"I hear her Grace loves the play," said Mistress Margaret.
"Indeed she does. I saw her at Whitehall the other day, when the children of the Chapel Royal were acting; she clapped and called out with delight.
But Mistress Corbet can tell you more than I can--Ah! here she is."
Isabel looked up, and saw a wonderful figure coming briskly along the terrace and down the steps that led from the house. Miss Corbet was dressed with what she herself would have said was a milkmaid"s plainness; but Isabel looked in astonishment at the elaborate ruff and wings of muslin and lace, the shining peac.o.c.k gown, the high-piled coils of black hair, and the twinkling buckled feet. She had a lively bright face, a little pale, with a high forehead, and black arched brows and dancing eyes, and a little scarlet mouth that twitched humorously now and then after speaking. She rustled up, flicking her handkerchief, and exclaiming against the heat. Isabel was presented to her; she sat down on a settle Mr. James drew forward for her, with the handkerchief still whisking at the flies.
"I am ashamed to come out like this," she began. "Mistress Plesse would break her heart at my lace. You country ladies have far more sense. I am the slave of my habits. What were you talking of, that you look so gravely at me?"
Mr. James told her.
"Oh, her Grace!" said Miss Corbet. "Indeed, I think sometimes she is never off the stage herself. Ah! and what art and pa.s.sion she shows too!"
"We are all loyal subjects here," said Mr. James; "tell us what you mean."
"I mean what I say," she said. "Never was there one who loved play-acting more and to occupy the centre of the stage, too. And the throne too, if there be one," she added.
Miss Corbet talked always at her audience; she hardly ever looked directly at any one, but up or down, or even shut her eyes and tilted her face forward while she talked; and all the while she kept an incessant movement of her lips or handkerchief, or tapped her foot, or shifted her position a little. Isabel thought she had never seen any one so restless.
Then she went on to tell them of the Queen. She was so startlingly frank that Lady Maxwell again and again looked up as if to interrupt; but she always came off the thin ice in time. It was abominable gossip; but she talked with such a genial air of loyal good humour, that it was very difficult to find fault. Miss Corbet was plainly accustomed to act as Court Circular, or even as lecturer and show-woman on the most popular subject in England.
"But her Grace surpa.s.sed herself in acting the tyrant last January; you would have sworn her really angry. This was how it fell out. I was in the anteroom one day, waiting for her Grace, when I thought I heard her call.
So I tapped; I got no clear answer, but I heard her voice within, so I entered. And there was her Majesty, sitting a little apart in a chair by herself, with the Secretary--poor rat--white-faced at the table, writing what she bade him, and looking at her, quick and side-ways, like a child at a lifted rod; and there was her Grace: she had kicked her stool over, and one shoe had fallen; and she was striking the arm of her chair as she spoke, and her rings rapped as loud as a drunken watchman. And her face was all white, and her eyes glaring"--and Mary began to glare and raise her voice too--"and she was crying out, "By G.o.d"s Son, sir, I will have them hanged. Tell the----" (but I dare not say what she called my Lord Suss.e.x, but few would have recognised him from what she said)--"tell him that I will have my will done. These--" (and she called the rebels a name I dare not tell you)--"these men have risen against me these two months; and yet they are not hanged. Hang them in their own villages, that their children may see what treason brings." All this while I was standing at the open door, thinking she had called me; but she was as if she saw nought but the gallows and h.e.l.l-fire beyond; and I spoke softly to her, asking what she wished; and she sprang up and ran at me, and struck me--yes; again and again across the face with her open hand, rings and all--and I ran out in tears. Yes," went on Miss Corbet in a moment, dropping her voice, and pensively looking up at nothing, "yes; you would have said she was really angry, so quick and natural were her movements and so loud her voice."
Mr. James" face wrinkled up silently in amus.e.m.e.nt; and Lady Maxwell seemed on the point of speaking; but Miss Corbet began again:
"And to see her Grace act the lover. It was a miracle. You would have said that our Artemis repented of her coldness; if you had not known it was but play-acting; or let us say perhaps a rehearsal--if you had seen what I once saw at Nonsuch. It was on a summer evening; and we were all on the bowling green, and her Grace was within doors, not to be disturbed. My Lord Leicester was to come, but we thought had not arrived.
