“Tom, it’s the very devil of a business!” groaned his lordship, when the door had closed. “Robert Devereux is coming home.”
“I thought that would be it.” Overbury had not so much as flickered an eyelid. “I knew of his coming.”
“You knew? How?”
“Faith, isn’t it my business to know everything that happens in the world? How should I serve you unless I were a sponge to absorb knowledge? There’s a dispatch come from Paris — from Digby. His Majesty sent it to me that you might see it, and consider some of the matters in it. I have prepared some notes. You’ll find them, together with the dispatch, in your study when ye’ve time. Among sundry news items the dispatch contains is mention of the fact that my Lord of Essex is leaving for home.”
“Home!” said Rochester, and his lips writhed.
“Yes,” insisted Overbury. “I have been expecting it.”
“Why? What knowledge had you?”
“Worldly knowledge, that is all. Knowledge that husbands have an inconsiderate trick of turning up when not required. Demned intruders, husbands — especially this one.”
“Man, don’t laugh!” growled my lord, his northern burr accentuated.
“Tears won’t help you. Besides, I doubt you’ll have had a surfeit of them already. What are you going to do?”
“That is what I have come to ask you. I want advice.”
“You mostly do. But, as my only advice in this case is nauseously distasteful, you’ll refuse to follow it. Write finis to the chapter of my Lady Essex.”
“I can’t! I won’t! No, by heaven, not for a dozen husbands.”
“Very well, then,” said Overbury the imperturbable. “In that case you had better pull off your boots and take a turn with the foils. You’ll need to practise diligently, or one day soon it will be guard, guard, and — biff — the point in your liver!”
“You’re a fool, Tom.”
“So my father always told me, and yet—”
“Men of my rank don’t fight duels.” He fancied himself a prince of the blood, you see, no less. “Besides, there are edicts.”
“Yes; and there are street-corners and dark nights and daggers for the backs of gentlemen whose dignity does not suffer them to render honourable satisfaction to outraged husbands. Come, come, Robin. I’ll be full of sense, if sense is what you need or want. Essex is coming home, and you must accept the fact that you have run your course. You’ve held the lists quite long enough. In the gentleman’s absence you have been a poacher on his preserves. If you persist, now that he is coming back to look after his own, you’ll meet the fate of any other poacher, and earn as much sympathy from the general. No, no! The comedy is played out. Let down the curtain, and go home to forget the play and return to the realities of life.”
“My Heaven, man, is there aught in life more real?”
“You’ll think so in a year’s time. Meanwhile, accept my word for it, or resign yourself to being so much dead meat before that same year is out.”
This last was the contingency that Overbury feared; and it was precisely because he feared it that he gave his advice in such downright fashion, with the full intention to persist in it until he had bent Rochester’s mind to his will. His motives were at once his affection for Rochester, which was sincere, and his affection for himself, which was still more sincere. My lord of Essex — Sir Thomas had been at pains to obtain information — was grown an austere and downright fellow, a puritanical, masterful soldier, free from all subtleties. Sir Thomas knew precisely what might be expected from such a man — six feet of earth for Rochester if he should be caught dangling about my lady. And if Rochester were removed at this stage what was to become of Overbury himself? His own feet were not yet sufficiently squarely planted. It was still Rochester who held the reins of power, so far as the king was concerned, by virtue of his handsome face and figure. Overbury enjoyed the Royal protection at second hand, and that protection would vanish if Rochester were removed. He would be left at the mercy of all his enemies, secret and avowed, who, amongst them, would make a speedy and unmerciful end of him. Moreover — as you will have gathered — the affair between my lord of Rochester and Lady Essex had been threatening results quite other from those which Sir Thomas had foreseen when first he had encouraged his patron to embark on it. The Howards — Northampton in particular — were obtaining upon the favourite a hold far greater than suited Overbury’s ends.
