By What Authority?. Robert Hugh Benson

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      When Isabel went up again to the Hall in the evening, a couple of days later, she found Mr. James sitting with his mother and aunt in the same part of the garden. Mr. James, who rose as she came through the yew archway, and stood waiting to greet her, was a tall, pleasant, brown-faced man. Isabel noticed as she came up his strong friendly face, that had something of Hubert's look in it, and felt an immediate sense of relief from her timidity at meeting this man, whose name, it was said, was beginning to be known among the poets, and about whom the still more formidable fact was being repeated, that he was a rising man at Court and had attracted the Queen's favour.

      As they sat down again together, she noticed, too, his strong delicate hand in its snowy ruff, for he was always perfectly dressed, as it lay on his knee; and again thought of Hubert's browner and squarer hand.

      "We were talking, Mistress Isabel, about the play, and the new theatres. I was at the Blackfriars' only last week. Ah! and I met Buxton there," he went on, turning to his mother.

      "Dear Henry," said Lady Maxwell. "He told me when I last saw him that he could never go to London again; his religion was too expensive, he said."

      Mr. James' white teeth glimmered in a smile.

      "He told me he was going to prison next time, instead of paying the fine. It would be cheaper, he thought."

      "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 peacock 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 passion 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 surpassed 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 God's Son, sir, I will have them hanged. Tell the——' (but I dare not say what she called my Lord Sussex, 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 hell-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 amusement; 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 God, 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 chink; 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 God, 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 passionate 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 peacock," she cried out, as a stately bird stepped delicately out of the shrubbery on to the low wall a СКАЧАТЬ