His Grace of Osmonde | Page 3

be whose fortune it was to see
her violet eyes melt in love--and his Grace went to her mother, the
Lady Elspeth, and besought her to let him proffer his vows to the young
lady; and she was his Duchess in ten months' time--and Madame
Carwell had come from France, and in a year was made Duchess of
Portsmouth."
"Heard you not that she too--some three weeks past--?" quoth Comfort,
who was as fond of gossip as an old woman.
"Seventeen days gone," put in Bush; "and 'twas dead, by Heaven's
mercy, poor brat. They say she loses her looks, and that his Majesty
tires of her, and looks already toward other quarters." And so they sat
over their ale and gossiped, they being supplied with anecdote by his
Grace's gentleman's gentleman, who was fond of Court life and found
the country tiresome, and whose habit it was to spend an occasional
evening at the Plough Horse for the pleasure of having even an
audience of yokels; liking it the better since, being yokels, they would
listen open-mouthed and staring by the hour to his swagger and stories
of Whitehall and Hampton Court, and the many beauties who
surrounded the sacred person of his most gracious Majesty, King
Charles the Second. Every yokel in the country had heard rumours of
these ladies, but Mr. Mount gave those at Camylott village details
which were often true and always picturesque.
"What could be expected," he would say, "of a man who had lived in
gay exile through his first years, and then of a sudden was made a King,
and had all the beauties of England kneeling before him--and he with a
squat, black, long-toothed Portugee fastened to him for a wife? And
Mistress Barbara Palmer at him from his first landing on English soil to
be restored--she that was made my Lady Castlemaine."
And then he would relate stories of this beauteous fury, and her
tempestuous quarrels with the King, and of how 'twas known his ease
and pleasure-loving nature stood in terror of her violence and gave way
before it with bribes and promises through sheer weariness.
"'Tis not that he loves her best," said Mr. Mount, snuff-taking in

graceful Court fashion, "for he hath loved a dozen since; but she is a
shrew, and can rave and bluster at him till he would hang her with
jewels, and give her his crown itself to quieten her furies. 'Tis the pretty
orange wench and actor woman Nell Gwynne who will please him
longest, for she is a good-humoured baggage and witty, and gives him
rest."
'Twas not alone Charles who was pleased with Nell Gwynne. All
England liked her, and the lower orders best of all, because she was
merry and kind of heart and her jokes and open-handedness pleased
them. They were deep in the midst of a story of a poor gentleman in
orders whom she had rescued from the debtors' prison, when old Rowe,
who had been watching the road leading from the park gates, pricked
up his ears and left his seat, trembling with excitement.
"'Tis a horse galloping," he cried; and as they all turned to look he flung
his cap in the air. "'Tis the messenger," he burst forth, "and he waves
his hat in his hand as if he had gone mad with joy. Off go I to the
church tower as fast as legs will carry me."
And off he hobbled, and the messenger galloped onward, flourishing
his hat as he rode, and giving it no rest till he drew rein before the
Plough Horse door, and all gathered about him to hear his news.
"An heir--an heir!" he cried. "'Tis an heir, and as lusty as a young lion.
Gerald Walter John Percy Mertoun, next Duke of Osmonde! Hurrah,
hurrah, hurrah!"
And at the words all the men shouted and flung up their hats, the
landlord with his wife and children ran forth, women rushed out of
their cottages and cried for joy--and the bells in the old church's grey
tower swung and rang such a peal of gladness as sounded as if they had
gone wild in their ecstacy of welcome to the new-born thing.
In all England there was no nobleman's estate adorned by a house more
beautiful than was the Tower of Camylott. Through the centuries in
which it had stood upon the fair hill which was its site, there had passed
no reign in which a king or queen had not been guest there, and no pair
of royal eyes had looked from its window quite without envy, upon the
richly timbered, far reaching park and the broad lovely land rolling
away to the sea. There was no palace with such lands spread before it,
and there were