University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.
CAPTAIN BELLARMYNE; A YOUNG SOLDIER OF THE EMPEROR'S.

A beautiful autumnal day had drawn to its close some three
weeks previous to the little incident which produced Rosamond's
letter, and caused so much anxiety and suffering to the old
cavalier; and she was sitting alone and despondent at the window
of her apartment which looked over the gardens, in those
days extending from the rear of the exquisite palace of Whitehall
to the banks of the brimful silver river.

But she had no eyes for the shaven lawns, the tufted parterres,
or the moonlighted bosom of the argent Thames; no
ears for the sounds of merriment and music which came, at
times, swelling on the gentle air from the returning barges of
pleasure parties and homebound revellers.

She thought of herself only, of her perplexities, her trials,

her undefended situation, her offended virtue, her menaced
honor.

For she had discovered, in season, both the offence and the
menace; and while resenting the one, and fortifying herself
against the other, had learned that, in the path of virtue, she
might hope for neither encouragement among her beautiful
companions, the fair, frail maids-of-honor; nor for the chivalric
defence of one noble heart among the corrupt, licentious courtiers.
To the king an appeal for support would have been
worse than absurd; since his smiles, his encouragement, his
good wishes, were all with the offender.

The queen, alas! could have given sympathy and tears only,
had she chosen to give these; but, short as was the space since
her espousals, she had learned already the sad lesson that, to
preserve even the outward semblance of her husband's respect,
she must turn a consenting eye to his foibles, and interfere with
no one of his unroyal pleasures.

It was, perhaps, wonderful that—beautiful and accomplished
as was Rosamond Bellarmyne; and, moreover, from her very
inexperience, free-spoken as she was free-hearted—she had not
been singled out before in that profligate and ungracious court
for dishonorable and degrading pursuit.

But it had so happened that, when she arrived, the king himself
had eyes or ears for none but La belle Stewart—who, by
her meretricious half-consents and half-denials, kept him sighing
and dangling at her knees longer than his constancy ever endured
for any other maid or matron; the Duke of York, for
whose gross tastes the innocent and lively Rosamond would
have lacked piquancy and vice, was in the chains of the ill-favoured
and brazen Sedley; and of the other courtiers none,
perhaps, dared—so much was there, even in her lightest and
gayest moments, of the true dignity of virtue in her every word

and gesture—to approach the young maid-of-honor with the
suit of dishonor.

To accident, therefore, and in some lesser degree to her own
demeanor, she had owed thus far her escape from persecution.

But one had now come upon the scene—to whom to outrage
dignity, as to ruin virtue, and pollute honor, was but an incentive,
added to the gratification of his passions, and—what with
him stood far higher than his passions—his extraordinary and
indomitable vanity.

Master of all graces, all arts, all accomplishments, which
conciliate one sex and ruin the other, animated by no solitary
spark of honor, courage, manhood, or integrity, though so
skilled in polite and politic dissimulation as to make all the
world believe him the very soul of honor, chivalry, and courteous
courage, De Grammont had resolved to compass her destruction.

And what he had resolved in that sort heretofore, had almost
inevitably come to pass.

His own powers of seduction, should they prove for once
insufficient, were now aided to the utmost by no less an auxiliary
than Charles himself; who lately being deeply smitten
with the charms of a young French coquette—to use no
harsher term—a cousin, it was given out, of the consummate
count himself, had bargained—shameful contract, but most
characteristic of those shameful days—for the facile Frenchman's
favor with his kinswoman by engaging to throw into
his arms the beautiful Bellarmyne.

All this, of course, was a secret beyond the reach of Rosamond;
yet she had already perceived much and divined more
of the iniquities which were plotting against her.

The odious compliments, the resolutely pertinacious attentions,

so marked as to banish all other courtiers from her side;
his insolently graceful importunities—to be repulsed by no
scorn, no coldness, no denials; for these he treated either as
girlish caprices, or as English pruderies—had given way of late
to an assumption of radiant triumph in her presence; to an
affectation of being perfectly in her good graces; to a boastful
and self-sufficient complacency; as if he were, indeed, the admitted
and successful lover—the gorgeous Jupiter of a submissive
Semele.

She heard, too, from the maids-of-honor, who rallied and
complimented her on her victory—as if to be the fallen victim
of that Hyperion's passions were a triumph—that he proclaimed,
almost aloud, by the insinuation of adroit disclaimers and
modest inuendoes, that to him at least the severe Bellarmyne
had lowered her arms ineffectual.

By bribery of her maids learning what would be her dress
at each court festival, he appeared always wearing her colors;
so that to every one not in his secret, it must appear a matter
of concert between them.

