CHAPTER IX
CHRISTMAS EVE
Kensington House was hushed and dark; in only one room did a light burn,and that was where the Queen of England sat alone in her cabinet withthe door locked and two tapers burning on her desk.
It was long past midnight on Christmas Eve, and she supposed in bed; thestillness was intense; the ticking of the little brass clock soundedloud and steady--a solitary noise.
Mary sat at the desk with her papers spread before her; she had burntmany of them in the candle-flame, and a little pile of ashes lay on thecold hearth.
It was four days since she had first sickened, and the doctors said thisand that, disagreeing with each other, and constantly changing theiropinion; but Mary had never been deceived; she had cheated herself, shehad cheated the King, into a belief that she was lately better, but fromthe moment in her bedchamber at Hampton Court when the thought of herdanger had first flashed on her, she had had an absolute premonitionthat this was the end. All her life had been coloured by the sense shewould not live past youth. The first shock over, she did not grieve forherself, but terribly, more terribly than she had conceived she could,for the King.
At first a kind of wild joy had possessed her that she would go first;but the agony of leaving him alone was almost as awful as the agony ofbeing left.
Because she could not endure to face his anguish she had so farconcealed from him both her certainty of her own approaching end and herown belief as to her malady. Dr. Radcliffe alone among the physicianshad said smallpox, and been laughed at for his opinion, but the Queenknew that he was right. "Malignant black smallpox," he had said, and sheknew he was right in that also.
Few recovered from this plague; few lived beyond the week.
Alone in the little cabinet, consecrated by so many prayers,meditations, and tears, the young Queen faced her fate.
"I am going to die," she said to herself. "I am going to die in a fewdays."
She sat back in her chair and caught her breath. The stillness seemedto ache in her ears. So little done, so much unfinished, so manystorms, troubles, attempts, poor desperate endeavours, and now--the end.
She recalled that when the King had been last on the Continent she hadbeen ill of a sore throat, and been so melancholy on account of thedismal state of public affairs, the ingratitude and malice of thepeople, that she had wished to die, but checked that thought, believingthat she could still be of service to her husband. And now it was nowish or idle fancy, but the very thing itself.
And she must leave him.
Her deep piety made her think the agony she endured at that thought apunishment for having so deeply loved a human creature. She tried tofix her mind on God, but earthly affection was stronger. The image ofheaven became dim beside the image of him to whom her whole heart hadbeen given; the very tenderness that had been provoked in him by herillness made it harder.
At last she rose and went over to a little gilt escritoire in thecorner; there were locked away all the letters she had ever had from theKing, some from her father, a Prayer Book of her mother's before herconversion, some of her own meditations and prayers, her diary, andvarious little trifles with poignant associations.
With the keys in her hand she hesitated, but courage failed her to openany of the drawers; she returned to the large bureau and took up a sheetof paper.
She felt ill and cold; her limbs were heavy, her eyes ached, and herhead was full of pain. She made a strong effort of will to take up thequill and write; at first the pen shook so there were mere ink-marks onthe paper.
What she wrote were a few last requests to the King: that her jewels andclothes might be given to her sister Anne, that her servants might belooked after, that he would remember his promise with regard to thehospital at Greenwich, and that if Leeds was disgraced the King woulddeal mildly with him--"for he hath ever been a good servant to us."
She did not trust herself to add words of affection, but wrote beneath,"The Lord have thee in His keeping," folded it up with the ink scarcedry, and rose to unlock the top drawer of the escritoire and place thepaper within.
That done she relocked it and placed the key in her bosom.
All her other papers and letters she had destroyed; her private affairswere in order; she had not a debt nor an obligation in the world. Therewas nothing more to do.
She put her hands before her eyes and endeavoured to settle herthoughts, to dismiss earthly matters and think only of God, but shecould not put the King out of her heart. Her thoughts ran past her owndeath, and saw him lonely amidst his difficulties, without her aid tosmooth over little frictions, without her company in his infrequentleisure, without her sympathy in his disappointments; in a thousandlittle ways he scarcely knew of she had been able to help him, and nowthere would be no one--no one to watch and notice and understand as shehad done; she could not trust even Portland to do what she had done.
