On his side, the Duke, already captivated by her grace and beauty upon the stage, found himself lost in admiration now that at close quarters he beheld her slim loveliness. For lovely she was, and the blush which his scrutiny had drawn to her cheeks, heightening that loveliness, almost disposed him to believe Etheredge’s incredible assertion of her virtue. Shyness may be counterfeited and the simpers of unsophistication are easily assumed; but a genuine blush is not to be commanded.
His grace bowed, low, the curls of his wig swinging forward like the ears of a water-spaniel.
“Madam,” he said, “I would congratulate you were I not more concerned to congratulate myself for having witnessed your performance, and still more Lord Orrery, your present author. Him I not only congratulate but envy—a hideous, cankering emotion, which I shall not conquer until I have written you a part at least as great as his Katherine. You smile?”
“It is for gratification at your grace’s promise.”
“I wonder now,” said he, his eyes narrowing, his lips smiling a little. “I wonder is that the truth, or is it that you think I boasted? that such an achievement is not within my compass? I’ll confess frankly that until I saw you it was not. But you have made it so, my dear.”
“If I have done that, I shall, indeed, have deserved well of my audience,” she answered, but lightly, laughing a little, as if to discount the high-flown compliment.
“As well, I trust, as I shall have deserved of you,” said he.
“The author must always deserve the best of his puppets.”
“Deserve, aye. But how rarely does he get his deserts!”
“Surely you, Bucks, have little reason to complain,” gibed Etheredge. “In my case, now, it is entirely different.”
“It is, George—entirely,” his grace agreed, resenting the interruption. “You are the rarity. You have always found better than you deserved. I have never found it until this moment.” And his eyes upon Miss Farquharson gave point to his meaning.
When at length they left her, her sense of exaltation was all gone. She could not have told you why, but the Duke of Buckingham’s approval uplifted her no longer. Almost did she wish that she might have gone without it. And when Betterton came smiling good-naturedly, to offer her his congratulations upon this conquest, he found her bemused and troubled.
Bemused, too, did Etheredge find the Duke as they drove back together to Wallingford House.
“Almost, I think,” said he, smiling, “that already you find my despised prescription to your taste. Persevered with it may even restore you your lost youth.”
“What I ask myself,” said Buckingham, “is why you should have prescribed her for me instead of for yourself.”
“I am like that,” said Etheredge,—“the embodiment of self-sacrifice. Besides, she will have none of me—though I am ten years younger than you are, fully as handsome and almost as unscrupulous. The girl’s a prude, and I never learnt the way to handle prudes. Faith, it’s an education in itself.”
“Is it?” said Buckingham. “I must undertake it, then.”
And undertake it he did with all the zest of one who loved learning and the study of unusual subjects.
Daily now he was to be seen in a box at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and daily he sent her, in token of his respectful homage, gifts of flowers and comfits. He would have added jewels, but that the wiser Etheredge restrained him.
“Ne brusquez pas l’affaire,” was the younger man’s advice. “You’ll scare her by precipitancy, and so spoil all. Such a conquest as this requires infinite patience.”
His grace suffered himself to be advised, and set a restraint upon his ardour, using the greatest circumspection in the visits which he paid her almost daily after the performance. He confined the expressions of admiration to her histrionic art, and, if he touched upon her personal beauty and grace, it was ever in association with her playing, so that its consideration seemed justified by the part that he told her he was conceiving for her.
Thus subtly did he seek to lull her caution and intoxicate her senses with the sweet poison of flattery, whilst discussing with her the play he was to write—which, in his own phrase, was to immortalize himself and her, thereby eternally uniting them. There was in this more than a suggestion of a spiritual bond, a marriage of their respective arts to give life to his dramatic conception, so aloof from material and personal considerations that she was deceived into swallowing at least half the bait. Nor was it vague. His grace did not neglect to furnish it with a certain form. His theme, he told her, was the immortal story of Laura and her Petrarch set in the warm glitter of an old Italian frame. Nor was that all he told her. He whipped his wits to some purpose, and sketched for her the outline of a first act of tenderness and power.
At the end of a week he announced to her that this first act was already written.