Then I had occasion to go to my room to get a little book I had promised to show to Caroline; and, thinking no harm, I ran through into the court, and there stood a horse, his legs apart, all steaming and blowing. Some courier, said I to myself, and never thought to look at the trappings; and so I ran upstairs to go to the gallery, across which lay my chamber; and I came up, and just began to push open the door, when I heard her Grace"s voice beyond, and, by the mercy of G.o.d, I stopped; and dared not close the door again nor go downstairs for fear I should be heard. And there were two walking within the gallery, her Grace and my lord, and my lord was all disordered with hard riding, and nearly as spent as his poor beast below. And her Grace had her arm round his neck, for I saw them through the c.h.i.n.k; and she fondled and pinched his ear, and said over and over again, "Robin, my sweet Robin," and then crooned and moaned at him; and he, whenever he could fetch a breath--and oh! I promise you he did blow--murmured back, calling her his queen, which indeed she was, and his sweetheart and his moon and his star--which she was not: but "twas all in the play. Well, again by the favour of G.o.d, they did not see how the door was open and I couched behind it, for the sun was shining level through the west window in their eyes; but why they did not hear me as I ran upstairs and opened the door, He only knows--unless my lord was too sorely out of breath and her Grace too intent upon her play-acting. Well, I promise you, the acting was so good--he so spent and she so tender--that I nearly cried out Brava as I saw them; but that I remembered in time "twas meant to be a private rehearsal. But I have seen her Grace act near as pa.s.sionate a part before the whole company sometimes."
The two old ladies seemed not greatly pleased with all this talk; and as for Isabel she sat silent and overwhelmed. Mary Corbet glanced quickly at their faces when she had done, and turned a little in her seat.
"Ah! look at that peac.o.c.k," she cried out, as a stately bird stepped delicately out of the shrubbery on to the low wall a little way off, and stood balancing himself. "He is loyal too, and has come to hear news of his Queen."
"He has come to see his cousin from town," said Mr. James, looking at Miss Corbet"s glowing dress, "and to learn of the London fashions."
Mary got up and curtseyed to the astonished bird, who looked at her with his head lowered, as he took a high step or two, and then paused again, with his burnished breast swaying a little from side to side.
"He invites you to a dance," went on Mr. James gravely, "a pavane."
Miss Corbet sat down again.
"I dare not dance a pavane," she said, "with a real peac.o.c.k."
"Surely," said Mr. James, with a courtier"s air, "you are too pitiful for him, and too pitiless for us."
"I dare not," she said again, "for he never ceases to practise."
"In hopes," said Mr. James, "that one day you will dance it with him."
And then the two went off into the splendid fantastic nonsense that the wits loved to talk; that grotesque, exaggerated phrasing made fashionable by Lyly. It was like a kind of impromptu sword-exercise in an a.s.sault of arms, where the rhythm and the flash and the graceful turns are of more importance than the actual thrusts received. The two old ladies embroidered on in silence, but their eyes twinkled, and little wrinkles flickered about the corners of their lips. But poor Isabel sat bewildered. It was so elaborate, so empty; she had almost said, so wicked to take the solemn gift of speech and make it dance this wild fandango; and as absurdity climbed and capered in a shower of sparks and gleams on the shoulders of absurdity, and was itself surmounted; and the names of heathen G.o.ds and nymphs and demi-G.o.ds and loose-living cla.s.sical women whisked across the stage, and were tossed higher and higher, until the whole mad erection blazed up and went out in a shower of stars and gems of allusions and phrases, like a flight of rockets, bright and bewildering at the moment, but leaving a barren darkness and dazzled eyes behind--the poor little Puritan country child almost cried with perplexity and annoyance. If the two talkers had looked at one another and burst into laughter at the end, she would have understood it to be a joke, though, to her mind, but a poor one. But when they had ended, and Mary Corbet had risen and then swept down to the ground in a great silent curtsey, and Mr. James, the grave, sensible gentleman, had solemnly bowed with his hand on his heart, and his heels together like a Monsieur, and then she had rustled off in her peac.o.c.k dress to the house, with her muslin wings bulging behind her; and no one had laughed or reproved or explained; it was almost too much, and she looked across to Lady Maxwell with an appeal in her eyes.
Mr. James saw it and his face relaxed.
