The First of the English: A Novel
you have forgotten your promise to me!”
Then he of Alva, with voice that seems to her harsh as the judgment
trumpet of our Lord will seem to those who have no hope in eternity,
answers: “This man is not the man you thought you loved. This is not
Guido Amati. He was killed at the Battle on the Ice, slain by this
English rover, this accursed pirate, this scum of the sea, this
base-born clown, who aped a Spanish noble to win your trust and love.”
“Base-born clown!” breaks out the Englishman. “That’s a lie, when
coupled with the name of Chester. My lord of Alva, you speak to belted
English knight. My accolade was given by the Queen’s own hand. I have
in me the blood of the Stanhopes, who fought with William the
Conqueror; my cousin is a Stanley and wears Earl’s coronet. Nobility I
have enough for you and yours. Do you think I would have sullied her I
love by luring her to wed ignoble blood? Look—on my breast I bear the
golden spurs of knighthood!”
At this the girl, who has cowered under the words that brand the man
she loves as one of the ignoble, seizing from Chester’s breast the
trinkets that show he is of her rank and class, holds them up before my
lord of Alva, and cries out in almost happy voice: “He’s noble! Father,
do you hear, HE’S NOBLE! Now you can’t refuse, he’s noble, though he
is—” she pauses here and falters to Guy, for now she somewhat
understands, “Are you the—‘The First of the English?’”
“Yes!”
The answer comes haughtily and proudly, and with it there is a sudden
light in her brain, and she gasps: “Ah, now I know—! This—this Oliver
his friend—the day he rescued me, the day they said the English rover
was in Antwerp.” Then she whispers, almost exultation in her voice:
“Twice, my love, that day I saved you; to-day I will save you again!”
But this dies away into one awful wailing cry, as he of Alva, in a
voice as unyielding as the Rock of Ages, says harshly: “Gomez, bring in
the executioner!”
“The executioner! Father, you don’t understand. This is the man I
love.”
“You love him?” jeers the Duke. “You love an enemy of your country?
This man who was a friend of Oliver, the traitor in my household, whose
attack on Mons gave Orange time to rise with all of Holland; this man
who robbed me for his queen of my Italian treasure? Bah! you must hate
him, girl, as I do,” and he turns to give further orders.
At this mention of stolen wealth there is a jeering laugh from Guy,
despite himself, but Hermoine puts hand upon his lips and whispers
pleadingly: “Don’t anger him, for my sake, my Guido—my Englishman. I
can twist papa about my little finger,” and tries to laugh in his face,
“See me!”
With this she is about Alva’s neck murmuring: “What nonsense do you
talk? You always do as your Hermoine tells you. Papa dear, shall I pull
your naughty beard?”
But he says: “Child, you do not understand. I’ll send to France for
gewgaws and new dresses for you. You will soon forget,” then raises up
his voice—“The Executioner!”
But she will not be put off and apes to laugh: “The executioner?—for
the man you have promised me as husband? What NONSENSE! You mean the
priest. Goosey dear, send for the priest at once!”
But Alva answers harshly: “To shrive him were he not a heretic,” next
says sternly, “Gomez, why are you waiting? You have my orders—THE
EXECUTIONER!”
CHAPTER XXIII.
“IT IS AN AFFAIR OF STATE!”
Then pandemonium breaks forth in the girl, and she laughs in awful
jeer: “My father offers me gewgaws for my lover’s life. Perhaps he’ll
toss the gold for my affianced’s head in my lap and think I’ll spend it
in buying sweetmeats and dainties for the mouth,” next sobs to Guy,
who, the entrances of the room being all guarded, has now no chance of
escape save by almost superhuman means: “Oh, Mother of Mercy! why did
you not trust me? Did you suppose I loved only a name?” then screams
out hoarsely: “Father, spare him! You promised! Spare at least his
life. Father, mercy for ME!”
For there is a bustle outside, the noise of men coming into the house;
but it is only the lieutenant of the guard who enters, a fiddle
dripping with blood in his hand and announces: “We have killed every
man in the boat, musicians and all.”
At this there is a spasm of hope, the first that has come to Chester.
In his military mind has sprung this idea: “The butchery of the
musicians was warning to my boats that their captain is beset.”
But this is effaced by the agony of her he loves, for Hermoine is now
pleading with her father as if for her own life, calling him loving
names as if she adored him in her agony, and sobbing, though she has no
tears: “Father, don’t you hear me, don’t you feel me?” As her arms are
round the grim old Viceroy’s neck. “Don’t you know—that I—love this
man!—See it, believe it by the agony of my breaking heart. If you kill
him you kill me. I had mourned for him as dead before; must I be
widowed AGAIN?”
Thus supplicating, Hermoine de Alva looks lovelier in her despair than
in her joy, for there is now about her a kind of nervous intensity and
ethereal electricity that makes her not wholly of this earth; she is as
Eve pleading for Adam, not to God, but—to Satan.
But Satan is not merciful, and thinking her father does not really
understand how it is her very life he is cutting short, she cries out:
“You shall believe my love by this!”
Then this being whom modesty now covers with blushes, in the presence
of grim old arquebusiers and all the lackeys and attendants the noise
has drawn to the doors of the room, walks up to Guy Chester and her
arms go round him and she is kissing him and sobbing over him, and
begging him not to think she would have betrayed him for all the world,
she loves him so.
