“Disgrace!” she cried furiously. “Yes, if it is a disgrace to love and wish to marry, I have disgraced you. It is an honor to be mistress of the King. Mary has brought you honor! An I would not come for my mother, assuredly I will not come for you!”
“The King commands your presence!”
“You may do what you will,” she said stubbornly. “He may do what he will. I care for nothing...now.” And she burst into fresh weeping.
Sir Thomas—diplomatic over a family crisis as on a foreign mission—explained that his daughter was sadly indisposed; and the King, marveling at his feelings for this willful girl, replied, “Disturb her not then.”
The King left Hever, and Anne returned to that life which had no meaning—waiting, longing, hoping, fearing.
One cold day, when the first touch of winter was in the air and a fresh wind was bringing down the last of the leaves from the trees in the park, Sir Thomas brought home the news.
He looked at Anne expressionlessly and said: “Lord Percy has married the Lady Mary Talbot. This is an end of your affair.”
She went to her room and stayed there all that day. She did not eat; she did not sleep; she spoke to none; and on the second day she fell into a fit of weeping, upbraiding the Cardinal, and with him her lover. “They could have done what they would with me,” she told herself bitterly. “I would never have given in!”
Drearily the days passed. She grew pale and listless, so that her mother feared for her life and communicated her fears to her husband.
Sir Thomas hinted that if she would return to court, such action would not be frowned on.
“That assuredly I will not do!” she said, and so ill was she that none dared reason with her.
She called to mind then the happiness of her life in France, and it seemed to her that her only hope of tearing her misery from her heart lay in getting away from England. She thought of one whom she would ever admire—the witty, sparkling, Duchess of Alencon; was there some hope, with that spritely lady, of renewing her interest in life?
Love she had experienced, and found it bitter; she wanted no more such experience.
“With Marguerite I could forget,” she said; and, fearing for her health, Sir Thomas decided to humor her wishes; so once more Anne left Hever for the court of France.
The King’s Secret Matter
THE HOUSE AT LAMBETH was wrapped in deepest gloom. In the great bed which Jocosa had shared with Lord Edmund Howard since the night of her marriage, she now lay dying. She was very tired, poor lady, for her married life had been a wearying business. It seemed that no sooner had one small Howard left her womb than another was growing there; and poverty, in such circumstances, had been humiliating.
Death softened bitter feelings. What did it matter now, that her distinguished husband had been so neglected! Why, she wondered vaguely, were people afraid of death? It was so easy to die, so difficult to live.
“Hush! Hush!” said a voice. “You must not disturb your mother now. Do you not see she is sleeping peacefully?”
Then came to Jocosa’s ears the sound of a little girl’s sobbing. Jocosa tried to move the coverlet to attract attention. That was little Catherine crying, because, young as she was, she was old enough to understand the meaning of hushed voices, the air of gloom, old enough to smell the odor of death.
Jocosa knew suddenly why people were afraid of death. The fear was for those they left behind.
“My children...” she murmured, and tried to start up from her bed.
“Hush, my lady,” said a voice. “You must rest, my dear.”
“My children,” she breathed, but her lips were parched, too stiff for the words to come through.
She thought of Catherine, the prettiest of her daughters, yet somehow the most helpless. Gentle, loving little Catherine, so eager to please that she let others override her. Some extra sense told the mother that her daughter Catherine would sorely miss a mother’s care.
With a mighty effort she spoke. “Catherine....Daughter...”
“She said my name!” cried Catherine. “She is asking for me.”
“C...Catherine...”
“I am here,” said Catherine.
Jocosa lifted the baby fingers to her parched lips. Perhaps, she thought, she will acquire a stepmother. Stepmothers are not always kind; they have their own children whom they would advance beyond those of the woman they have replaced, and a living wife has power a dead one lacks. Perhaps her Aunt Norfolk would take this little Catherine; perhaps her Grandmother Norfolk. No, not the Norfolks, a hard race! Catherine, who was soft and young and tender, should not go to them. Jocosa thought of her own childhood at Hollingbourne, in the lovely old house of her father, Sir Richard Culpepper. Now her brother John was installed there; he had a son of his own who would be playing in her nursery. She remembered happy days spent there, and in her death-drugged thoughts it was Catherine who seemed to be there, not herself. It was soothing to the dying mother to see her daughter Catherine in her own nursery, but the pleasure passed and she was again conscious of the big, bare room at Lambeth:
“Edmund...” she said.
Catherine turned her tearful eyes to the nurse.
“She speaks my father’s name.”
