The King's Men Part 17

"You will excuse me for disturbing you, will you not?" asked Maggie, whose eyes were red with weeping, and whose hair had a dishevelled look, as if it had been buried deep in a pillow. "But I felt so lonely and troubled to-night that I have come to talk to you."

Mary leaned over and kissed her with tenderness. "My dear Miss Windsor,"

she said, "I am touched that you should come to me."

"Oh, please do not call me Miss Windsor, call me Maggie: I cannot tell you anything if you call me Miss Windsor. You know I never had a mother; and there are some things which a girl must tell to some one."

"Maggie, dear," said Mary gently, "tell me everything. It will ease your mind, even if I cannot help you in any way."

"You cannot help me; no one can help me," sobbed Maggie, as her friend put her arm around her waist, and gently stroked her hair. "It is only that I love him so, and he is unworthy of it."

"Do you mean Geoffrey Ripon?" asked Mary.

"Yes, yes."

"Geoffrey Ripon unworthy of a woman's love!" exclaimed Mary. "That cannot be. John Dacre--" She blushed and turned away her face, that Maggie might not see her as she spoke his name. "John Dacre says that he is the soul of honor and his life-long friend."

"Oh! men have such different ideas of honor from ours," exclaimed Maggie. Then she told her friend in broken speech of her love for Geoffrey; that she had supposed that he had not told her he loved her because he felt that he had nothing to offer her; that she had come to England to see him again; and then she told of the dreadful scene in Chichester, and how she had coldly rejected him in the morning because she believed he loved Eleanor Carey, and that he wished to marry for money.

The story seemed shameful to her as she told it: her forwardness in coming to England, and her shattered faith in her lover.

"And yet he seemed in earnest this morning, and he appeared to love me,"

she said to Mary, when she had told her story, "and when I told him, when he asked me what he had to gain by a pretence of loving me, that he had everything to gain, his face was deadly white and his eyes were filled with tears. Oh, I almost believed in him then, and I should have relented; I fear I should have been weak enough to have relented if he had not left me; and now it is all over!"

She burst into tears, and Mary's face was full of sympathy, as she whispered words of comfort in the unhappy girl's ear.

"I own that appearances are against him," she urged, "but they may be explained away. Mrs. Carey is a very dangerous and bad woman; at the moment when Geoffrey appeared to you the worst he may have loved you the most. Have heart, dear, if he loves you, and if he is a good and true man, as I think he must be, for John Dacre trusts him--"

Maggie raised her head, looked into her friend's eyes and read her secret. Then two hands clasped together tightly, and they kissed and wept together.

"You will see him again," whispered Mary, as Maggie was leaving the room. "You will see him soon, and everything will be right."

"No, I am afraid everything will not," said Maggie; "but if I have lost a lover, I have found a friend, have I not?"

And they did not meet soon again, for Geoffrey was dispatched by Dacre upon most important duty--to make arrangements for the concealment of the King when he should arrive in the country to return to his own again. He went into the enterprise heart and soul; that is to say, with that part of his heart which was left him. Still he feared the end of the affair, and seemed to foresee the ruin to which the troubled waters in which he swam were sweeping the King's men.

CHAPTER X.

KING GEORGE THE FIFTH.

England was at peace; but it was the lurid peace before the storm. All men knew that the days were hurrying on toward an outbreak. In what shape it should come no one knew, and the mystery deepened the sensation of expectancy and dread.

It had been publicly spoken, in the street, the press, and even in Parliament, that the Royalists were conspiring for a revolution; and this certainty had sunk deep into the hearts of the people. Their silence was ominous; the Royalists looked upon it as favorable.

But there were Englishmen who knew their countrymen better, and who foreboded darkly, though without fear, of the end; and among these was Richard Lincoln. His heart beat with the popular pulsation, and he knew that there could be but one outcome to such a blind and reckless enterprise.

Mary Lincoln alone perceived how deep was the trouble in her father's soul as those surcharged hours went reeling past. Deep beyond even his trouble was her own, for though she had not confessed it even to herself, every hope of her life was bound up in the destinies of the Royalist conspiracy.