By connivance of the king—who played his most unroyal
game with all the zeal of an interested ally; and with an
adroitness which proved that, if he made a less than indifferent
monarch, he would have made an admirable Sir Pandarus—in
every masque, quadrille, riding-party, hunting match, or other
court diversion, in which it was the custom of the day that the
company should be paired, the famous chevalier had as his
partner the unwilling and unhappy Rosamond, whom the rules
of court etiquette, stringent as those of court morality were lax,
prohibited from refusing this detested companion.

Thus all the world of Whitehall, from Charles himself to the
least of his courtiers, either by connivance or from being themselves
deceived, received it as an acknowledged fact that the

Bean Grammont either stood already, or was in a fair way of
standing, as he would with the Belle Bellarmyne.

And she, while she felt this, and perceived no way of avoiding
it, or of disentangling herself from the nets sensibly spreading
their meshes around her, trembled, and wept and prayed,
and feared even herself for herself should this miserable deceit
continue, fatal as the enchantment of some evil genius.

Perhaps had things thus continued had no overt violence
been attempted, no outrage offered, had she been left to the
influence of that evil society in which all the angels around her
were fallen angels, rejoicing and luxuriating in their fall—left
to the imputation of being herself a victim of the same dark
sin—left to doubt and distrust herself, and to despair of being
virtuous alone in the midst of that carnival of vice—she had
fallen.

But, for this time, it was not so ordered; and, as it is often
the case when the darkness of human calamity is deepest, that
the dawn of happiness is nearest, so now events—of which she
had not the smallest suspicion, over which she had not the
least control—were in progress, which effected changes as unexpected
as important both in her present and future condition.

It was the close of a beautiful autumnal day; the sun had
sunk, as he rarely does in summer-time in that humid climate
of England, unclouded over the soft Richmond hills; and a
tender, dusky twilight, mellowed only by the young light of a
crescent moon, was outspread over the city and its suburbs.

On this evening there was no court ceremonial; and dispensed
from attendance on her royal mistress, and yet more
odious attendance in the court circle, Rosamond Bellarmyne
had just wept herself and her sorrows into temporary forgetfulness,
when an affair fell out between Barns Elms and Battersea,

which seeming to have no connexion with her or her
affairs, yet influenced the whole way of her after life.

The country in that direction was, in the days of which I
write, although now so covered with streets and squares of thickly
settled parishes as to be indistinguishable from the metropolis
itself, truly the country; a suburban district, it is true, but
in all its aspects rural; green fields and green groves, and a
maze of green winding lanes, with here and there a country
villa, here and there a country tavern and wine-garden—frequented
for the most part by the dissolute and wanton of both
sexes, the scum of the neighboring metropolis, though visited
occasionally by the petits maîtres and petites maîtresses of the
court—often in disguise, and always on errands no less secret
and illicit than those of the ordinary inmates.

It was, in short, a district presenting all the worst features—
beauty excepted—of both city and country; in addition to
which its character was not greatly improved by being the
favorite resort of seafaring men on a frolic, and of the crews—
then, as now, a most unruly set—of the river craft and
barges.

In the centre of this district, not far from the river bank, to
which extended its overgrown gardens and shrubberies, too
luxuriant from neglect, there stood a pleasant Italian edifice;
once the suburban residence of a foreign ambassador near the
court of the first king James, but for some time past fallen
into disuse and disrepair.

Within the few weeks preceding the date of my narrative,
the minds of the country quidnuncs of the vicinity had been
exercised by the repairs and decoration of the villa; the bringing
thither in many wains overland, in many barges by river,
much sumptuous furniture, mirrors and tapestries, carpets and

couches, cabinets of marquetry and tables of rare carving, suitable
only for the abodes of the great and noble.

On the morning of that beautiful autumnal day the exercised
minds had been strained to their utmost tension by the arrival
—in a grand calêche, drawn by superb Flanders mares, and
escorted by a train of servants of both sexes—of a very young,
and very lovely, though dark-complexioned, foreign lady, without
any visible protector and companion. And the excitement
was relieved only by the announcement made by an English
postillion—all the other servants being French—that the lady
was Mademoiselle de la Garde, of almost royal blood in France;
and that the Italian House, as it was called, had been purchased
for her residence by her kinsman, the celebrated Chevalier
de Grammont.

It was in one of the country hostelries mentioned above that
this announcement was made; a pleasant rustie-looking place
enough, at about half a mile's distance from the villa, and
nearly twice as far from the main London road; lying on a
lonely lane, secluded by thick, bowery hedges, and rendered
almost dark at noon by the overhanging branches of the huge
elms. This inn had a bowling-green, a maze, and a large
garden in the rear, with pleasant apartments, both for day and
night, opening upon them, for the use of visitors of the better
class; while in front were a tap-room, an ordinary with shovelboards,
and a skittle-ground, for the accommodation of the
neighbors and the city roisterers, who mightily affected the
Royal Oak—on Sundays more especially.

At the time when this announcement was made a young
gentleman of good mien was present, having entered the house
casually as a stranger, dismounting from a good horse, and
announcing his intention of tarrying there a day or two, having
some business with a sea-captain of Battersea.