“I have laboured day and night,” he told her; “driven relentlessly by the inspiration you have furnished me. So great is this that I must regard the thing as more yours thanmine, or I shall do it when you have set upon it the seal of your approval.” Abruptly he asked her, as if it were a condition predetermined: “When will you hear me read it?”
“Were it not better that your grace should first complete the work?” she asked him.
He was taken aback, almost horror-stricken, to judge by his expression.
“Complete it!” he cried; “without knowing whether it takes the shape that you desire?”
“But it is not what I desire, your grace....”
“What else, then? Is it not something that I am doing specially for you, moved to it by yourself? And shall I complete it tormented the while by doubts as to whether you will consider it worthy of your talents when it is done? Would you let a dressmaker complete your gown without ever a fitting to see how it becomes you? And is a play, then, less important than a garment? Is not a part, indeed, a sort of garment for the soul? Nay, now, if I am to continue I must have your assistance as I say. I must know how this first act appears to you, how far my Laura does justice to your powers; and I must discuss with you the lines which the remainder of the play shall follow. Therefore again I ask you—and in the sacred cause of art I defy you to deny me—when will you hear what I have written?”
“Why, since your grace does me so much honour, when you will.”
It was intoxicating, this homage to her talent from one of his gifts and station, the intimate of princes, the close associate of kings, and it stifled, temporarily at least, the last qualm of her intuitions which had warned her against this radiant gentleman. They had become so friendly and intimate in this week, and yet his conduct had been so respectful and circumspect throughout, that clearly her instincts had misled her at that first meeting.
“When I will,” said he. “That is to honour me, indeed. Shall it be to-morrow, then?”
“If your grace pleases, and you will bring the act....”
“Bring it?” He raised his eyebrows. His lip curled a little as he looked round the dingy green room. “You do not propose, child, that I should read it here?” He laughed in dismissal of the notion.
“But where else, then?” she asked, a little bewildered.
“Where else but in my own house? What other place were proper?”
“Oh!” She was dismayed a little. An uneasiness, entirely instinctive, beset her once again. It urged her to draw back, to excuse herself. Yet reason combated instinct. It were a folly to offend him by a refusal? Such a thing would be affronting by its implication of mistrust; and she was very far from wishing to affront him.
He observed the trouble in her blue eyes as she now regarded him, but affected not to observe it, and waited for her to express herself. She did so after a moment’s pause, faltering a little.
“But ... at your house.... Why, what would be said of me, your grace? To come there alone....”
“Child! Child!” he interrupted her, his tone laden with gentle reproach. “Can you think that I should so lightly expose you to the lewd tongues of the Town? Alone? Give your mind peace. I shall have some friends to keep you in countenance and to join you as audience to hear what I have written. There shall be one or two ladies from the King’s House; perhaps Miss Seymour from the Duke’s here will join us; there is a small part for her in the play; and there shall be some friends of my own; maybe even His Majesty will honour us. We shall make a merry party at supper, and after supper you shall pronounce upon my Laura whom you are to incarnate. Is your hesitancy conquered?”
It was, indeed. Her mind was in a whirl. A supper party at Wallingford House, at which in a sense she was to be the guest of honour, and which the King himself would attend! She would have been mad to hesitate. It was to enter the great world at a stride. Other actresses had done it—Moll Davis and little Nelly from the King’s House; but they had done it upon passports other than those of histrionic talent. She would have preferred that Miss Seymour should not have been included. She had no great opinion of Miss Seymour’s conduct. But there was a small part for her, and that was perhaps a sufficient justification.
And so she cast aside her hesitation, and gladdened his grace by consenting to be present.
On the evening of the day that had seen the meeting between Holles and Tucker, at about the same hour that Sir John Lawrence was vainly representing at Whitehall the expediency of closing the theatres and other places of congregation in view of the outbreak of plague within the City itself, His Grace of Buckingham was sitting down to supper with a merry company in the great dining-room of Wallingford House.
Eleven sat down to a table that was laid for twelve. The chair on the Duke’s right stood empty. The guest of honour, Miss Farquharson, had not yet arrived. At the last moment she had sent a message that she was unavoidably detained for some little time at home, and that, if on this account it should happen that she must deny herself the honour of sitting down to supper at his grace’s table, at least she would reach Wallingford House in time for the reading with which his grace was to delight the company.