He doubted if, in the pass to which things had come, he could succeed much longer in keeping them in play. Reluctant as he might be to break with them altogether, yet that seemed to him the lesser evil. Therefore, whatever the return of Essex might be to others, to Sir Thomas it was most opportune and welcome, as affording the means to shake off the Howards without an absolute breach with them. Whole-heartedly, then, Sir Thomas set himself now to preserve his patron, to hold him by main force out of the looming peril.
It was a task demanding all the wit and resource and strength of purpose with which Overbury had been endowed. In the end, by the indefatigable exertion of all these, he made his will prevail, and obtained my lord’s promise to make an end of the affair between himself and Lady Essex.
Rochester pleaded with his masterful secretary to be allowed to go in person to convey that resolve, and take a last farewell of the lovely Frances. But Overbury denied him in such masterful terms that at last Rochester, entirely dominated, agreed to Sir Thomas’s counter-proposal. Sir Thomas would write her one of his inimitable letters, couched in such terms of melting despair and grief that it should contain some echo of the breaking of his lordship’s surcharged heart. It should blend love, despair, and wisdom so cunningly that my lady must find it impossible to rebel against its decision without forfeiting the worship in which the writer held her. It should subtly convey that this decision, taken in suffocation of every selfish instinct that urged the contrary, was entirely for her sake; and it should conclude on a note that bade her accept unquestioningly, as a last act of homage, this renunciation which prudence and wisdom dictated for her sake.
When that moving piece of writing was accomplished, my lord shed tears over it, and admitted that since this thing must be done — and he had been persuaded by now of the wisdom of it, and of the folly of persevering in an adventure that might end in ruin — it could not be better done.
Her ladyship submitted perforce. All alternative had been cunningly abstracted. Her answer came. A little note of some half-dozen lines, comprising a sob of despairing submission, and a vow of eternal fidelity to their love, which made no exception in favour of an obtrusive husband.
Sir Thomas smiled in secret as he wrote “finis” — prematurely, as we shall see — to that chapter of my Lord Rochester’s career. Thereafter he plunged his patron more deeply into the business of the State, and set himself also in a subtle fashion to break down and lessen the intimacy which had grown up between Rochester and Northampton. This Northampton was not slow to perceive, and the perception did not increase his scant love of Overbury.
At first Sir Thomas found it difficult to wean Rochester from his passion. Gradually, however, he succeeded, assisted by events which found their climax, in the following spring, in the death of Salisbury, the Secretary of State. The consequences of this to Rochester, absorbing him wholly for a time, completed his cure, and so rendered him once more entirely the gay, sunny, laughing courtier in whom the king delighted.
It was for Rochester, and in even greater measure for Overbury, who as usual was the driving force, a time of stress and deep intrigue. The office of Secretary of State stood vacant, and the filling of it was a matter of great moment. The seals, meanwhile, continued in the hands of Sir Thomas Lake, who had acted as Salisbury’s deputy during the earl’s last illness; and Lake had every hope of being permanently appointed, and a considerable party to support him.
Then there was Sir Henry Neville, put forward as a candidate by the Commons, who came to seek Rochester’s interest on his behalf. Rochester rec
eived them favourably, but said them neither yea nor nay. It was his intention, upon Overbury’s recommendation, himself to take over, without any formal appointment, the duties of the office of Secretary of State; and the king favoured a project which would enable himself and his favourite to keep the control of affairs so completely in their own hands. This is what in the end took place, and Sir Thomas Lake was commanded to deliver up his seals to Rochester.
It was now that Overbury became more than ever invaluable to his friend and patron, acting as a skilled pilot in the troublous waters through which Rochester must steer. And, thanks to that supreme skill of his, Rochester was enabled to display to the king such a masterly grip of affairs, such a genius for intrigue and statecraft, that James’s esteem for him and confidence in him were further increased.
