Part 26 (2/2)
Adderley continued: ”John York was an honest man, of wholesome sport, jovial, and never s.h.i.+rking with the wine, commendable in his appet.i.te, of rollicking soul and proud temper, and a gay dog altogether--gay, but to be trusted, too, for he had a royal heart. In the coltish days of the Prince Regent he was a boon comrade, but never did he stoop to flattery, nor would he hedge when truth should be spoken, as ofttimes it was needed with the royal blade, for at times he would forget that a prince was yet a man, topped with the accident of a crown. Never prince had truer friend, and so in his best hours he thought, himself, and if he ever was just and showed his better part, it was to the bold country gentleman who never minced praise or blame, but said his say and devil take the end of it. In truth, the Prince was wilful, and once he did a thing which might have given a twist to the fate of England. Hot for the love of women, and with some dash of real romance in him too, else even as a prince he might have had shallower love and service,--he called John York one day and said:
”'To-night at seven, Squire John, you'll stand with me while I put the seal on the Gates of Eden;' and, when the other did not guess his import, added: 'Sir Mark Selby is your neighbour--his daughter's for my arms to-night. You know her, handsome Sally Selby--she's for your prince, for good or ill.'
”John York did not understand at first, for he could not think the Prince had anything in mind but some hot escapade of love. When Mistress Selby's name was mentioned his heart stood still, for she had been his choice, the dear apple of his eye, since she had bloomed towards womanhood. He had set all his hopes upon her, tarrying till she should have seen some little life before he asked her for his wife. He had her father's G.o.dspeed to his wooing, for he was a man whom all men knew honest and generous as the sun, and only choleric with the mean thing.
She, also, had given him good cause to think that he should one day take her to his home, a loved and honoured wife. His impulse, when her name pa.s.sed the Prince's lips, was to draw his sword, for he would have called an emperor to account; but presently he saw the real meaning of the speech: that the Prince would marry her that night.”
Here the story-teller paused again, and Pierre said softly, inquiringly:
”You began to speak in your own way, and you've come to another way--like going from an almanac to the Ma.s.s.”
The other smiled. ”That's so. I've heard it told by old Shearton at King's House, who speaks as if he'd stepped out of Shakespeare, and somehow I seem to hear him talking, and I tell it as he told it last year to the governor of the Company. Besides, I've listened these seven years to his style.”
”It's a strange beginning--unwritten history of England,” said Sir Duke musingly.
”You shall hear stranger things yet,” answered Adderley. ”John York could hardly believe it at first, for the thought of such a thing never had place in his mind. Besides, the Prince knew how he had looked upon the lady, and he could not have thought his comrade would come in between him and his happiness. Perhaps it was the difficulty, adding spice to the affair, that sent the Prince to the appeal of private marriage to win the lady, and John York always held that he loved her truly then, the first and only real affection of his life. The lady--who can tell what won her over from the honest gentleman to the faithless prince? That soul of vanity which wraps about the real soul of every woman fell down at last before the highest office in the land, and the gifted bearer of the office. But the n.o.ble spirit in her brought him to offer marriage, when he might otherwise have offered, say, a barony.
There is a record of that and more in John York's Memoirs which I will tell you, for they have settled in my mind like an old song, and I learned them long ago. I give you John York's words written by his own hands:
”'I did not think when I beheld thee last, dearest flower of the world's garden, that I should see thee bloom in that wide field, rank with the sorrows of royal favour. How did my foolish eyes fill with tears when I watched thee, all rose and gold in thy cheeks and hair, the light falling on thee through the chapel window, putting thy pure palm into my prince's, swearing thy life away, selling the very blossoms of earth's orchards for the brier beauty of a hidden vineyard! I saw the flying glories of thy cheeks, the halcyon weather of thy smile, the delicate lifting of thy bosom, the dear gaiety of thy step, and, at that moment, I mourned for thy sake that thou wert not the dullest wench in the land, for then thou hadst been spared thy miseries, thou hadst been saved the torture-boot of a lost love and a disacknowledged wifedom. Yet I could not hide from me that thou wert happy at that great moment, when he swore to love and cherish thee, till death you parted.
