Exit Lady Masham by Louis Auchincloss Page A

pretended not to notice. Do you know why? Because he wanted to protect
me\
And when I succeeded to the crown, all that he cared about was to keep out of the public attention and to avoid arousing the jealousy of my people. He believed that he could help me, not to rule, but to survive. By just
being
there. By just loving me. And he sustained me, Masham. How shall I live without him?"
    Perhaps I should have said something about the Prince's spirit being always present to give her sustenance, but it would have been artificial, and I had never been artificial with the Queen. I was like Sarah in this one respect: I was always truthful. The difference was that I didn't feel I had to say everything: disagreeable truths I could keep to myself. "Mrs. Still" had never been a hypocrite. What the Queen, I believe, valued in me above aught else was my sentient silence. She loved to ramble on, almost as if talking to herself. But it would have given her no solace had she really been talking to herself.
    "People think the Prince was indifferent to politics, that he cared for nothing but hunting. But it was not true. He took a great interest in everything that went on. It was only to avoid embarrassing me that he professed political neutrality. But he cared, Masham! Oh, he cared! And he had noble standards, nobler than mine, and certainly far nobler than my sister's. His heart ached over my father. You know the old story, how he kept repeating 'I can't believe it!' to King James, as the word came in of each new desertion from the crown. And how, when he himself at last deserted to join me and Mary, my father retorted: 'What, has old "I can't believe it" gone, too?' Well, that story almost killed the poor Prince. He would have gladly stayed with the King to the end; he would have willingly laid down his life for him; but because he knew I had gone with the Marlboroughs to declare for William, he believed that his place was at my side!"
    The Queen and I both looked up now as three doctors silently approached her chair. It was not necessary for them to speak. The gravity of their long countenances told their message. My poor mistress, with a loud cry, arose and staggered across the room to throw herself on her husband's body.
    ***
    Two days later I stood with the Queen's ladies in the corridor outside the chamber where the Prince's body lay, listening to the loud colloquy, loud at least on the Duchess's side, between the Queen and her Mistress of the Robes.
    "But Your Majesty must not remain another night in a palace where a royal demise has occurred!"
    "Was it not the great Elizabeth, Duchess, who said: 'The word "must" is never used to princes'?"
    "But it's the custom, ma'am, to remove from a palace under these circumstances!"
    "Do we not make the customs?"
    "Hardly, in a case like this. It's not seemly! You should not shock your subjects, who are grieving for you."
    "
Are
they grieving for me?"
    "Indeed they are. I certainly am. But even if Your Majesty does not care what we think, she should consider how the Prince would have felt. Surely no man breathed who had a greater deference for good manners and established usage!"
    My heart ached for my poor mistress. Yet there was something awe-inspiring in the relentlessness of the Duchess. Perhaps in her own odd way she had some real feeling for the Queen, but her lack of imagination where other persons were concerned was profound, abysmal, bottomless. There was no humanity in her—except, perhaps, for Marlborough.
    Her last point, at any rate, hit the Queen.
    "That is true," the feebler voice came to us. "The Prince always did the right thing."
    "Then, I beg you, ma'am, to consider what I am asking."
    "Very well, then. We shall consider it. But we must rest now." There was a pause, and then her next words formed a cold, clear command. "Send Masham to me, Duchess!"
    How I still hear the sweet, silvery tone of those words! I remember how my eyes filled with instant tears and how my knees