or destroy it would be vandalism, in his eyes almost a blasphemy. And she
still meant more to him than he had been willing to admit these past months,
for she had a kind of freshness and purity which he did not discover in many
women he knew and which appealed strongly to the disillusion of his tired and
bitter heart.

He
would have gone immediately to visit her but the doctors advised against it for
fear he might carry the infection and spread it to others. He wrote instead.
But though he tried to make his letter sound confident and unworried it had a
false flat sound to him, for he did not believe it himself. He had scant faith
left in anything, certainly not in the duty of God to preserve a woman's beauty
for men's eyes. He had found God a negligent debtor who cared little to keep
His accounts straight. But he sent her his own best physicians and pestered
them constantly for news of her.

How
was she feeling? Was she better today? Good! Was she cheerful? And—would she be
marred? They always told him what he wanted to hear, but he knew when they were
lying.

It
was the end of the first week in May—more than a month later—before they would
let him see her. And then when his coach rolled into the courtyard of Somerset
House he found it jammed full with a score or more of others. Evidently word
had spread that he was coming, and they had wanted to be there to see the
meeting between them. Charles muttered a curse beneath his breath and his face
turned hard and sombre.

Damn
them all for their ghoulish curiosity, their cheap petty minds and malignant
poking into the sorrows of others.

He
got out of his coach and went inside. Mrs. Stewart, Frances's mother, had been
expecting him. He saw at a glance that she was nervous and excited, close to
tears, and he knew then for certain that the doctors had been lying to him.

"Oh,
your Majesty! I'm so glad you've come! She's been longing to see you! Believe
me, Sire, she's never forgiven herself for that wretched trick she played on
you!"

"How
is she?"

"Oh,
she's much better! Very much better! She's dressed and sitting up—though she's
weak yet, of course."

Charles
stood looking down at her, his black eyes reading what was behind her odd
fluttering gestures, her quick breathless way of speaking, the anguish in her
eyes and the new lines beneath them.

"May
I see her now?"

"Oh,
yes, your Majesty! Please come with me."

"From
the look of the courtyard, I'd say I'm not the only visitor she has
today."

Mrs.
Stewart was mounting the stairs beside him. "It's the first day she's been
allowed visitors, you see. The room's quite full—all the town's in there."

"Then
I think I'll step into this ante-room until they leave."

She
went to send them away with the plea that Frances had had excitement enough for
one day. Charles stood behind the closed door listening to them troop by,
chattering and giggling with irresponsible malice. When at last they were gone
Mrs. Stewart came for him. They walked down the gallery and into Frances's own
apartments, then through several more rooms until finally they reached the
bed-chamber where she sat waiting.

She
half lay on a couch that faced the doors and she was wearing a lovely silken
gown which hung in folds to the floor. The draperies had been pulled across all
windows to darken the room—it was only two o'clock—and though several candles
burned all of them were placed at a distance from her. Charles swept off his
hat and bowed, then immediately crossed the room to stand before her. He bowed
again, deeply, and reluctantly he raised his eyes to look at her. What he saw
sickened him.

She
had changed. Oh, even in this dim light she had changed. The disease had spared
her nothing. There were ugly red splotches and deep pockmarks on the skin that
had been smooth and white as a water-lily, and one eye was partly closed. All
that pure and perfect beauty was gone. But it was misery in Frances's own
upraised begging eyes that struck him hardest.

Mrs.
Stewart was still in the room—for Charles had asked her to stay—and she stood
with her hands clasped before her, anxious and worried as she watched them. But
Charles and Frances had forgotten she was there.

"My
dear," he said softly, forcing himself to speak after too long a silence.
"Thank God you're well again."

Frances
stared at him, struggling for self-control but afraid to trust her voice. At
last she managed a pitiful little smile, but the corners of her mouth began to
quiver. "Yes, your Majesty. I'm well again." Her soft low voice
dropped to a mere whisper. "If it's anything to be grateful for."

There
was a sudden bitter twist of her mouth, her eyes went down and she looked
quickly away. All at once she covered her face with her hands and began to cry,
shoulders and body shaken with the violence of her sobs. It was, he knew, not
only the agony of having him see what had happened to her, but the culmination
of all she had endured this afternoon—the curious cruel spiteful eyes of the
men and women who had been there, all elaborately polite, sympathetic, falsely
cheerful. They had taken their revenge on her for every moment of
grudging
admiration she had ever had, for each fawning compliment, each hypocritical
friendship.

Instantly
Charles dropped to one knee beside her. His hand touched her arm lightly, the
deep tones of his voice began to plead with her. "I've been so worried for
you, Frances! Oh, my dear—forgive me for acting like a jealous fool!"

"Forgive
you? Oh, Sire!" She looked at him, her hands still covering all her face
but her eyes, as though she could hide from him behind them. "It's I who
must ask your forgiveness! That's why this happened to me—I know it is!—to
punish me for what I did to you!"

A
wave of almost unbearable pity and tenderness swept over him. He felt that he
would have given everything he possessed on earth to have her beautiful again,
to see her look at him with her old teasing confident coquetry. But it had all
gone forever, the sparkling expressions of her face, the happy laughter of a
lovely woman who knows that her beauty will buy forgiveness for anything.
Savage anger filled him. God in heaven! Does the world spoil
everything
it
touches?

"Don't
talk like that, Frances. Please. I don't know what made me act like such a
fool— But when I heard you were sick I was out of my mind. If anything had
happened to you— But thank God you're well again! I'm not going to lose
you."

She
looked at him for a long serious moment, as though wondering whether or not he
could see the change in her— pathetically hoping— But it was no use. Of course
he could see it. Everyone else had—why shouldn't he?

"I'm
well again, yes," she murmured. "But I wish I weren't. I wish I were
dead. Look at me—!" Her hands came down, her voice was a lonely cry,
anguished and full of desperation; behind them they heard a sudden hard sob
from her mother. "Oh,
look
at me! I'm
ugly
now!"