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Hedged with Divinities

XVII

page 116

XVII.

For a long time the King paced up and down his lonely room. He wished to see Nelly and talk with her upon this momentous issue of their lives, but the hour was late, too late for him, with due regard for her delicacy of conduct, to visit her at her home. He therefore despatched one of his officers with a carriage for her, and a request that she would confer a favour upon the King if she would visit him at the Residency in an open and public manner. After some little delay Nelly appeared, looking anxious and distressed at the unusual summons, which, she felt assured, betokened some very grave and unforeseen event at hand. Moreover, rumours (which Jack's absence had prevented him from hearing) had reached her ears, both as to the intentions of the Council and the wishes of the majority of the women, in regard to the royal marriage.

The officers of the household were dismissed, and the betrothed pair held conference in one of the larger drawing-rooms.

"Nelly," said Jack, "I have sent for you in an hour of sore trouble. I have been present at a meeting of the Council, and have listened to page 117the speeches on the Royal Marriage Bill. I need not tell you in what direction my thoughts have continuously turned; it was always to marriage with you, and to a home wherein nothing could separate us; a home where we might spend the years of our lives in entire sympathy and fellowship. Now I feel that such a home, complete in itself, but shutting out all those not so blest as ourselves, would be but a selfish retreat after all; and I have asked you to come and see me that we might talk the matter over, and choose that which is right."

While he had been speaking, waves of red and white had chased each other over Nelly's face, but her figure seemed to grow proudly rigid as he finished, and she said, with a look of indignation, "I am afraid, Jack, that your being able even to discuss such a matter at all with me shows that you call me to your counsels too late. Are you sure that your effort after 'that which is right' is not to please yourself most after all? Why not say at once that the charms of other women are turning you from me, who have lost many of the graces of girlhood under sorrows too heavy to be borne?"

"The griefs that you wrongly think have marred your beauty have not been of my making, or at all events of my ordering," Jack answered. "I would have given my life to save you from them, as I would give it freely now to save your dear body from one touch of pain."

"My body!" said Nelly, "my body! it is my soul that is wrung by the thought of your desertion, by this trouble worse than has befallen other women. I have lost my home, I have lost my mother, and now I have lost all hope."

page 118

"It was the lot of all," replied Jack gloomily. "The calamity was universal."

"Yes," said Nelly, "but their loss was not like mine, for they were numbed as I was by despair. But to me, and to me alone, you came like a god, beckoning me with a finger of light back to life again. Mother and home were replaced by a glorious dream, that I see now was only a deceitful and treacherous dream, for in it I thought that you would fill the place of all those lost dear things, and be to me lover, husband, home, everything and all in one. Oh Jack!" cried the poor tortured girl, "think of what I am suffering now, having believed in you as above all men: nobler, stronger, better, purer than the mass of men—and that this hero of mine was to be full of endless infinite affection for me, and me only. Now I find him to be common clay, tempted by the tinsel of his childish royalty, ready to shut my hope and belief out into blackness for ever, for the sake of the first bold-eyed wanton that throws her arms around him. Help you to do right? You who are ready to thrust aside the holy marriage vows you promised to make to me, and trample on the sacred laws of heaven and earth! Go to your harem, my lord King! I am ashamed for you and for myself; I am utterly, utterly desolate." She broke down into wild sobbing, exhausted with the stormy passion into which she had worked herself while she declaimed her wrongs, and Jack's face darkened as he listened.

"Oh Nelly," he said, "I never saw you give way like this; I never thought your sweet nature had in it such depths of bitter distrust, or that you could scold at me so harshly." He tried to take her hands from her tearful face, but Nelly dashed his touch aside and page 119refused to be comforted. "Listen, Nelly," he continued, "you spoke of my breaking laws by the marriage the State wishes me to make, but it has always been held that 'the welfare of the people is the supreme law,' and, even in lesser extremities than this, others have had to sacrifice love and life for the sake of their country. I heard speech after speech made to-night in the Council, and against all of them I sullenly rebelled. I heard them prate of duty; a duty that they said I had been selected from among the millions of men to perform, and while my heart and my conscience told me that they were right, I hardened myself and said, 'I will not do this, I will not! let the race end now.' But they used another argument, Nelly, they threatened you; they swore that, either by the knife of the avenger or by the State Decree, you should die if you frustrated the will of the people or destroyed the human race by your successful claim upon my selfish affection. If this is so we must bow to the inevitable; what cannot be, cannot be, and it is hopeless to think of the happy home we dreamt of, in the midst of a mutinous and dangerous people. But Nelly, there is another way; be you the first and highest of my queens; you shall reign Lady Paramount, first in the nation as in my heart; first ——"

"If you dare to say another word like that," interrupted Nelly, "I will kill myself before the day breaks. I share with others! I— I—" and she broke afresh into a paroxysm of weeping.

