In any case she was not going to have her back as a maid of honor. William might attempt to insist but she would stand out even against William.
Elizabeth was waiting for William in a small anteroom of the palace.
They embraced and she told him how Mary had planned to be rid of her.
William nodded. “She astonishes me.”
“And me. Will you command her to take me back?”
“No,” said William. “Not yet. I think she would stand against it.”
“And you will allow her to?”
“For the time, I can do nothing else.”
Elizabeth was surprised but too clever to show her surprise. He was, then, afraid of Mary. Well, he had to remember that if ever the crown of Britain came to him it would be through Mary, for Anne and her children would stand between his inheriting it in his own right.
Elizabeth accepted this. She had much to tell him. There was above all the information she had collected from her father in England.
“I made him sit up all night that he might write a clear account of what was happening there. I thought you would find it useful.”
William pressed her hand.
“For the time,” he said, “go to your sister Katherine. I will visit you at their house. And later …”
She kissed his hand.
“Later,” he went on, “you shall come back to Court.”
William Bentinck had a commission to carry out for his master.
Bentinck guessed for whom the Prince was buying the necklace, and was sorry for the Princess, for a few months after Elizabeth’s return she was back in the Palace wearing a diamond necklace.
Mary did not know her strength; or perhaps she did not want to know it. She could have dismissed Elizabeth; she could have made her husband understand that she demanded to be treated, not as a meek consort, but as a Princess in her own right.
But she did not seem sure of the way she wanted to go. Thus there were these spurts of independence followed by subservience.
What would happen? wondered Bentinck, if she came to the throne of Britain? He knew that it was a question which disturbed his master.
THE VITAL QUESTION
Mary was twenty-four years old and would have been very beautiful indeed had she not grown so fat. The people of Holland delighted in her; for whenever she went among them her manner, while gracious and charming, was undoubtedly friendly. She was a contrast to her taciturn husband; she had a measure of that Stuart charm which Monmouth had possessed to a great degree and Charles overwhelmingly, and which usually meant that, whatever their faults, there would always be some to forgive them.
Mary, it seemed to those about her, had few faults. Perhaps she would have been understood better if she had had. She loved card playing, but that could not be called a fault; and although she was friendly in general, after the departure of Anne Trelawny she did not make a close friend of anyone.
They did not entirely understand her, so they remained aloof; her docility to her husband was interrupted now and then by those outbursts of firmness which showed themselves in the part she had played in the Zuylestein marriage and in sending Elizabeth Villiers to England. She was meant to be gay and vivacious as she had been in the days of childhood; but life with William had subdued that. She had become devoutly religious, devoted to the Church of England—and to her husband. Those about her believed that no one could love a man like William as she professed to do, and that her obvious devotion was like a religion to her. She had chosen it as the right way of life and determined to pursue it. Those who remembered how gay she had been during the visit of the Duke of Monmouth were certain of this. Mary, because of some strange bent in her nature, was determined to subdue her natural impulses and become the sort of person she felt it her duty to be.
She knew that Elizabeth Villiers continued to be William’s mistress. For some time she had visited William at the Palace and now was installed in her old position, yet Mary preferred to ignore it. Neither Elizabeth nor William ever mentioned to her that trip to England; it was as though it had never been.
Her women said that they could not understand a woman in her position accepting what Mary did; and Mary was an enigma.
She was to William also. If he could have been sure of how she would act in the event of ascending the throne of England, his entire attitude toward her would have changed. He could have talked to her more freely of his plans; but this stood between them; and he could not bring himself to talk openly of the position she would expect him to hold. Although to all outward appearances he had subdued her, yet he was afraid of her; and although she was the meek wife, seeming always to bend to his will, yet it was in her power to exclude him from the brilliant future which had been his goal ever since he had contemplated marrying her.
This was the state of affairs when Gilbert Burnet arrived at the Court of The Hague.
Gilbert Burnet was in his forties when he came to Holland. He had been a favored chaplain of Charles II but he had quickly fallen foul of James, for he deplored the threat of papacy. It became clear to Burnet that while his position was precarious under Charles, for his friends Essex and Russell had been involved in the Rye House Plot, it would be untenable under James. After that plot he had left England for France where he was warmly received.
One of the first things he did on returning was to preach a sermon against popery which was received with wild enthusiasm by an anti-Catholic congregation; and when Burnet thundered out: “Save me from the lion’s mouth; thou hast heard me from the horn of the unicorn …” the applause rang out in the church, for the lion and unicorn were the royal arms and this could only mean that Burnet when denouncing popery was denouncing James.
After that there was only one thing for Burnet to do—leave the country. He had been writing busily for the last few years and had produced his History of the Rights of Princes in the Disposing of Ecclesiastical Benefices and Church Lands among other works. He was a man whom James could not afford to keep in England.
Burnet went to Paris where he remained until the repercussions of the Monmouth rebellion had subsided; then on to Italy and Geneva and eventually, receiving an invitation from the Prince and Princess of Orange, he arrived at The Hague.
William received him coolly. He was not sure that he trusted him completely for in his opinion the man was apt to talk too much. Burnet was without fear, there was no doubt of that, but the fearlessness made him indiscreet; and William always mistrusted indiscretion. With Mary, Burnet was on happier terms. She was interested in what he had to tell her of England and his travels, and would ask him to sit with her and while he sat she knotted fringe, for she had had to give up doing the fine needlework on which she had enjoyed working, since her eyes had given her so much trouble.
This was a pleasant domestic scene and sometimes William would join them and listen to the conversation.
Burnet believed that James could bring no good to England and for this reason William became gradually drawn toward him; and, since the coming of Burnet, was more frequently in his wife’s company than he had been before.
Mary began to look forward to those hours as the most rewarding of her days. There she would sit working at the fringe close to the candles, to get the utmost light; Burnet would answer the questions she put to him and gradually a picture of the English Court would evolve. William would sit a little apart listening, now and then firing a question of his own, his head, looking enormous in its periwig drooping over his narrow shoulders and slightly hunched back, throwing a grotesque shadow on the wall.
It was the nearest to domesticity that Mary had ever reached; and she wanted to go on like this, for she believed that William was changing toward her since Burnet had come. While he was in her company he was neglecting Elizabeth. Perhaps he was finding that his wife could be of greater help to him in his political schemes than his mistress ever could be. So as she talked to Burnet she was deeply conscious of William; and she asked those questions which she thought would best please her husband.