On the afternoon of November 23d there was an early adjournment of Parliament, and her father came home more depressed than she had ever seen him. Her heart grew cold in the unusual silence.

Mary waited for her father to speak, but the evening wore on, and he had only tried to lead her to every-day subjects.

"Father," she said at last, "there is depressing news. What has happened? Will you not tell me?"

"Yes, there is sad news, dear--gloomy news for some. Those madmen will attempt a revolution by civil war within the next twenty-four hours."

"It is known?"

"Yes, it is all known--and all prepared for."

Mary's face changed as if a white light had fallen on it; her pitiful excitement was evident in the quivering lips and restless hands. She would have cried out in her grief and pity had she been alone; but her father's strength, so close to her, made her strong and patient.

"If it is known," she said, with forced calmness, "surely it will be stopped without bloodshed? They will arrest those gentlemen before they go too far."

Had her father looked into the eyes that spoke more than the lips he might have read beyond the words. But his mind was preoccupied.

"Bloodshed might be avoided by their arrest," he said, sadly; "but the evil would only be postponed, not eradicated. The conspirators have entered the rapids: they will be allowed to go over the falls."

"Oh, father!" whispered Mary, standing beside him and holding his arm, "can they not be warned?"

Richard Lincoln, startled from his own brooding by this astounding question from his daughter, turned, almost sternly, to speak of the righteous doom of traitors, but he did not say the words. At last he saw what a less observant eye might have seen long before--the suffering and fear in her eyes, and the lines which concealed anxiety had drawn on his daughter's face. Without a word she came into his arms and lay upon his breast and sobbed, and no word was needed that was not spoken in the father's gentle hand on her dear head.

The hours of the afternoon went slowly by, and Richard Lincoln was glad to look forward to an unusual evening as the best means of diverting Mary's mind from the subject which filled it. At seven o'clock a great public meeting was to be held in Cobden Square. The platform for the speakers happened to be built beneath the windows of Mr. Windsor's city house, and the hospitable American, who was to depart next morning for his own country, had invited a large party to hear the speeches.

Mary was glad when her father told her that he wished her to go with him, for Maggie Windsor was the only one who knew her secret. As she drove with her father into the square in the evening, the place was bright as mid-day with electric lights. The crowd was already gathering, and the people were strangely silent.

At Mr. Windsor's there was a large party, and among the guests many of those whom Mary had met at Ripon House.

It was almost a merry gathering. The genial American gentleman and his charming daughter had conquered even the austerity of the d.u.c.h.ess of Bayswater; and the Duke conversed with Mr. Sydney, swaying his gold eyegla.s.s on its string with gracious abandon.

Geoffrey Ripon and Featherstone, who were together, saw Mr. Lincoln and Mary as soon as they entered.

"Geoffrey," said Featherstone, in a bantering whisper, "behold our deadly enemy. Do you dare to speak to him?"

"I should rather not," answered Geoffrey, "but I suppose we must.

Heavens! How pale his daughter is!"

"Come, Ripon. Mr. Lincoln sees us. Here goes to shake hands with the man whom we must send to prison to-morrow--if he don't send us."

Geoffrey Ripon felt more like a truant schoolboy approaching a severe master than he cared to confess even to himself, as he moved through the crowded room toward Richard Lincoln. But when they met there was nothing in the manner of either to indicate any unusual feeling.

Mary Lincoln stood near a window, from which she looked over the still silent but now dense crowd in the square. While she mentally contrasted the two scenes, that within with that without, she turned her head with the consciousness of being observed, and met the quiet eyes of Sir John Dacre, who bowed without a smile.

Mary's strong impulse was to warn him of his danger, at any cost to herself, and she had taken a step toward him, when she was intercepted by Mrs. Oswald Carey. The Beauty was splendidly dressed, and a deep excitement blazed in her eyes.

"We have kept places for you, Miss Windsor and I," said she, with gay kindliness. "Is your father going to speak to-night?"