Chapter 30
810 Words
When we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a bright
side for him. This bright side went on brightening more and more
every day: in a very little while it was become almost all
sunshine and delightfulness. He lost his fears; his misgivings
faded out and died; his embarrassments departed, and gave place to
an easy and confident bearing. He worked the whipping-boy mine to
ever-increasing profit.
He ordered my Lady Elizabeth and my Lady Jane Grey into his
presence when he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when
he was done with them, with the air of one familiarly accustomed
to such performances. It no longer confused him to have these
lofty personages kiss his hand at parting.
He came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and
dressed with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning. It
came to be a proud pleasure to march to dinner attended by a
glittering procession of officers of state and gentlemen-at-arms;
insomuch, indeed, that he doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms,
and made them a hundred. He liked to hear the bugles sounding
down the long corridors, and the distant voices responding, "Way
for the King!"
He even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council, and
seeming to be something more than the Lord Protector's mouthpiece.
He liked to receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains,
and listen to the affectionate messages they brought from
illustrious monarchs who called him brother. O happy Tom Canty,
late of Offal Court!
He enjoyed his splendid clothes, and ordered more: he found his
four hundred servants too few for his proper grandeur, and trebled
them. The adulation of salaaming courtiers came to be sweet music
to his ears. He remained kind and gentle, and a sturdy and
determined champion of all that were oppressed, and he made
tireless war upon unjust laws: yet upon occasion, being offended,
he could turn upon an earl, or even a duke, and give him a look
that would make him tremble. Once, when his royal 'sister,' the
grimly holy Lady Mary, set herself to reason with him against the
wisdom of his course in pardoning so many people who would
otherwise be jailed, or hanged, or burned, and reminded him that
their august late father's prisons had sometimes contained as high
as sixty thousand convicts at one time, and that during his
admirable reign he had delivered seventy-two thousand thieves and
robbers over to death by the executioner, {9} the boy was filled
with generous indignation, and commanded her to go to her closet,
and beseech God to take away the stone that was in her breast, and
give her a human heart.
Did Tom Canty never feel troubled about the poor little rightful
prince who had treated him so kindly, and flown out with such hot
zeal to avenge him upon the insolent sentinel at the palace-gate?
Yes; his first royal days and nights were pretty well sprinkled
with painful thoughts about the lost prince, and with sincere
longings for his return, and happy restoration to his native
rights and splendours. But as time wore on, and the prince did
not come, Tom's mind became more and more occupied with his new
and enchanting experiences, and by little and little the vanished
monarch faded almost out of his thoughts; and finally, when he did
intrude upon them at intervals, he was become an unwelcome
spectre, for he made Tom feel guilty and ashamed.
Tom's poor mother and sisters travelled the same road out of his
mind. At first he pined for them, sorrowed for them, longed to
see them, but later, the thought of their coming some day in their
rags and dirt, and betraying him with their kisses, and pulling
him down from his lofty place, and dragging him back to penury and
degradation and the slums, made him shudder. At last they ceased
to trouble his thoughts almost wholly. And he was content, even
glad: for, whenever their mournful and accusing faces did rise
before him now, they made him feel more despicable than the worms
that crawl.
At midnight of the 19th of February, Tom Canty was sinking to
sleep in his rich bed in the palace, guarded by his loyal vassals,
and surrounded by the pomps of royalty, a happy boy; for tomorrow
was the day appointed for his solemn crowning as King of England.
At that same hour, Edward, the true king, hungry and thirsty,
soiled and draggled, worn with travel, and clothed in rags and
shreds--his share of the results of the riot--was wedged in among
a crowd of people who were watching with deep interest certain
hurrying gangs of workmen who streamed in and out of Westminster
Abbey, busy as ants: they were making the last preparation for
the royal coronation.
- Writer
