Boundless intemperance
In nature is a tyranny — it hath been
The untimely emptying of many a throne,
And fall of many kings.
MACBETH.
While Colonel Everard retreated in high indignation from the little refection, which Sir Henry Lee had in his good-humour offered, and withdrawn under the circumstances of provocation which we have detailed, the good old knight, scarce recovered from his fit of passion, partook of it with his daughter and guest, and shortly after, recollecting some silvan task, (for, though to little efficient purpose, he still regularly attended to his duties as Ranger,) he called Bevis, and went out, leaving the two young people together.
“Now,” said the amorous Prince to himself, “that Alice is left without her lion, it remains to see whether she is herself of a tigress breed. — So, Sir Bevis has left his charge,” he said loud; “I thought the knights of old, those stern guardians of which he is so fit a representative, were more rigorous in maintaining a vigilant guard.”
“Bevis,” said Alice, “knows that his attendance on me is totally needless; and, moreover, he has other duties to perform, which every true knight prefers to dangling the whole morning by a lady’s sleeve.”
“You speak treason against all true affection,” said the gallant; “a lady’s lightest wish should to a true knight be more binding than aught excepting the summons of his sovereign. I wish, Mistress Alice, you would but intimate your slightest desire to me, and you should see how I have practised obedience.”
“You never brought me word what o’clock it was this morning,” replied the young lady, “and there I sate questioning of the wings of Time, when I should have remembered that gentlemen’s gallantry can be quite as fugitive as Time himself. How do you know what your disobedience may have cost me and others? Pudding and pasty may have been burned to a cinder, for, sir, I practise the old domestic rule of visiting the kitchen; or I may have missed prayers, or I may have been too late for an appointment, simply by the negligence of Master Louis Kerneguy failing to let me know the hour of the day.”
“O,” replied Kerneguy, “I am one of those lovers who cannot endure absence — I must be eternally at the feet of my fair enemy — such, I think, is the title with which romances teach us to grace the fair and cruel to whom we devote our hearts and lives. — Speak for me, good lute,” he added, taking up the instrument, “and show whether I know not my duty.”
He sung, but with more taste than execution, the air of a French rondelai, to which some of the wits or sonnetteers, in his gay and roving train, had adapted English verses.
An hour with thee! — When earliest day
Dapples with gold the eastern grey,
Oh, what, can frame my mind to bear
The toil and turmoil, cark and care.
New griefs, which coming hours unfold,
And sad remembrance of the old? —
One hour with thee!
One hour with thee! — When burning June
Waves his red flag at pitch of noon;
What shall repay the faithful swain,
His labour on the sultry plain,
And more than cave or sheltering bough,
Cool feverish blood, and throbbing brow? —
One hour with thee!
One hour with thee! — When sun is set,
O, what can teach me to forget
The thankless labours of the day;
The hopes, the wishes, flung away:
The increasing wants, and lessening gains,
The master’s pride, who scorns my pains? —
One hour with thee!
“Truly, there is another verse,” said the songster; “but I sing it not to you, Mistress Alice, because some of the prudes of the court liked it not.” “I thank you, Master Louis,” answered the young lady, “both for your discretion in singing what has given me pleasure, and in forbearing what might offend me. Though a country girl, I pretend to be so far of the court mode, as to receive nothing which does not pass current among the better class there.”
“I would,” answered Louis, “that you were so well confirmed in their creed, as to let all pass with you, to which court ladies would give currency.”
“And what would be the consequence?” said Alice, with perfect composure.
“In that case,” said Louis, embarrassed like a general who finds that his preparations for attack do not seem to strike either fear or confusion into the enemy —“in that case you would forgive me, fair Alice, if I spoke to you in a warmer language than that of mere gallantry — if I told you how much my heart was interested in what you consider as idle jesting — if I seriously owned it was in your power to make me the happiest or the most miserable of human beings.”
“Master Kerneguy,” said Alice, with the same unshaken nonchalance, “let us understand each other. I am little acquainted with high-bred manners, and I am unwilling, I tell you plainly, to be accounted a silly country girl, who, either from ignorance or conceit, is startled at every word of gallantry addressed to her by a young man, who, for the present, has nothing better to do than coin and circulate such false compliments. But I must not let this fear of seeming rustic and awkwardly timorous carry me too far; and being ignorant of the exact limits, I will take care to stop within them.”
“I trust, madam,” said Kerneguy, “that however severely you may be disposed to judge of me, your justice will not punish me too severely for an offence, of which your charms are alone the occasion?”
