“I am not so sure. We are discussing what appears to be your religion — that of not paying your just debts.”
“But, my dear child,” he protested, “this is absurd. Where is the man who is without them?”
“In moderation, perhaps.”
“Moderation? And does anyone dare to suggest that mine are immoderate?”
“I do.”
“Oh, I say. Come now. A few thousand would clear them all up.”
“Then why don’t you clear them all up?”
“Because — well, because I haven’t thousands enough.”
“But surely you might pay the more important ones. You know, Colin, it hurts me to talk to you on such a subject, but I do so because, knowing you as I do, I feel that you do not realize the positive dishonesty of your behavior.”
“Dishonesty?” he gasped.
“It never occurred to you in that light, did it?”
Colin got up. He felt that she was going rather too far.
“Look here, Molly, what on earth are we discussing this for? I am sure I didn’t come here to talk about my debts.”
“I am quite sure you didn’t. But I thought that, after what you said last night, I had a right to go into it. I could never consent, under any circumstances, to listen to the advances of a man who deliberately refuses to pay what he owes.”
“But I do not deliberately refuse,” he answered with some heat. “I intend to pay every penny. Besides, Molly, these debts of mine are vastly overrated, no doubt by those people who do me the questionable honor of talking of my affairs. I have really only one formidable creditor. To the others I owe perhaps a couple of thousand in all. I’ll settle up those to-morrow if you wish it and clear off the other one — the big one — as soon as I can comfortably manage it. Will that convince you of my good intentions?”
“How much does the big debt amount to? she asked, implacably.
“About seven thousand.”
“Heavens, Colin! How did you manage it?”
“Well, you see, they were my father’s solicitors, and they advanced me money — about ten thousand or so — on stock that I inherited and which I was holding for a rise. I was unlucky; instead of the rise there was the deuce of a slump, leaving me in Wilfrid and Lagdale’s debt to the tune of some seven thousand pounds. Sheer ill luck, Molly!”
“And you wish to leave such a debt — a debt of honor — to be paid when you can comfortably manage it,” she cried in horror. “Colin, I am ashamed of you.”
“But what am I to do? If I were to scrape together every available penny I might just manage to pay it. But the inconvenience would be appalling.”
“No matter what the inconvenience, you should liquidate that debt without a moment’s delay. It is worse with you than I thought, Colin. This is no ordinary debt. It’s payment at the earliest moment is a sacred duty.”
Colin hung his head, realizing that she was quite right. It was a sad reflection. Then he raised his eyes and they met hers. She smiled at him, and he told himself that she was very beautiful. To win her even the effort — the sacrifice — she demanded would be but little.
“Molly,” he declared, “for your sake I will do it, no matter how much it hampers me. But when it is done—”
“Do it first,” she checked him with a laugh. “We will talk about the rest afterwards.”
Thus was the metamorphosis of Colin effected, and thus was he prevailed upon to pay the heaviest portion of his debts and abandon the careless ways he had trodden.
He posted a check to Wilfrid and Langdale, and two days later he called upon Mary Escott with the receipt in his pocket and a fever of anticipation in his soul which he mistook for the glow of satisfaction said to result from the performance of one’s duty.
She received him with metaphorically — and only metaphorically — open arms.
“My dear Colin,” she cried before he had said a word, “you have behaved nobly, and I shall ever feel proud to think that I was instrumental in recalling you to a sense of your duty.”
Colin looked askance.
“You know that I have paid Wilfrid and Langdale?” he faltered.
“Why, yes. I had a letter from my husband this morning, in which he mentioned that he had received your check.”
“Your husband!” he echoed, with mouth agape.
“Yes; Mr. Escott, you know, is the present Wilfrid and Langdale — has been for the past two years.”
“But — but — What are you talking about, Molly? Mr. Escott has been dead for over two years.”
“Oh, dear no, Colin. Surely I should know. You are thinking of Mr. Plunkett, my first husband.”
