“I would not be so suspicious as you—” Polly broke out: but she checked herself.
“Yes, you would, if you had seen what I have seen of princes and priests. Now tell me, Polly, has it occurred to you that it may be no such new thing to Sampson to be a papist?”
Polly stared.
“Suppose he should never have been anything else? I offend you, I see: that is no wonder. You will tell me that I do not know Sampson; and that is pretty nearly true.”
“I wish you would not make any guesses about him at all,” Polly said, angrily.
“But simply hear what you tell me of him. Well and good! but then you must not imagine you have my counsel.”
“Let us say no more about it at all!” exclaimed Polly.
“With all my heart. Only this. After what you have laid open to me I am bound to tell you that wherever the Queen of Scots remains for many days together, there plots spring up, and simple people are won, and pious people are compelled, and selfish people are bribed, to serve the purposes of the plotters. Here, where her Grace has remained weeks instead of days, there are almost as many secrets hanging about the Castle as there are birds in the holes of the rock below it. Now you have your warning.”
“I have,” replied Polly; “and I thank you for it.”
As she was leaving the threshold, the Wise Man called her back.
“One word more, Polly. All the honesty in this case lies on one side. Simply to have no more to say to Sampson could not endanger him. Well! I see you will not hear of that. Farewell, then; but remember”—and he held up his hand in a warning way—“no state secrets, no papist secrets, no secrets of Sampson’s must come here.”
Polly would have been glad to be angry; but she turned away without a word. The Wise Man was sorry for her.
“They want some clever, unsuspected agent in the village,” thought he; “and they will sacrifice her for the object. She will be bound by a secret marriage: her father’s house is a convenient resting place for the Duke and his rod and tackle. She makes the channel complete, from her Grace to the Duke. I have said all that it could avail to say. If she can get over the hint of Sampson’s having been only a pretended Protestant, and of her being made a mere tool of, nothing else that I could have said would have answered any purpose. As she walks now, she is turning all I have said of danger into a reason for uniting her fate with Sampson’s to-morrow; and the more I have touched her with suspicion of her being courted to be used, the more eager she will be to show a generous faith by an act which nothing can recall. I think she is safe about Sampson being a bachelor. These priests have few scruples; but no one of them would venture upon marrying a man over and over, however convenient the wives may be as tools. And Sampson himself could hardly go that length, though he is more cunning than wise. Polly will be a real wife; and then she must make the best of it. If she were not in love, she would see how simple and safe an honest course would really be. But she will take the hard and doubtful one.”
This was just what Polly herself was intending, as she made her way through the wood by round-about paths. She was proud of a lover who was a servant of the most unhappy and the sweetest princess in the world; and she would brave everything to be his wife, and his supporter in peril and duty. As for becoming a Papist, she need not think of that at the moment; her way would clear; and it could be no good religion which would make her desert her lover, and seek her own safety, as soon as she was put to the proof. In this mood she was met by Sampson and his patron the tailor. The latter promised to show her the Scottish ladies’ apartments, and the Queen’s own walk on the terrace, if she would come up to the Castle before sunset.
Her heart was as soft as anybody could desire as she and Sampson paced the terrace at sunset. She had seen the apartment where the Queen passed the mornings, the desk at which she wrote, the frame on which her embroidery was stretched, and a book in which she had read only a few days before. She had sat in the window-seat which commanded a wide view over Need wood Forest, but from which one could almost step out upon the terrace. The sleeping-rooms above, she was told, might be opened to her some day soon, if she should deserve the confidence. Meantime, Sampson had a hundred little anecdotes to tell her of the Queen’s sayings and doings. He was intoxicated by an interview he had had with her about some silk. Polly knew this before: but now she was confident that there was more than silk in the matter. Sampson was not a very good keeper of secrets, she now found. He was fidgety about a certain stand-point on the terrace; he was restless when she looked over the parapet, and saw a man loitering by the Dove, some way off; he was evidently delighted when her enthusiasm about the captive Queen grew to be like his own; but he let her see plainly that he had kept some things from her which were occupying his thoughts very much. After watching the swallows flitting from under the castle eaves, and swooping to the river below, and reappearing high overhead; after leaning over the ivied wall, listening for the cuckoo in the forest; after hearing how the poor Queen had burst into tears, and sobbed for an hour after meeting a toddling child which had trespassed on the terrace, and how she had said that she had a baby son in Scotland; after listening to fearful stories of the malice which had pursued this Catholic princess, even charging her with adultery and murder—suffering saint as she was!—Polly was in no mood to break for ever with Sampson, and the little world of the Queen of Scots. And if she did not break with them, she must join them. The worst trial would be living apart from them, in the very midst of the Queen’s enemies. The tailor, however, threw out a hint that the time might not be far off when the Queen would be found to have fewer enemies than was supposed, and when Polly might . . . . There was no saying what Polly might not have arrived at.
