A Gentleman Player; His Adventures on a Secret Mission for Queen Elizabeth. Robert Neilson Stephens

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СКАЧАТЬ bowed. He had little knowledge, or curiosity, regarding the mysteries of state affairs, and easily believed that the general weal might be promoted by the queen's outwardly authorizing a subject's arrest, and then secretly compassing his escape. And yet he might have known that a Tudor's motives in interfering with the natural course of justice were more likely to be private than public, and that a Tudor's circumstances must be unusual indeed to call for clandestine means, rather than an arbitrary mandate, for such interference. It was not till long afterward that, by putting two and two together, he formed the theory which it is perhaps as well to set forth now, at the opening of our history.

      The Essex conspiracy was not against the person or supremacy of the queen, but against her existing government, which the plotters hoped to set aside by making her temporarily a prisoner and forcing her decrees. They avowed the greatest devotion to her Majesty's self. As a woman, she had little or no reason for bitter feelings against them. But the safety of the realm required that the principals should suffer. Yet she might have pardoned her beloved Essex, had she received the ring he sent her in claim of the promise of which it was the pledge.¹⁷ But thinking him too proud even to ask the mercy he might have had of her, she let him die. As for his chief satellites, there were some for whom she cared nothing, some against whom there were old scores, and who might as well be dead or imprisoned as not, even were public policy out of the question. Southampton, for one, had offended her by marrying, and had later been a cause of sharp passages between her and Essex. But as to this mysterious gentleman, of whom she spoke to Master Marryott?

      He was one of those who had contrived to get safe away from London, and who felicitated themselves that there existed no trace of their connection with the plot, but against whom evidence had eventually arisen in private testimony before the council. Of these men, it was decided by the council to make at least one capital example, and this particular gentleman was chosen, for his being a Catholic as well as a conspirator.

      Now the fact seems to have been that Elizabeth, the woman, had softer recollections of this gentleman than Elizabeth, the queen, was fain to acknowledge to third parties. He was not alone in this circumstance, but he differed from Essex and other favored gentlemen in several particulars. Being a Catholic, he was not of the court. Once, many years before this March day, the queen, while hunting, sought refuge at his house from a sudden storm. She prolonged her stay on pretexts, and then kept him in attendance during one of her journeyings. Her association with him was conducted with unusual concealment. It was not violently broken off, nor carried on to satiety and natural death. It was merely interrupted and never resumed. Thus it remained sweet in her memory, took on the soft, idealizing tones that time gives, and was now cherished in her heart as an experience apart from, and more precious than, all other such. It was the one serene, perfect love-poem of her life. The others had been stormy, and mixed with a great deal of prose. This one might have been written by Mr. Edmund Spenser. And it was the dearer to her for its being a secret. No one had ever known of it but a tight-mouthed old manservant and a faithful maid of honor, the former now infirm, the latter dead.

      She could not endure to mar this, her pet romance, by letting its hero die when it was in her power to save him. She had never put forth her hand, nor had he asked her to do so, to shield him from the smaller persecutions to which his religion had exposed him from neighbors and judges and county officers, and which had forced him to live most of the time an exile in France. But death was another matter, a catastrophe she liked not to think of as overtaking him through operations she could control; and this was none the less true though she had no hope of ever meeting him again.

      Moreover, this lover had upon her affection one claim that others had forfeited: he had never married.¹⁸ That alone entitled him at this time, in her eyes, to a consideration not merited by Essex or Southampton. And, again, her fortitude had been so drawn upon in consigning Essex to the block, that she had not sufficient left to tolerate the sacrifice of this other sharer of her heart.

      Now that fortitude had been greatly, though tacitly, admired by the lords to whom she wished to appear the embodiment of regal firmness, and she could not bring herself to confess to them that it was exhausted, or unequal to the next demand upon it. More than ever, in these later days, she desired to appear strong against her inner feelings, or indeed to appear quite above such inner feelings as she had too often shown toward her favorite gentlemen. That she, the Virgin Queen, leader of her people, conqueress of the great Armada, had entertained such feelings in the past, and been so foolish as to disclose them, was the greater reason why she now, when about to leave her final impression upon history, should seem proof against them. To refuse her sanction to the council's decision concerning this gentleman, when there was twofold political reason for that decision, and no political reason to interpose against it, would open the doors upon her secret. And she was as loath to expose her tenderly recollected love to be even suspected or guessed at, such was the ideal and sacred character it had taken in years of covert memory, as she was to be thought still prone to her old weakness. As for awaiting events and eventually saving the man by a pardon, such a course, in view of her having sanctioned the council's choice of him as an example, would disclose her as false to the council, and capricious beyond precedent, and would betray her secret as well.¹⁹

      So here was one case in which she dared not arbitrarily oppose the council's proceeding, though her old lover's arrest meant his conviction, as sure as verdict was ever decided ere judge and jury sat—as verdicts usually were in the treason trials of that blessed reign. For her peace as a woman, she must prevent that arrest. For her reputation as a queen, she must seem to favor it, and the prevention must be secret. One weakness, the vanity of strength and resolution, required that the indulgence of another weakness, undue tenderness of heart toward a particular object, should be covert. The queen's right hand must not know what the woman's left hand did. To get time for a plan, as she told Hal, she had requested that the pursuivant's men, while in quest of the gentleman, might bear letters to certain justices in his neighborhood; the preparation of these letters would delay, for a few hours, the departure of the warrant.

      For her purpose she needed a man of courage, adroitness, and celerity; one who would be loyal to the secret reposed in him alone; one so out of court circles, so far from access to or by herself, that if he ever should betray her part in his mission none would believe him; a man who would take it on faith, as Hal really did, that deep state reasons dictated the nullification, secretly, of a proceeding granted openly—for this strong queen would not have even the necessary confidant, any more than the lords of the council, suspect this weak woman.

      "The man who is my servant in this," went on the queen, "must seem to act entirely for himself, not for me. There must be no evidence of his having served me; so he will never receive the credit of this mission for his sovereign, save in that sovereign's thoughts alone."

      "Where else should he seek it, your Majesty?" replied Hal, brought to this degree of unselfish chivalry by the influence of her presence.

      "Where else, truly?" echoed the queen, with a faint smile. "And he must never look to me for protection, should he find himself in danger of prison or death, in consequence of this service. Indeed, if pressure move him to say 'twas I commissioned him, I shall declare it a lie of malice or of deep design, meant to injure me."

      "Your Majesty shall not be put to that shift, an I be your happy choice for the business," said Hal, thrilling more and more devotedly to the task as it appeared the more perilous and rewardless.

      "You will be required to go from London," continued the queen, forgetting her pretence that he was not yet certainly her choice for the errand, "and to give your friends good reason for your absence."

      "'Twill be easy," replied the player. "Our company goes travelling next week. I can find necessity for preceding them. One Master Crowe can play my parts till I fall in with them again."

      "Even this gentleman," resumed the queen, after a moment's thought, СКАЧАТЬ