Read Online Exit Lady Masham by Louis Auchincloss - Free Book Online Page B

that the time had come to make abundantly clear to my future life companion just where my first duty lay and would continue to lie. I remained with my mistress.
    ***
    When I went the next morning to Harley's apartments I found my "betrothed" there before me. He took not the slightest notice of me as I entered, but continued to pace up and down the chamber as he excitedly talked. Harley, relaxed and bald, without his wig, was sitting by the fire, puffing at his long clay pipe and smiling in the amiable fashion with which he was wont to meet the troubles of others. He silently waved a hand toward the chair that I should take, as if I were a latecomer to an amusing play.
    "I'm tied up like a cow for a rutting bull!" Masham was almost shouting. "I'm trussed and garroted! All that little jade has to do is dab an ink patch on her temple and tell Great Anna that I smote her. And then, thank you very much, poor Sam here will be dispatched to some hellhole of a Carib isle to sweat out his days overseeing a troop of blackamoors. Was ever a man so had? Why, if the new Mistress Masham so much as sighs in the royal presence, she will be asked: 'What has the fiend been doing to my little dove?'"
    "You're like Bertram in
All's Well,
" Harley observed with equanimity, and I remembered that the Queen herself had referred to this title of Mr. Shakespeare's.
    "I'm telling you I bleed to death, and you talk of Bertram! Who's Bertram? Some literary character, I suppose. Do you
live
in books, Harley?"
    "He's the hero of one of Mr. Shakespeare's comedies," Harley replied, unruffled. "Helena is the poor cousin who loves him, but who cannot look so high. However, when she cures the King of France of his fistula, she is rewarded by being allowed her pick of the royal knights for a husband. She chooses Bertram, of course, but he protests to the King that she is not his equal."
    "And the King lets him off? It's easy to see he didn't have a
queen
to deal with!"
    "On the contrary, the King commands him to marry her. Bertram can avoid his fate only by stealing off to the wars." Here Harley winked at me. "We shall have Sam in Flanders yet, Abigail."
    "I may well come to it! Think of it! To marry a chambermaid! And why? Has
she
cured the Queen of a fistula?"
    "She's cured her of something just as bad: ennui. Sam, you're making a great fuss over nothing. If your name is ever in the history books, it will be as Abigail's husband. When will you learn, my lad, that in the game of power it's not title that counts, but proximity to the royal ear?"
    "But the Queen doesn't govern.
You
should know that. Doesn't everyone say she's putty in the hands of her ministers?"
    Masham came over to Harley now and straddled a chair, leaning over its back to face his interlocutor. I reflected sourly what a poor creature I was about to marry. His present indignation was as feigned as his erstwhile ardor; he had no passions at all, only a mild acquisitiveness. If Harley could convince him that I was an asset in disguise, he might very well prove an amicable if uninteresting spouse. But, oh, my dear mistress, my afflicted, worried sovereign, with what greatness of heart had she intervened to save her servant 1 As my mind rocked back and forth between Masham and my liege lady, I wondered if I should ever love any person, even the babe beginning in me, as I was now learning to love Queen Anne.
    "Many bigger men than you have made that mistake about Anne Stuart," Harley expounded patiently. "Take it from me that, in the last ditch, she has a will of iron. She can be pushed just so far, kicked just so hard, and then, bang, you find that your foot is shattered. There are many great peers, many great Whig lords, but don't forget it is
she
who prorogues or dissolves Parliament and
she
who picks and discharges her ministers. She could reduce the great Marlborough to a simple ensign tomorrow. She could..."
    "Don't forget what happened to her father!"
    "And don't you talk treason, my friend!