Chapter 52

TREASON

Full many a glorious morning: have I seen,
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green;
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon, permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face.

SHAKSPEARE.

The duke of York, urged so earnestly to fly, felt that to do so was to save himself at the expense of his friends, on whom Henry’s vengeance would severely fall, when he found himself balked of his victim. He consented to leave Jane Shore’s abode, with the resolve not of effecting his escape, but of securing, by surrendering himself, the safety of his defenceless adherents united under her lowly roof. He directed his course as he believed into the very centre of danger, entering the narrow straggling street whence the sound of the advance of the troop of horse had been heard. He entered the lane; it was empty. The ominous sounds were still sharp and near; it seemed as if they were in some street parallel to the one which he threaded. He turned at right angles into another, to reach the spot: again he turned, led by the baffling noise, in another direction. It was just four in the morning; there were but few abroad so early: he saw a monk gliding stealthily from under a dark archway, and a poor fellow, who looked as if he had slept beneath heaven’s roof, and had not wherewithal to break his fast. True to the kindly instincts of his nature, Richard felt at his girdle for his purse; it was long since he had possessed the smallest coin of his adversary’s realm. “I, a prince!” his feeling had been more bitter, but that his fingers came in contact with his dagger’s hilt, and the conviction of freedom burst with fresh delight upon him. Free, even in spite of its intents; for the tramp which had gradually grown fainter, was dying absolutely away.

They had probably reached the hut: thither he must return. It was no easy thing to find his way to it, he had so entangled himself in the narrow lanes, and wretched assemblages of dwellings huddled together on the outskirts of London. At length they opened before him: there was the dingy field, there the hut, standing in quiet beneath the rays of the morning sun, of the opening, summer, soft, sweet day. He was quickly at its threshold; he entered. Jane was within, alone, seated in her wooden chair; her hands clasped; her pale face sunk on her bosom: big tears were gathering in her eyes, and rolling down her faded cheeks unheeded. Jane’s aspect was usually so marble (a miraculous chiselling of resigned hopelessness), her mien so unbending, that these signs of emotion struck the prince with wonder and compassion.

He knelt at her feet and pressed her thin, but little hand to his lips, saying, “Mother, where are my friends? Mother, bless me before I go.”

She dried the drops raining from her eyes, saying in a voice that expressed how occupied she was by her own emotion, “I am a sinful woman; well do these tones remind me of the same: those days are quite, quite gone, even from the memory of all; but once they were as the present hour, when so he spoke, and I was lost, and still am lost; for, through hunger and cold and shame, I love, and cannot quite repent. Will the hour ever come when I can regret that once I was happy?”

Many, many sad years had passed since words like these had dropped from poor Jane’s lips; her feelings fed on her, possessed her, but she had been mute; overflowing now, her accent was calm; she spoke as if she was unaware that her thoughts framed speech, and that she had an auditor.

“You have paid a dear penalty, and are surely forgiven,” said York, striving in his compassion to find the words that might be balm to her.

“Prince,” she continued, “some time ago, —I have lost all date; now the chasm seems nought, now a long eternity; it was when my poor heart knew nothing of love, save its strong necessity and its delight; methought I would see your father’s fair offspring, for I loved them for his sake. At the festival of Easter I placed myself near the gate of the royal chapel: I thought to be unseen. The happy queen held her sons each by the hand; you were then, as now, his image, a little sportive blue-eyed cherub. The prince of Wales had his mother’s look: her large, dark eye, her soft, rosy mouth, her queenlike brow; her beauty which had won Edward, her chaste sweetness, which had made her his wife; my presence—I thought to conceal it better—was revealed. The queen turned her face away; there was anguish surely written there, for the prince darted on me a look of such withering scorn—yes, even he—his stainless, fair brow was knit, his bright angel’s face clouded: the look sank in my heart. Edward’s beautiful, pure child reproved me, hated me: for three days I felt that I would never see the deluder more: you do not share his abhorrence; you do not hate the pale ghost of Shore’s wife?”