It was in part a fiction. There was nothing to detain Miss Farquharson beyond a revival of her uneasy intuitions, which warned her against the increase of intimacy that would attend her inclusion in the Duke’s supper-party. The play, however, was another affair. Therefore she would so time her arrival that she would find supper at an end and the reading about to begin. To be entirely on the safe side, she would present herself at Wallingford House two hours after the time for which she had been bidden.
His grace found her message vexatious, and he would have postponed supper until her arrival but that his guests did not permit him to have his own way in the matter. Asthe truth was that there was no first act in existence, for the Duke had not yet written a line of it and probably never would, and that supper was to provide the whole entertainment, it follows that this would be protracted, and that however late she came she was likely still to find the party at table. Therefore her late arrival could be no grave matter in the end. Meanwhile, the empty chair on the Duke’s right awaited her.
They were a very merry company, and as time passed they grew merrier. There was Etheredge, of course, the real promoter of the whole affair, and this elegant, talented libertine who was ultimately—and at a still early age—to kill himself with drinking was doing the fullest justice to the reputation which the winecup had already earned him. There was Sedley, that other gifted profligate, whose slim, graceful person and almost feminine beauty gave little indication of the roistering soul within. Young Rochester should have been of the party, but he was at that moment in the Tower, whither he had been sent as a consequence of his utterly foolish and unnecessary attempt to abduct Miss Mallet two nights ago. But Sir Harry Stanhope filled his vacant place—or, at least, half-filled it, for whilst Rochester was both wit and libertine, young Stanhope was a libertine only. And of course there was Sir Thomas Ogle, that boon companion of Sedley’s, and two other gentlemen whose names have not survived. The ladies were of less distinguished lineage. There was the ravishingly fair little Anne Seymour from the Duke’s House, her white shoulders displayed in adécolletagethat outraged even the daring fashion of the day. Seated between Stanhope and Ogle, she was likely to become a bone of contention between them in a measure as they drowned restraint in wine. There was Moll Davis from the King’s House seated on the Duke’s left, with Etheredge immediately below her and entirely engrossing her, and therewas that dark, statuesque, insolent-eyed Jane Howden, languidly spreading her nets for Sir Charles Sedley, who showed himself willing and eager to be taken in them. A fourth lady on Ogle’s left was making desperate but futile attempts to draw Sir Thomas’s attention from Miss Seymour.
The feast was worthy of the exalted host, worthy of that noble chamber with its richly carved wainscoting, its lofty ceiling carried on graceful fluted pillars, lighted by a hundred candles in colossal gilded girandoles. The wine flowed freely, and the wit, flavoured with a salt that was not entirely Attic, flowed with it. Laughter swelled increasing ever in a measure as the wit diminished. Supper was done, and still they kept the table, over their wine, waiting for that belated guest whose seat continued vacant.
Above that empty place sat the Duke—a dazzling figure in a suit of shimmering white satin with diamond buttons that looked like drops of water. Enthroned in his great gilded chair, he seemed to sit apart, absorbed, aloof, fretted by the absence of the lady in whose honour he had spread this feast, and annoyed with himself for being so fretted, as if he were some callow schoolboy at his first assignation.
Alone of all that company he did not abuse the wine. Again and again he waved away the velvet-footed lackeys that approached to pour for him. Rarely he smiled as some lively phrase leapt forth to excite the ready laughter of his guests. His eyes observed them, noting the flushed faces and abandoned attitudes as the orgy mounted to its climax. He would have restrained them, but that for a host to do so were in his view an offence against good manners. Gloomily, abstractedly, his eyes wandered from the disorder of the table, laden with costly plate of silver and of gold, with sparkling crystal, with pyramids of fragrant fruits and splendours of flowers that already were being used as missiles by his hilarious guests.
From the chilly heights of his own unusual sobriety he found them gross and tiresome; their laughter jarred on him. He shifted his weary glance to the curtains masking the long windows. They draped the window-spaces almost from floor to ceiling, wedges of brilliant colour—between blue and green, upon which golden peacocks strutted—standing out sharply from the sombre richness of the dark wainscot. He strained his ears to catch some rumble of wheels in the courtyard under those windows, and he frowned as a fresh and prolonged burst of laughter from his guests beat upon his ears to shut out all other sounds.