"God forgive me for this weakness," she murmured, in great distress."God strengthen and make it easy for us both."
She rose and went to the window; she could see the black sky piercedhere and there by a few stars as the clouds parted--nothing else.
On an instant the deep silence was rent by a clamour of sweet sound; thesharp strong pealing of church bells rang out over the sleeping city.
Mary knew that it was the village church of Kensington practising forChristmas; she sank into the window-seat and fixed her eyes on those fewdistant pale cold stars.
She could not steady her thoughts. Old memories, pictures of dead days,arose and disturbed her. She saw the sunlight on the red front of thehouse at Twickenham and the little roses growing over the brick, herselfas a child playing in the garden, and the figure of her father standingby the sundial looking at her, as he had stood once on one of his rarevisits--very handsome and tall and grave with long tasselled gloves inhis hand, she saw the hayfields beyond St. James's and the summer-tannedlabourers working there and a little girl in a blue gown asleep on agathered sheaf and Lady Villiers pointing out the last swallow and howlow it flew--so low that the light of the setting sun was over its backand it was like a thing of gold above the rough stubble--she sawpictures of The Hague--that beautiful town, and her own dear house, andthe wood...
She remembered her presentiment, before William left for England, thatthey were looking at the wood together for the last time.
All over now, mere memory, and memory itself soon to end; she wouldnever see the flowers again either in England or Holland; she had lookedher last on blue sky and summer sun; she would never more go down toChester to welcome the King home from the war; she would never again cutthe sweet briar roses to place in the blue bowls at Hampton Court.
It frightened her that she thought so of these earthly things, that shecould not detach her mind from the world. She endeavoured to fix herattention on the bells, and they seemed to shake into the words of anancient hymn she had known as a child--
"O Lord, let Thou my spirit rise From out this Press of turning Strife. Let me look into Thy awful eyes And draw from Thee Immortal Life."
The bells seemed to change into one of the endless little Dutchcarillons that she heard so often in her dreams; she put her handsbefore her face--
"Take, dear Lord, the best of me, And let it, as an Essence pressed Like unto Like, win Immortality Absorbed in Thy unchanging rest."
The bells paused and shuddered as if a rude hand had checked them; themelody hesitated, then changed rhythm; a single bell struck out from therest in clear ringing, then stopped.
For a little space the air was full of echoes, then a mournful stillnessfell. The Queen remained in the window-seat with her hands before hereyes.
When she raised her head one of the candles had guttered out and theother was near its end.
She had lost the sense of time, almost of place; it would have given herno surprise to find she was sitting in the garden at The Hague or goingdown
the waterways of Holland in her barge; she did not notice thedarkness so ill-dispersed by that one flame burning tall, ragged, andblue in the great silver stick; she began to say over her prayers in akind of exaltation; she went on her knees and pressed her face againstthe smooth wood of the window-frame; she was murmuring to herself underher breath as if she tried to lull her own soul to sleep; she got up atlast, not knowing what she did, and unlatched the window.
She looked out on a ghastly dawn, pallid above the leafless trees,against which a few flakes of snow fell heavily. The Queen stared atthis picture. The cold wind entered the chamber and a snowflake lightlydrifted in and changed to a crystal drop on the window-seat.
She latched the window again and turned into the room; the last candlehad been out hours; the wax was hard round the frozen wick; a wholenight had passed with the drawing of a breath, and this was Christmasmorning.
Above the chimney-piece was a mirror in a gold and ebony frame; theQueen stepped up to it and looked at herself; she beheld a woman withoutcolour; her gown was black and her face and throat indistinguishablefrom her crumpled lace collar; her hair was dark and without a glint inthe dead light; the pearls in her ears were ghostly pale; she thoughther features were very changed, being hollowed and sunk.
"They cover the faces of the dead," she thought curiously; "they willsoon cover mine." She put her hand delicately under her chin. "Poorface, that will never laugh or blush--or weep again!"
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