"You must not take us too seriously, Mistress Isabel," he said in his kindly way. "It is all part of the game."
"The game?" she said piteously.
"Yes," said Mistress Margaret, intent on her embroidery, "the game of playing at kings and queens and courtiers and ruffs and high-stepping."
Mr. James" face again broke into his silent laugh.
"You are acid, dear aunt," he said.
"But----" began Isabel again.
"But it is wrong, you think," he interrupted, "to talk such nonsense.
Well, Mistress Isabel, I am not sure you are not right." And the dancing light in his eyes went out.
"No, no, no," she cried, distressed. "I did not mean that. Only I did not understand."
"I know, I know; and please G.o.d you never will." And he looked at her with such a tender gravity that her eyes fell.
"Isabel is right," went on Mistress Margaret, in her singularly sweet old voice; "and you know it, my nephew. It is very well as a pastime, but some folks make it their business; and that is nothing less than fooling with the gifts of the good G.o.d."
"Well, aunt Margaret," said James softly, "I shall not have much more of it. You need not fear for me."
Lady Maxwell looked quickly at her son for a moment, and down again. He made an almost imperceptible movement with his head, Mistress Margaret looked across at him with her tender eyes beaming love and sorrow; and there fell a little eloquent silence; while Isabel glanced shyly from one to the other, and wondered what it was all about.
Miss Mary Corbet stayed a few weeks, as the custom was when travelling meant so much; but Isabel was scarcely nearer understanding her. She accepted her, as simple clean souls so often have to accept riddles in this world, as a mystery that no doubt had a significance, though she could not recognise it. So she did not exactly dislike or distrust her, but regarded her silently out of her own candid soul, as one would say a small fearless bird in a nest must regard the man who thrusts his strange hot face into her green pleasant world, and tries to make endearing sounds. For Isabel was very fascinating to Mary Corbet. She had scarcely ever before been thrown so close to any one so serenely pure. She would come down to the Dower House again and again at all hours of the day, rustling along in her silk, and seize upon Isabel in the little upstairs parlour, or her bedroom, and question her minutely about her ways and ideas; and she would look at her silently for a minute or two together; and then suddenly laugh and kiss her--Isabel"s transparency was almost as great a riddle to her as her own obscurity to Isabel. And sometimes she would throw herself on Isabel"s bed, and lie there with her arms behind her head, to the deplorable ruin of her ruff; with her buckled feet twitching and tapping; and go on and on talking like a running stream in the sun that runs for the sheer glitter and tinkle of it, and accomplishes nothing. But she was more respectful to Isabel"s simplicity than at first, and avoided dangerous edges and treacherous ground in a manner that surprised herself, telling her of the pageants at Court and fair exterior of it all, and little about the poisonous conversations and jests and the corrupt souls that engaged in them.
She was immensely interested in Isabel"s religion.
"Tell me, child," she said one day, "I cannot understand such a religion.
It is not like the Protestant religion at Court at all. All that the Protestants do there is to hear sermons--it is all so dismal and noisy.
But here, with you, you have a proper soul. It seems to me that you are like a little herb-garden, very prim and plain, but living and wholesome and pleasant to walk in at sunset. And these Protestants that I know are more like a paved court at noon--all hot and hard and glaring. They give me the headache. Tell me all about it."
Of course Isabel could not, though she tried again and again. Her definitions were as barren as any others.
"I see," said Mary Corbet one day, sitting up straight and looking at Isabel. "It is not your religion but you; your religion is as dull as all the rest. But your soul is sweet, my dear, and the wilderness blossoms where you set your feet. There is nothing to blush about. It"s no credit to you, but to G.o.d."
Isabel hated this sort of thing. It seemed to her as if her soul was being dragged out of a cool thicket from the green shadow and the flowers, and set, stripped, in the high road.
Another time Miss Corbet spoke yet more plainly.
"You are a Catholic at heart, my dear; or you would be if you knew what the Religion was. But your father, good man, has never understood it himself; and so you don"t know it either. What you think about us, my dear, is as much like the truth as--as--I am like a saint, or you like a sinner. I"ll be bound now that you think us all idolaters!"
Isabel had to confess that she did think something of the sort.
"There, now, what did I say? Why haven"t either of those two old nuns at the Hall taught you any better?"