”Ah, George, my prince, my king, how wickedly thou didst break thy vows with both of us who loved thee well, through good and ill report--for they spake evil of thee, George; ay, the meanest of thy subjects spake lightly of their king--when with that sweet soul secretly hid away in the farthest corner of thy kingdom, thou soughtst divorce from thy later Caroline, whom thou, unfaithful, didst charge with infidelity. When, at last, thou didst turn again to the partner of thy youth, thy true wife in the eyes of G.o.d, it was too late. Thou didst promise me that thou wouldst never take another wife, never put our dear heart away, though she could not--after our miserable laws--bear thee princes. Thou didst break thy promise, yet she forgave thee, and I forgave thee, for well we knew that thou wouldst pay a heavy reckoning, and that in the hour when thou shouldst cry to us we might not come to thee; that in the days when age and sorrow and vast troubles should oppress thee, thou wouldst long for the true hearts who loved thee for thyself and not for aught thou wudst give, or aught that thou wert, save as a man.
”'When thou didst proclaim thy purpose to take Caroline to wife, I pleaded with thee, I was wroth with thee. Thy one plea was succession.
Succession! Succession! What were a hundred dynasties beside that precious life, eaten by shame and sorrow? It were easy for others, not thy children, to come after thee, to rule as well as thee, as must even now be the case, for thou hast no lawful child save that one in the loneliest corner of thy English vineyard--alack! alack! I warned thee George, I pleaded, and thou didst drive me out with words ill-suited to thy friend who loved thee.
”'I did not fear thee, I would have forced thee to thy knees or made thee fight me, had not some good spirit cried to my heart that thou wert her husband, and that we both had loved thee. I dared not listen to the brutal thing thou hintedst at--that now I might fatten where I had hungered. Thou hadst to answer for the baseness of that thought to the King of kings, when thou wentest forth alone, no subject, courtier, friend, wife, or child to do thee service, journeying--not en prince, George; no, not en prince! but as a naked soul to G.o.d.
”'Thou saidst to me: ”Get thee gone, John York, where I shall no more see thee.” And when I returned, ”Wouldst thou have me leave thy country, sir?” thou answeredst: ”Blow thy quarrelsome soul to the stars where my farthest bugle cries.” Then I said: ”I go, sir, till thou callest me again--and after; but not till thou hast honoured the child of thy honest wedlock; till thou hast secured thy wife to the end of her life against all manner of trouble save the shame of thy disloyalty.” There was no more for me to do, for my deep love itself forbade my staying longer within reach of the n.o.ble deserted soul. And so I saw the chastened glory of her face no more, nor evermore beheld her perfectness.'”
Adderley paused once more, and, after refilling his pipe in silence, continued:
”That was the heart of the thing. His soul sickened of the rank world, as he called it, and he came out to the Hudson's Bay country, leaving his estates in care of his nephew, but taking many stores and great chests of clothes and a s.h.i.+pload of furniture, instruments of music, more than a thousand books, some good pictures, and great stores of wine. Here he came and stayed, an officer of the Company, building King's House, and filling it with all the fine things he had brought with him, making in this far north a little palace in the wilderness.
Here he lived, his great heart growing greater in this wide sinewy world, King's House a place of pilgrimage for all the Company's men in the north; a n.o.ble gentleman in a sweet exile, loving what he could no more, what he did no more, see.
”Twice a year he went to that point yonder and blew this bugle, no man knew why or wherefore, year in, year out, till 1817. Then there came a letter to him with great seals, which began: 'John York, John York, where art thou gone, John York?' There followed a score of sorrowful sentences, full of petulance, too, for it was as John York foretold, his prince longed for the 'true souls' whom he had cast off. But he called too late, for the neglected wife died from the shock of her prince's longing message to her, and when, by the same mail, John York knew that, he would not go back to England to the King. But twice every year he went to yonder point and spoke out the King's words to him: 'John York, John York, where art thou gone, John York?' and gave the words of his own letter in reply: 'King of my heart, king of my heart, I am out on the trail of thy bugles.' To this he added three calls of the bugle, as you have heard.”
Adderley handed the bugle to Lawless, who looked at it with deep interest and pa.s.sed it on to Pierre. ”When he died,” Adderley continued, ”he left the house, the fittings, and the stores to the officers of the Company who should be stationed there, with a sum of money yearly, provided that twice in twelve months the bugle should be blown as you have heard it, and those words called out.”
”Why did he do that?” asked Lawless, nodding towards the point.
”Why do they swing the censers at the Ma.s.s?” interjected Pierre. ”Man has signs for memories, and one man seeing another's sign will remember his own.”
”You stay because you like it--at King's House?” asked Lawless of Adderley.
The other stretched himself lazily to the fire and, ”I am at home,” he said. ”I have no cares. I had all there was of that other world; I've not had enough of this. You'll come with me to King's House to-morrow?”
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