Colin’s eyes seemed to roll in his head. He certainly turned pale. For a moment she thought he would burst out into denunciations. Then with a sudden, jerky movement he reached out for his hat.
“Good morning,” said he, and was gone before she could say another word.
THE NIGHT OF DOOM
Premier Magazine, June 1919
That long-faced, ingenuous young gentleman, Sir Thomas Overbury, who for a time was all but King of England, was diligently writing verses. To be more exact, he was composing a love-letter in verse — a passionate, burning, swiftly throbbing plea for fond compassion calculated to melt the iciest heart in England, much less the heart of that wanton Essex woman to whom it was addressed, a heart languishing for the opportunity to melt.
As he wrote he smiled. It was not merely that he took a poet’s complacent satisfaction in the ingenuity of his jingles, although that pleased him, too. His real satisfaction lay in the deeper ingenuity prompting this rhymed production, the subtle secondary purpose of his own which it was to serve, as distinct from the obvious primary purpose for which it was intended by the elegant minion on whose behalf and in whose name it was being written.
A very subtle gentleman was Sir Thomas Overbury, with a head astonishingly old and cunning for the nine-and-twenty years he counted to his age. A wit and a scholar, he was endowed with a grasp of affairs, a gift of statecraft, and a genius for intrigue that might have carried him far indeed but for the lovely viper which crossed his path, and upon which he chanced to tread — the woman to whom he was now inditing, in another’s name, this passionate rhymed epistle.
As it was, those gifts of his made him, as I have said — in a phrase that perhaps needs explaining — all but King of England. King James I. — that wisest fool in Christendom — was under the spell of his handsome favourite Robert Carr; and Carr was naught without Overbury, who mended out of his own abundant store Carr’s lack of learning, supplied the soul and brain without which the minion had been fashioned. Thus Overbury ruled Carr, who ruled the king, who ruled England.
The friendship between Carr and Overbury was now some ten years old, antedating by some six years Carr’s admission into royal favour. They had first met in Edinburgh, in 1601, at a time when Carr, a lad of about Overbury’s own age, had been a page in the service of the Earl of Dunbar. On Overbury’s return to his native England, he was accompanied by the comely young Scot, who came to seek his fortune at the Court of the Scots king. That fortune Carr found, as is well known, unexpectedly perhaps, in the tilt-yard at Whitehall. He had entered the service of his countryman, Sir James Hay, the favourite, and with him rode to that tilting-match, and there by his flaxen-haired comeliness and straight-limbed grace at once inspired the admiration of King James. When, his horse stumbling under him, he took a fall, it was to tumble headlong into the very lap of fortune; and although he broke one of his straight, shapely legs he had no cause to blame Fortune on that account. It was her way of serving him. For his plight merged compassion — the pity that is akin to love — into the admiration which his beauty was arousing in the maudlin spirit of King James. It was the king himself who disposed for his being tended, and the king, as much as anyone, who nursed him, keeping him company for long hours at his bedside what time his leg was mending, discovering in him an endearing ingenuousness and a gay, sun
ny temperament, and conceiving for him then that extraordinary affection which was ultimately to make him the lad’s utter slave.
When Rabbie — as by now the king was fondly calling him — rose at last from his bed, his leg mended, and its vigour and symmetry nowise impaired by his mishap, it was to plant his foot firmly upon the first rungs of fortune’s ladder. His ascent of it was swift and easy, and to this Overbury contributed.
At the very outset the rising favourite had held out a hand to his friend that he might mount with him. And in this way he may have served a twofold aim — the first to help Overbury, the second to help himself. He was conscious of his own shortcomings, doubted his strength to mount unaided and to maintain himself at the summit when it should be reached; knew that he lacked learning and those gifts of mind which bring immunity from giddiness in the high places of the world. In Overbury, that quick-witted man of parts, sometime scholar of Queen’s College, Oxford, and bencher of the Middle Temple, he perceived the strength which he himself lacked. Whilst singly neither might go far, united the twain might conquer the world itself. Carr possessed the physical beauty which had claimed the attention and now held the affection of the king. Overbury could supply the mind and soul, without which that beauty must in time reveal itself for an empty husk. Indeed, of this emptiness the king seemed already apprehensive, for he was diligently seeking to mend the lad’s lack of learning, just as he was lavishly mending his lack of wardrobe. If he commanded tailors to wait on him and deck his loveliness becomingly, himself he set about educating him and teaching him Latin, though some suggested that it would be as well to begin by having Carr taught English. But the king was slow to perceive the lad’s shortcomings in this, since his own accent was as broad Scots as Carr’s.
