Part 22 (2/2)

”Only, mother, sweet mother,” cried the girl, childlike, set upon her pleasure, ”I will be as good as can be. I will transgress in nought if only thou wilt get my father to take me to see Master Eyre's cavern.”

She was altogether the home daughter again in her eagerness, entreating and promising by turns with the eager curiosity of a young girl bent on an expedition, but Richard was not to be prevailed on. He had little or no acquaintance with the Eyre family, and to let them go to the cost and trouble of lighting up the cavern for the young lady's amus.e.m.e.nt would be like the encouragement of a possible suit, which would have been a most inconvenient matter. Richard did not believe the young gentleman had warrant from his father in giving this invitation, and if he had, that was the more reason for declining it. The Eyres, then holding the royal castle of the Peak, were suspected of being secretly Roman Catholics, and though the Earl could not avoid hospitably bidding them to supper, the less any Talbot had to do with them the better, and for the present Cis must be contented to be reckoned as one.

So she had to put up with her disappointment, and she did not do so with as good a grace as she would have shown a year ago. Nay, she carried it to Queen Mary, who at night heard her gorgeous description of the wonders of the cavern, which grew in her estimation in proportion to the difficulty of seeing them, and sympathised with her disappointment at the denial.

”Nay, thou shalt not be balked,” said Mary, with the old queenly habit of having her own way. ”Prisoner as I am, I will accomplish this. My daughter shall have her wish.”

So on the ensuing morning, when the Earl came to pay his respects, Mary a.s.sailed him with, ”There is a marvellous cavern in these parts, my Lord, of which I hear great wonders.”

”Does your grace mean Pool's Hole?”

”Nay, nay, my Lord. Have I not been conducted through it by Dr. Jones, and there writ my name for his delectation? This is, I hear, as a palace compared therewith.”

”The Peak Cavern, Madam!” said Lord Shrewsbury, with the distaste of middle age for underground expeditions, ”is four leagues hence, and a dark, damp, doleful den, most noxious for your Grace's rheumatism.”

”Have you ever seen it, my Lord?”

”No, verily,” returned his lords.h.i.+p with a shudder.

”Then you will be edified yourself, my Lord, if you will do me the grace to escort me thither,” said Mary, with the imperious suavity she well knew how to adopt.

”Madam, madam,” cried the unfortunate Earl, ”do but consult your physicians. They will tell you that all the benefits of the Buxton waters will be annulled by an hour in yonder subterranean hole.”

”I have heard of it from several of my suite,” replied Mary, ”and they tell me that the work of nature on the lime-droppings is so marvellous that I shall not rest without a sight of it. Many have been instant with me to go and behold the wondrous place.”

This was not untrue, but she had never thought of gratifying them in her many previous visits to Buxton. The Earl found himself obliged either to utter a harsh and unreasonable refusal, or to organise an expedition which he personally disliked extremely, and moreover distrusted, for he did not in the least believe that Queen Mary would be so set upon gratifying her curiosity about stalact.i.tes without some ulterior motive. He tried to set on Dr. Jones to persuade Messieurs Gorion and Bourgoin, her medical attendants, that the cave would be fatal to her rheumatism, but it so happened that the Peak Cavern was Dr. Jones's favourite lion, the very pride of his heart. Pool's Hole was dear to him, but the Peak Cave was far more precious, and the very idea of the Queen of Scots honouring it with her presence, and leaving behind her the flavour of her name, was so exhilarating to the little man that if the place had been ten times more damp he would have vouched for its salubrity. Moreover, he undertook that fumigations of fragrant woods should remove all peril of noxious exhalations, so that the Earl was obliged to give his orders that Mr. Eyre should be requested to light up the cave, and heartily did he grumble and pour forth his suspicions and annoyance to his cousin Richard.

”And I,” said the good sailor, ”felt it hard not to be able to tell him that all was for the freak of a silly damsel.”

Mistress Cicely laughed a little triumphantly. It was something like being a Queen's daughter to have been the cause of making my Lord himself bestir himself against his will. She had her own way, and might well be good-humoured. ”Come, dear sir father,” she said, coming up to him in a coaxing, patronising way, which once would have been quite alien to them both, ”be not angered. You know n.o.body means treason! And, after all, 'tis not I but you that are the cause of all the turmoil. If you would but have ridden soberly out with your poor little Cis, there would have been no coil, but my Lord might have paced stately and slow up and down the terrace-walk undisturbed.”

”Ah, child, child!” said Susan, vexed, though her husband could not help smiling at the arch drollery of the girl's tone and manner, ”do not thou learn light mockery of all that should be honoured.”

”I am not bound to honour the Earl,” said Cis, proudly.

”Hush, hus.h.!.+” said Richard. ”I have allowed thee unchecked too long, maiden. Wert thou ten times what thou art, it would not give thee the right to mock at the gray-haired, highly-trusted n.o.ble, the head of the name thou dost bear.”

”And the torment of her whom I am most bound to love,” broke from Cicely petulantly.

Richard's response to this sally was to rise up, make the young lady the lowest possible reverence, with extreme and displeased gravity, and then to quit the room. It brought the girl to her bearings at once. ”Oh, mother, mother, how have I displeased him?”

”I trow thou canst not help it, child,” said Susan, sadly; ”but it is hard that thou shouldst bring home to us how thine heart and thine obedience are parted from us.”

The maiden was in a pa.s.sion of tears at once, vowing that she meant no such thing, that she loved and obeyed them as much as ever, and that if only her father would forgive her she would never wish to go near the cavern. She would beg the Queen to give up the plan at once, if only Sir Richard would be her good father as before.

Susan looked at her sadly and tenderly, but smiled, and said that what had been lightly begun could not now be dropped, and that she trusted Cis would be happy in the day's enjoyment, and remember to behave herself as a discreet maiden. ”For truly,” said she, ”so far from discretion being to be despised by Queen's daughters, the higher the estate the greater the need thereof.”

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