But there were some others who knew better than King James. Having regained his normal mood, Rochester was athirst for pleasure as of old; and because of his confidence and trust in Overbury he did not hesitate to seek it, and so beguile the days, leaving to Sir Thomas the transaction of affairs. Thus Overbury’s power continued to grow, and by some his hand began to be seen and to be recognised as that of the real secretary, the helmsman of the Ship of State. The first to become aware of this was, of course, Northampton, who, by virtue of his office of Privy Seal, was constantly in touch with the Secretary of State. He found himself dealing more and more, and at last exclusively, with Overbury on public affairs. It was with Overbury that he treated such matters as those concerning the forthcoming marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, the farming of the Customs, the granting of manufacturer’s licences, the duties upon imports, and the treaties with foreign Powers.
It was into Overbury’s hands that all secret dispatches were now delivered, so that he came to know more of foreign policy than the king himself. Out of this consciousness of power he grew more arrogant and sardonic than ever. Yet he played his game skilfully, and in the main was loyal to Rochester, content to await the reward that must in time inevitably be his, and must accord him the full fruition earned by his talents for his ambition.
He reckoned without two factors — Northampton and Northampton’s niece.
With regard to her ladyship, events had been moving for her, too, during the past year, since Rochester, under Overbury’s advice, had broken with her. Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, had come home breathlessly eager at last to realise the dream of these past years of exile. He had flown straight to his wife, whom he fondly pictured awaiting him as eagerly. The reception she gave him staggered and dumbfounded him, shattered at a blow his dream and rent his pride. For the sight of him nothing tempered her ladyship’s disdain. She found herself looking upon a grave, silent man, uncouth of countenance, puritanical of air and dress, a man who first with clumsy eagerness, then gravely, and finally sternly informed her that he was her husband, and he had come to take her down to his home at Chartley.
She answered him in words that already she had rehearsed in her last talk with Rochester. He was a stranger to her; she did not admit his right to claim her to wife; she had been bartered to him before she had the will to give herself, and give herself to him she never would; he was a fool if he had imagined that things could be otherwise, and she begged him to do her the only favour that it lay in his power to do her, and that was never to let her see his face again.
It was a very hang-dog earl when she had finished; and it may be that he was hurt the more for finding her so very lovely and desirable. But he was young — not yet quite twenty, in fact — and possessed of youth’s inexhaustible fund of hope. He would be patient, he would wait; he realised the justice of some part of her complaint, but he would teach her to find him estimable. That was at first. But when, in spite of all his patience, she continued obdurate, when he realised that he would never win her, who refused him so much as the chance to woo her, he grew brutally stern once more, and stood upon his rights.
He was of a weak, obstinate, dull-witted nature, incapable of grappling with a situation of such complexity as this, a situation in which the first principles by which he had ever lived his life could avail him nothing. Yet he proceeded by them. He appealed to her parents, and it but remained for them to point out to their daughter that their granting or withholding their consent was as nothing. His was the power to compel her. Therefore she had best yield where she could not help herself.
It was the last drop in the cup of her despair. Benumbed, bereft, and feeling herself widowed of the man she loved, the man she deemed her true and natural mate, it required but this added horror to make her turn to thoughts of self-destruction.
In the end she resolved that, since she could not help herself, she would go down to Chartley with him as he commanded. But beyond that she would not yield an inch. She would make life as hideous for him as he had made it for her, and he should yet repent in bitterness this unchivalrous, unmanly exercise of force upon a defenceless woman.
And then he fell ill, dangerously ill, and her hopes soared wildly. It was then that she came to realise what his life meant to her, what his death would mean. It was his life that stood between her and the full achievement of her desires. Once he were dead, she would be free; no obstacle would stand between her and the man she loved. They would marry, an ideal union in a worldly as in a personal sense, that would give them, united, a power second to none in England.
She prayed then as she had never prayed before in her frivolous, butterfly life, prayed fervently that Devereux might die. And when in the end he recovered, and she perceived that Heaven was indifferent to her sufferings, deaf to her passionate entreaties, she turned in her despair to invoke the powers of hell.