Upon the knighthood presently bestowed on Carr had followed presently, at the new favourite’s request, a knighthood for Overbury. He was also made a gentleman of the King’s Household, to the great disgust of the queen, who held these royal minions in profound disfavour. Detesting the new favourite, yet in view of the king’s exceeding fondness for him not daring to express it, she was glad to find a vent for her feelings in open hostility to Overbury.
It was largely as a result of this that, in 1609, Overbury withdrew from Court, and went to spend a year or so in France and the Low Countries, critically observant, storing his mind with further learning of a practical kind, and more fully equipping himself for the part he was soon to play in the political life of England.
On his return he found Sir Robert Carr so increased in fortune and favour as to be in the way of becoming the fount of all patronage, his doors and ante-chambers thronged with suitors. And Carr welcomed his friend’s return right joyfully. More than ever now did he require Overbury’s mental strength by which to guide and steady himself if he were to go further. His ambitions had swollen with his fortunes. He aimed at absolute power, yet knew himself incapable of wielding it unaided.
So now he took Overbury for his counsellor and guide. The queen’s disfavour was to-day a matter of no moment; the aegis of the favourite had grown to such proportions that he who sheltered under it need fear no one, however highly placed. And Overbury, working in obscurity at first, and keeping himself well in the background, acquitted himself in so masterly fashion of his mentor’s task that presently the doting monarch slobbered with joy to observe the growing mental power of his favourite, the extraordinary grasp he was acquiring of affairs, and the hitherto unsuspected acuteness of his judgment.
Even Carr’s correspondence acquired a scholarly grace and a rhetorical force which were a further joy to the heart of James, who accounted them the fruits of the pains he had taken with the unlettered Scot.
In a contest of wits on a matter of policy with that astute old statesman Cecil, Lord Salisbury — who hated Carr for a minion, and despised him for an unlettered, ignorant upstart — King James was to see this man, grown old in statecraft, which he had first practised in so masterly a manner under Elizabeth, outmatched and defeated by his darling Rabbie.
James wept for joy — he was very prone to tears under stress of emotion — and thereafter Carr’s advancement was swift and certain. Within the year we find him created Viscount Rochester, invested — together with Charles, Duke of York — a Knight of the Garter, made Keeper of Westminster Palace for life, and granted the castle of Rochester in fee simple, whilst his wealth and power grew so amazingly that you behold him firmly established as the most puissant gentleman in England — he who some four years ago had been a simple, needy Scottish squire in the train of Sir John Hay.
Thus well had Overbury served him; and as well was Overbury serving him now in this matter of that lovely child, Lady Essex, to whom my Lord of Rochester had so lost his heart that he proposed to enter the lists against the Prince of Wales, her acknowledged lover.
That the grace of his figure should have wrought upon her my lord had cause to hope from the soft glances he had detected in her eyes when turned upon him. It remained to complete the conquest by revealing the graces of his mind — in reality the graces of the mind of his alter ego, Sir Thomas Overbury.
To this end Sir Thomas laboured at his rhymes, and, labouring, smiled, as we have seen.
He smiled because he did not mean quite to be so used, not would ever have lent himself to such base uses, but that it suited his own ends. For Sir Thomas had ambitions which soared far beyond the confines of this ghosting for my Lord of Rochester. Gradually the ghost should put on flesh; gradually men should come to know the master-mind that instructed Rochester in policy and statecraft. That little old man Salisbury could not live for ever. Already he was showing signs of failing. Soon the office of Secretary of State would fall vacant, and Sir Thomas dreamt dreams concerned with the succession of that office.