He was a man of some twenty-eight or thirty years, finely
and powerfully formed, with a very deep chest, and muscular
limbs. His present complexion was dark and sunburned;
though the color of his chestnut hair and steel-grey eyes, as
well as the fairness of his forehead—where it had been protected
by his hat—showed that the blackness was the effect of
exposure to the weather, not the work of nature. His carriage
and air, no less than a slight scar as of a sabre-cut on his
forehead, indicated that he had seen service. His garb—rich,
though of grave colors, and of foreign fashion—was half military,
and worn with a martial air; and he bore on his breast
a small foreign order. His name, as he gave it to the curious
barmaid, proved, if it were a true one, the rank and the station
of the bearer—Captain Bellarmyne, from the Low Countries.

This gentleman appeared, indeed, to be something moved, if
not surprised, by what he heard; but he said nothing, asked
no questions, dined privately at noon in one of the garden-chambers,
and after dinner took his cool tankard in an arbor
looking upon the cool, winding lane.

While he was sitting there a superb cavalier came powdering
along the lane, as hard as a splendid English hunter
could carry him, splendidly dressed in a grand peruke, a velvet
coat, and high riding-boots: a man of great personal beauty
and grace; both evidently made the most of, and set off to the
utmost.

“In truth it is himself!” muttered the young man. “It is
De Grammont. Whom shall we see next?”

And therewith he raised himself erect, so that he came into
full view of the passer-by; and lifting his plumed hat bowed
courteously, but coldly.

The chevalier looked puzzled—as if he recognised the face
without recognising the owner of it; looked annoyed at being

recognised; half checked his horse—as if to stop and speak;
then changing his mind, bowed slightly and galloped forward.

“He does not recollect me,” said Captain Bellarmyne;
“that is well, too. And, now—whom shall we see next?”

It was late in the afternoon of that day before the captain
saw any one; yet it was evident that he kept himself in the
way to see what was to be seen.

But when the sun had set, and the moon was almost rising,
two gentlemen rode up to the horse-trough before the door,
accompanied by a single groom; and one of them asked how
far was it to what was called the Italian House.

On receiving the reply they both dismounted; and giving
their horses to their attendant desired him not to wait, as they
would walk home in the pleasant moonlight or tarry until
morning.

That done, they called for a stoup of claret; and stood
chatting while they drank it not far from Captain Bellarmyne,
who soon saw clear enough who had come the next.

One of the two—the most remarkable in all respects—was
middle-aged; something above the middle stature; dark-complexioned
and harsh-featured, with coarse, black hair, partially
redeemed only by a bright, intelligent smile; a quick, vivacious
eye; and an air of innate and unconcealable gentility, if not
dignity, which shone like a diamond through the disguise—
evident to Bellarmyne's eyes, at least—which he wore.

In a word, it was the king; and the captain knew him in
his disguise, as he had known De Grammont in his splendor.

At a glance anyone would have pronounced him, as he was,
more witty than wise; more good-natured than good-principled;
fitter to be a gay companion than a true friend, whether
to himself or to others; fitter to be anything than a king—and
that a king of freemen.

His comrade Captain Bellarmyne knew likewise; knew for
what he was, the most worthless of men living then—perhaps,
of all men—without one redeeming trait of good by which to
palliate the infamy in which he steeped his really transcendent
talents—John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, the constant companion
of the monarch; one of whose worst faults lay in the
selection of his intimates—for friends they were not.

They tarried but a minute, and then sauntered down the lane
towards the villa; unobservant, but not unobserved by others
than the young soldier of the Low Countries.

A group of bystanders were collected, who had been playing
at skittles when the gentlemen rode up; and one of these, as
they spoke to the groom of walking home in the pleasant
moonlight, nudged his next neighbor with his elbow, and he
cast a meaning glance at a third.

Bellarmyne seeming to see nothing, saw all with his marking
military eye.

One of these was—that common character in the dramas of
those days—the soldado; a brawny ruffian, with a swashing
exterior and a coward's heart within, in a stained plush doublet
with tarnished lace, a broad shoulder-belt and a long rapier
balanced by a great dagger; the second was another genius of
the same order; but of a yet lower class; the third and most
dangerous of the party, was a seafaring man; smuggler, slaver,
or pirate—any, or perhaps all—as times and occasions suited.

“Didst hear that, Ruffling Jem?” asked the latter, scarce in a
whisper, of the soldado, as they strolled back to their interrupted
game.

“Ay, Bully sailor. What'st make of it?”

“That there'll be pickings in the pleasant moonlight, if we
look sharp, this evening.”

“Mum's the word. Sure and steady. Three to two wins
the game.”

“But not so surely three to three,” muttered Bellarmyne,
between his clinched teeth; “and you may meet that, and find
it odds against you.”