It came about in this way. Seeing that as soon as her husband was restored to strength she must willy nilly to Chartley with him, she was moved to make a pilgrimage to the ground that love had consecrated for her.
In that sweet Hammersmith garden, in that very bower above the river where last Rochester and she had clung each to each in passionate distress, she walked sadly now with that questionable friend who had lent her house to those assignations. A pretty woman this Mrs. Turner, widow of a physician whom she had ruined by her riotous living. She came of a good family, and was chiefly renowned in the world of fashion as the inventor of the yellow ruff. She had friends in high places; but straitened circumstances, and the questionable shifts by which she was forced to live, had driven her to seek friends in low places, too.
Such, in brief, was the confidante into whose sympathetic ear my lady poured the bitterness that filled her soul, and the handsome, needy, wicked little widow was very prompt with her advice.
“Your remedy, child, lies in divorce.”
“Divorce? And the grounds — I who have not lived with him?”
“But you will be doing so soon.”
Her ladyship smiled bitterly.
“Once that has come to pass it will be too late for any divorce. My lord’s love for me will be dead by then, killed by what he will account my unfaith — if it is not dead already. Oh, these bitter, bitter months of emptiness that are sped.”
“You let him go too easily,” said the widow, and sighed.
“What choice had I? He wrote me in such terms that my soul was torn. It was as if he wrote with his life’s blood, and how could I increase the sufferings of one so anguished by refusing to obey what he accounted Fate’s inexorable decree. I gave it thought. I am not all evil, nor all selfish, Turner. Such a nobility of soul as his is of itself ennobling, and points the way of duty, even of sacrifice. I saw that it might be very ill for him if I did other than he wished. Sometimes I am sorry. I am weak, you see. I nourish myself upon the hope that some day — some day—” She broke off, choked by her sobs. Then, controlling herself in part: “But once I go to Chartley with my Lord of Essex it will be to close the door upon all hope, to close the very door of the tomb. What then could a divorce avail me? Besides,” she ended, almost impatiently, “what divorce is possible?”
But Mrs. Turner had not lived upon her wits these years for nothing. She had amassed in the course of her adventures a considerable amount of very questionable, but very useful, knowledge. Some of that knowledge she now displayed, and saw her ladyship’s innocent blue eyes grow rounder and larger with amazement at first, then quicken with sudden eagerness.
“Yes, yes!” she cried. “Oh, priceless counsel, my sweet Turner.” And then, as suddenly, her eagerness all fell away. “But it will come too late. My lord’s love will be cold by then, if it is not so already.”
But here, too, Mrs. Turner had advice of an unusual kind.
“There are ways to stir up and quicken love, to give it birth, or resurrect it from the dead — unfailing ways, my child. I know of my own knowledge, for once I was in need of help, and found it.”
“What help? What manner of help?”
“The help of the unseen.”
“Wizardry?” Her ladyship was disposed to be scornful. “Philtres and incantations and the like?”
She had heard of all this. Indeed, the reign of James was famous for its witch-hunting. But, in spite of persecution, there was no lack of warlocks in the land, who took the risk of being burnt for the sake of the rich and easy profits which their dark trade brought them.
“You laugh,” said Mrs. Turner. “So do many — until, like myself, they have learnt to know better. There was a time when I, too, laughed. Yet I tell you that your needs can be supplied unerringly, that you can bind your lover to you with hoops of steel which no mortal power can break.”
So solemn and emphatic was Mrs. Turner that my lady grew serious, and craved more knowledge.
It would be a fortnight later, and my Lord of Essex now progressing in his convalescence, when Rochester came one day into that pleasant room above the Privy Gardens where Sir Thomas conducted the affairs of England in his lordship’s name. He carried in his hand a note, and there was a frown between his brows.
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