Meanwhile, let Rochester amuse himself. His lordship required little encouragement. Of late, seeing how completely Overbury was master of affairs, and how confidently he might leave them to his care, Rochester’s mind had turned more and more to pleasure.
It was a condition of things that Sir Thomas desired to encourage. Let my lord by all means spend his days and his nights in pursuit of the Essex butterfly. That was to Sir Thomas’s advantage.
Then, too, was she not a daughter of the too-powerful family of Howard, which Sir Thomas so cordially detested? Scandal in connection with her would hardly please that stiff-necked family, and scandal there was very likely to be — indeed, there was already in abundance. Thus by his versifying on that summer afternoon he subtly advanced his interests.
He had accomplished his task, and was sitting back in his chair, the feathered end of his quill between his teeth, his thoughts a thousand miles away upon the steep road of ambition, when my Lord Rochester came to dispel his reverie.
If, at the instance of a king who loved pretty fellows well-arrayed, his lordship had changed his tailors often of late, at least he had changed them to some purpose. His doublet, peaked sharply at the waist, was of cloth of gold, its slashed sleeves laced over an undergarment of white silk; of cloth of gold, too, were his ballooning trunks, which descended almost to his knees. Below these the shapeliest, straightest legs in England were encased in creaseless silk stockings the colour of ripe apricots. His cloak was of white beaver, edged with gold lace, and even his snowy ruff was delicately laced in gold thread along its cobweb edges.
For the rest his beautiful face, with its blue eyes and red-gold beard, and his tall, straight, graceful figure were worthy of such dazzling raiment. And there was about him, too, an engaging air of sunny gaiety and of irresistible light-heartedness which enhanced his gifts of face and form.
To see this creature of sunshine was to love him, unless, like my lords of Salisbury or Pembroke, you found his influence with the king a stumbling-block to your own ambitions, or, like Prince Henry, you were too austere and too perceptive of the mental and spiritual shortcomings under all this outward bravery.
He came forward briskly, and threw an arm about
the shoulder of his friend and secretary.
“Well, Tom! Well? And is it done? Is it done?”
Impatient eagerness stressed the broad Scottish accent, which was accounted by many an uncouthness in so lovely a courtier.
“It is that,” said Overbury, catching, as by infection, something of the bur, a smile half amiable, half mocking on his long, pale face. “Look, and content you, for I have laboured on it these two hours or more. Not Ben Johnson himself could have served you better.”
My lord leaned forward, and read the first line aloud:
“O lady, all of fire and snow compounded—”
There he broke off from sheer enthusiasm.
“Man! That’s a grand conceit! ‘O lady all of fire and snow compounded!’ A grand invocation, Tom! And it expresses her finely. A soul of fire and a chaste purity, cold and spotless as the driven snow.”
“Ahem!” coughed Sir Thomas. “The image was intended to be purely physical,” said he drily, and explained: “The fire is in her red-gold hair, her glowing eyes, her scarlet lips, perhaps — which no doubt could be fiery enough upon occasion; the snow is all the rest of her that is so wondrous white.”
“Ay, ay, very true. But why not spiritual, too? Why not?”
“Because I would not have her imagine that you wrote either as a fool or as a mocker. A woman has no love for either.”
“A fool or a mocker?” My lord was frowning. He took his arm from the other’s neck, and stood stiffly upright, half-facing him now. “Why must I be either?”
Overbury smiled a little wanly, and shrugged his shoulders.
“It is whispered, I believe, that the Prince of Wales singed some of his puritanical austerity at her shrine. Indeed, he is in danger of being quite burnt up, unless you make haste to rescue him by substituting yourself as the holocaust. Though I doubt he’ll not prove grateful.”
“Ha!” It was a short laugh from Rochester, the stream of his thoughts swung by the last words into a fresh channel. “Already Prince Henry does not love us, Tom. He’ll love us less hereafter.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 501