There came at this moment a knocking at the outer door, and the chamberlain announced the arrival of a deputation from the Council, if His Majesty would graciously receive it. The King assented, while Nelly with an immense effort composed herself, and withdrew page 120to one side of the room, turning as well as she could from the glare of the lamps. Three ladies entered; Victoria Stanley, Edith Selwyn, and Kate Mansfield. Victoria addressed the King, and informed him that the President regretted that sudden illness prevented her presence, but that she had requested the present deputation to convey to His Majesty the information that the Council had passed the Royal Marriage Act, and that it now awaited his signature for confirmation. The Council also desired the King to inform them when the necessary ceremonies should take place.

Jack, who still looked stern and moody from the stormy experiences of his scene with Nelly, answered the deputation that he did not intend to affix his signature; that his betrothal to Nelly Farrell had been completed years before, and that if any marriage was in question it would be a marriage with her.

Victoria replied, "I regret very much to appear disrespectful, but the President informs you, Sire, through me, that the matter is no longer debatable. It is the will of the people, and mast be obeyed."

At this Jack fairly lost his temper, and uttered a few harsh sounds which appeared to be "swear words." He said, "I will not take a vote of the Council as the voice of the people. I myself will summon a meeting of the citizens, and, telling them the history of my life, ask if it is their desire that this infamous Act be carried into effect. If I won't be married I won't; Council or no Council."

"You talk folly indeed," replied Victoria, hotly. "What right have you, marked out not only as our preserver from hunger and despair, but as the deliverer of your species from death, what right have you to weigh your own private wishes and dislikes against this most magnificent destiny? I and other women are page 121resigned to stand aside, we will toil and obey and serve our best; content to go down to old age and the grave if we can but know that the great human family will not end at once, and their only evidence in creation be as the fossils in the hills. Is all to be lost for the sake of your fooling with that girl?"

"My dear Lady Victoria," said the King drily, "do I learn from your discourse that you are going to stand aside in the competition for the throne, and that you have no personal interest in this matter?"

Victoria started as if she had been whipped across the face. "Now, for the first time, I have heard you say a cowardly and unmanly tiling," she replied; "I could hate you for it," and angry tears of wounded pride started to her eyes. "If you think," she continued, "that I have done this just that I might win you, that I have schemed like a petty Miss for your admiration, you are wrong and cruel. I wouldn't have you for my husband if there wasn't another man in the man in the world. There isn't; but I would not marry you if you entreated a million times. May I ask your Majesty's permission to retire?"

"I am sorry I have vexed you with my foolish jest," replied Jack. "Will you be good enough to inform the Council that I will do myself the honour of stating my decision to-morrow."

Victoria bowed deeply and left the room.

When she had disappeared Kate Mansfield addressed Jack, and said, "Sire, you spoke just now of a plebiscite. I can assure you that a plebiscite would result in the prevention of the marriage you wish for, by a thousand votes to one. We all wish for one course of action on your part; every woman amongst us is agreed; and the kindest thing both for yourself and Nelly here (indeed the only thing for her safety) page 122is to assent to the Marriage Act. Surely it is not so hard! Nelly herself may be one of your queens. Why not? I shall be proud to be the first to pay my homage to her, and she would not in this feel herself, as the other girls will do, sacrificed for State purposes, and risking their lives for the sake of others. I will ask you, Nelly, to join with me, and beseech His Majesty not only to please the people who love and honour him, but to do his duty and forget his own wishes for their sake."

Now, Nelly, after Victoria's tearful defeat and departure, had suffered a revulsion of feeling, and had sat with stony face but melting heart while Kate was speaking. With her fingers twisted together over her heart, and her lips almost as white as her cheek, she rose and went over to the three who stood together in the centre of the lofty room. "If others of my sex," she said, "can forget their own wishes for the sake of all, hardly as you think of me, I can be unselfish too. Here I renounce, all claims to my lover; I will not share him with others, nor be one of a herd, coaxing and cajoling for a part of his favors. He shall be free for me, free from me, free as if he were dead (her voice failed her for a moment), as I once thought he was, and as I wish that I was. But I will stand in his light and in the way of his duty no longer. Good-bye Jack—we two will part now, saying 'farewell for ever,' for even in the world to come you will not be mine. Good-bye!"

And, covering her face, she moved towards the door, while Jack dropped on his knee, and lifting the edge of her cloak, pressed it to his lips, while the tears in his eyes prevented him from seeing her slight form disappear in the doorway. Then he said to Kate Mansfield, "Bring the Act to me; I will sign it."