“Hear me out, sir, if you please,” resumed Alice. “I have listened to you when you spoke en berger — nay, my complaisance has been so great, as to answer you en bergère — for I do not think any thing except ridicule can come of dialogues between Lindor and Jeanneton; and the principal fault of the style is its extreme and tiresome silliness and affectation. But when you begin to kneel, offer to take my hand, and speak with a more serious tone, I must remind you of our real characters. I am the daughter of Sir Henry Lee, sir; you are, or profess to be, Master Louis Kerneguy, my brother’s page, and a fugitive for shelter under my father’s roof, who incurs danger by the harbour he affords you, and whose household, therefore, ought not to be disturbed by your unpleasing importunities.”
“I would to Heaven, fair Alice,” said the King, “that your objections to the suit which I am urging, not in jest, but most seriously, as that on which my happiness depends, rested only on the low and precarious station of Louis Kerneguy! — Alice, thou hast the soul of thy family, and must needs love honour. I am no more the needy Scottish page, whom I have, for my own purposes, personated, than I am the awkward lout, whose manners I adopted on the first night of our acquaintance. This hand, poor as I seem, can confer a coronet.”
“Keep it,” said Alice, “for some more ambitious damsel, my lord — for such I conclude is your title, if this romance be true — I would not accept your hand, could you confer a duchy.”
“In one sense, lovely Alice, you have neither overrated my power nor my affection. It is your King — it is Charles Stewart who speaks to you! — he can confer duchies, and if beauty can merit them, it is that of Alice Lee. Nay, nay — rise — do not kneel — it is for your sovereign to kneel to thee, Alice, to whom he is a thousand times more devoted than the wanderer Louis dared venture to profess himself. My Alice has, I know, been trained up in those principles of love and obedience to her sovereign, that she cannot, in conscience or in mercy, inflict on him such a wound as would be implied in the rejection of his suit.”
In spite of all Charles’s attempts to prevent her, Alice had persevered in kneeling on one knee, until she had touched with her lip the hand with which he attempted to raise her. But this salutation ended, she stood upright, with her arms folded on her bosom — her looks humble, but composed, keen, and watchful, and so possessed of herself, so little flattered by the communication which the King had supposed would have been overpowering, that he scarce knew in what terms next to urge his solicitation.
“Thou art silent — thou art silent,” he said, “my pretty Alice. Has the King no more influence with thee than the poor Scottish page?”
“In one sense, every influence,” said Alice; “for he commands my best thoughts, my best wishes, my earnest prayers, my devoted loyalty, which, as the men of the House of Lee have been ever ready to testify with the sword, so are the women bound to seal, if necessary, with their blood. But beyond the duties of a true and devoted subject, the King is even less to Alice Lee than poor Louis Kerneguy. The Page could have tendered an honourable union — the Monarch can but offer a contaminated coronet.”
“You mistake, Alice — you mistake,” said the King, eagerly. “Sit down and let me speak to you — sit down — What is’t you fear?”
“I fear nothing, my liege,” answered Alice. “What can I fear from the King of Britain — I, the daughter of his loyal subject, and under my father’s roof? But I remember the distance betwixt us; and though I might trifle and jest with mine equal, to my King I must only appear in the dutiful posture of a subject, unless where his safety may seem to require that I do not acknowledge his dignity.”
Charles, though young, being no novice in such scenes, was surprised to encounter resistance of a kind which had not been opposed to him in similar pursuits, even in cases where he had been unsuccessful. There was neither anger, nor injured pride, nor disorder, nor disdain, real or affected, in the manners and conduct of Alice. She stood, as it seemed, calmly prepared to argue on the subject, which is generally decided by passion — showed no inclination to escape from the apartment, but appeared determined to hear with patience the suit of the lover — while her countenance and manner intimated that she had this complaisance only in deference to the commands of the King.
“She is ambitious,” thought Charles; “it is by dazzling her love of glory, not by mere passionate entreaties, that I must hope to be successful. — I pray you be seated, my fair Alice,” he said; “the lover entreats — the King commands you.”
“The King,” said Alice, “may permit the relaxation of the ceremonies due to royalty, but he cannot abrogate the subject’s duty, even by express command. I stand here while it is your Majesty’s pleasure to address — a patient listener, as in duty bound.”
“Know then, simple girl,” said the King, “that in accepting my proffered affection and protection, you break through no law either of virtue or morality. Those who are born to royalty are deprived of many of the comforts of private life — chiefly that which is, perhaps, the dearest and most precious, the power of choosing their own mates for life. Their formal weddings are guided upon principles of political expedience only, and those to whom they are wedded a............