Even as she does this Hermoine de Alva seems suddenly to change. For,
as she flutters over him, Guy, having golden opportunity, whispers in
her ear: “Get me time—warn my boats—get me time!”
At this work she goes with every artifice of mind and body.
She looks about, then seems to grow faint, and mutters: “Water—water—my
head!”
At this her father cries: “Good heavens, you are swooning!”
To him she jeers: “That would make it easy for you. When I came to I
would be bereft. No, I’ll not faint while he lives—water!”
This Alva would bring her, but starting, she motions him away and
shudders: “Not from your hands; my maid, Alida—quick!”
On this the Moorish girl, who is looking on, a strange pathetic
interest in her face, comes to her bringing a goblet.
As Hermoine drinks she whispers: “To the landing, call them
on—boats—the English boats!”
A quick look of intelligence flies over the subtle Moorish face, and
Alida, bearing the goblet with her, steps out of the apartment.
This the Duke sees not. After his daughter has shuddered from him he
has turned away and pressed his hand upon his heart, his face working
strangely.
From this on he does not seem to wish to look upon his child, who now
comes with all her soul to delay, if she cannot change, her father’s
purpose.
In this she is strangely aided by an enemy; the Countess de Pariza
comes laughing in and giggles, viciously: “You are going to burn him by
the slow fire, he is a heretic.”
“Heretic in your teeth, hag,” cries Chester, “I am as good a Catholic
as my lord of Alva himself.” And memory of his God coming over him with
coming doom, he begins to tell his beads.
“A Catholic,” laughs Alva harshly, “as good as I? And raise thy hand
against the King of Spain!”
“Yes,” answers Guy, “I am a Catholic, but I am also an Englishman.”
“There’ll soon be one less of them to fight against the flag of Spain,”
sneers the Viceroy.
To this is joined a low wail of despair from Alva’s daughter.
The executioner, one of whom my lord always carries with him for sudden
use, comes in, in leather jerkin, and with awful cruel face, and he of
Alva says to him: “How now, fellow, where is thy noose?”
“I thought, my lord,” answers the man, “from what I heard outside, it
was a burning at the stake and wanted to know where it should be done?
There’s faggots enough in the kitchen for roasting of my man. Shall I
burn him in the great courtyard in front of the house? Shall I burn him
quick or burn him slow? I can find tallow fat enough to lard him!”
Here my lord of Alva sees something in his daughter’s face, though she
says no word to this, but simply strides up to her father and looks him
in the eye; and he, turning his head away, mutters: “The noose; he is
not a heretic, hang him up from a beam outside.”
“You are resolved on—on this?” Hermoine’s soft voice is broken now and
harsh.
“Yes! It is an affair of State.”
“My tears, my prayers, my breaking heart—” she sighs this out with
gasping sighs, “make no—change—in—your decree?” And there is a sweat of
agony about the girl’s beautiful eyes instead of tears.
“No. It is an affair of State.” Alva’s lips tremble as he says it.
“Then I claim for this man I love, since he is not a heretic, the
privilege of receiving the last rites of the church. You shall not damn
his soul though you condemn his body. You are too good a Catholic to
say a Catholic shall die without grace and church rites.”
To this Don Fernando answers shortly: “There’s no priest within reach.”
“You bring the executioner, but not the priest!” she jeers. “Give him
and me at least time to tell our beads—for when he dies—my heart breaks
also.”
But here there is a bustle at the rear among the arquebusiers guarding
the doors, and a man garbed as in the priesthood of the Catholic
Church, says: “Room, a father of the church!” And the soldiers
permitting him to pass, Guy sees with amazement it is the Father
Anastasius he had hoped this night would celebrate his wedding.
“Now,” cries Hermoine, “my Lord of Alva, you cannot refuse.”
“He shall not,” says the priest, “not to me, Father Anastasius, who
have lived in Zeeland persecuted all these years for love of the Lord;
he dare not refuse permission to save this man’s soul.”
“And why not?” answers Alva haughtily.
“Because I will anathematize you. Great Catholic that you are, you have
no right to violate an ordinance of Rome.”
“Then have your way. Bind him securely. Then let him make his orisons
to you—in yonder chapel, if you think it would be more holy—and save
this man’s soul. Now, girl, get thee to thy chamber.”
“Not until I see the last and hear the last word of the man I love. You
have denied all I have prayed you for, you have refused to spare the
life of him I love; and I have not cursed you for it—because I am your
daughter. But I will call down heaven’s anathema upon you if you send
me from his side while life is in him.”
To this Alva says nothing but sinks down at the table, putting his head
in his hands, muttering to the lieutenant: “On your life, beware he
does not escape you; that is all.”
Then the entrance of the chapel being guarded, Chester, bound and
helpless, is led in there, and sinks down before the man of God.
But even as he makes the confession of the dying sinner, there is the
frou of silk about him and the white laces and orange flowers of bridal
robe brush his face that has been bruised by arquebus stocks, and a
beautiful being upon whose face is despair but also love divine, sinks
down beside him and sighs out to the priest: “Not the sacrament for the
dead, but the sacrament of marriage!—with this man I love and who loves
me—and who has taken his life in his hands every time he looked upon my
face. Now I know what you have risked to gain me—my Guido!—now I
know—my Guy, my Englishman!”
“But my lord of Alva!” mutters the monk, aghast.
“You, didn’t fear him a minute ago. Be merciful as you are good. Look
at the altar piece; see, the Madonna pleads for me!”