Then Sedley in a maudlin voice began to sing a very questionable song of his own writing, whilst Miss Howden made a comedy of pretending to silence him. He was still singing it, when Stanhope sprang up and mounted his chair, holding aloft a dainty shoe of which he had stripped Miss Seymour, and calling loudly for wine. Pretty little Anne would have snatched back her footgear but that she was restrained by Ogle, who not only held her firmly, but had pulled her into his lap, where she writhed and screamed and giggled all in one.
Solemnly, as if it were the most ordinary and natural of things, a lackey poured wine into the shoe, as Stanhope bade him. And Stanhope, standing above them, gay and flushed, proposed a toast the terms of which I have no intention of repeating.
He was midway through when the twin doors behind the Duke were thrown open by a chamberlain, whose voice rang solemnly above the general din.
“Miss Sylvia Farquharson, may it please your grace.”
There was a momentary pause as of surprise; then louder than ever rose their voices in hilarious acclamation of the announcement.
Buckingham sprang up and round, and several others rosewith him to give a proper welcome to the belated guest. Stanhope, one foot on his chair, the other on the table, bowed to her with a flourish of the slipper from which he had just drunk.
She stood at gaze, breathless and suddenly pale, on the summit of the three steps that led down to the level of the chamber, her startled, dilating eyes pondering fearfully that scene of abandonment. She saw little Anne Seymour, whom she knew, struggling and laughing in the arms of Sir Thomas Ogle. She saw Etheredge, whom she also knew, sitting with flushed face and leering eyes, an arm about the statuesque bare neck of Miss Howden, her lovely dark head upon his shoulder; she saw Stanhope on high, capering absurdly, his wig awry, his speech halting and indecorous; and she saw some others in attitudes that even more boldly proclaimed the licence presiding over this orgy to which she had been bidden.
Lastly she saw the tall white figure of the Duke advancing towards her, his eyes narrowed, a half-smile on his full lips, both hands outheld in welcome. He moved correctly, with that almost excessive grace that was his own, and he at least showed no sign of the intoxication that marked the guests at this Circean feast. But that afforded her no reassurance. From pale that they had been, her cheeks—her whole body, it seemed to her—had flamed a vivid scarlet. Now it was paling again, paling this time in terror and disgust.
Fascinatedly she watched his grace’s advance for a moment. Then incontinently she turned, and fled, with the feelings of one who had looked down for a moment into the pit of hell and drawn back in shuddering horror before being engulfed.
Behind her fell a dead silence of astonishment. It endured whilst you might have counted six. Then a great peal ofdemoniac laughter came like an explosion to drive her fearfully onward.
Down the long panelled gallery she ran as we run in a nightmare, making for all her efforts but indifferent speed upon the polished, slippery floor, gasping for breath in her terror of a pursuit of which she fancied that already she heard the steps behind her. She reached the hall, darted across this, and across the vestibule, her light silk mantle streaming behind her, and so gained at last the open door, stared at by lackeys, who wondered, but made no attempt to stay her.
Too late came the shout from the pursuing Duke ordering them to bar her way. By then she was already in the courtyard, and running like a hare for the gateway that opened upon Whitehall. Out of this the hackney-coach that had brought her was at that moment slowly rumbling. Panting she overtook it, just as the driver brought it to a halt in obedience to her cry.
“To Salisbury Court,” she gasped. “Drive quickly!”
She was in, and she had slammed the door as the Duke’s lackeys—three of them—ran alongside the vehicle, bawling their commands to stop. She flung half her body through the window on the other side to countermand the order.
“Drive on! Drive quickly, in God’s name!”
Had they still been in the courtyard, it is odds that the driver would not have dared proceed. But they were already through the gateway in Whitehall itself, and the coach swung round to the left in the direction of Charing Cross. Here in the open street the driver could defy the Duke’s lackeys, and the latter dared not make any determined attempt to hinder him.
The coach rolled on, and Miss Farquharson sank back to breathe at last, to recover from her nameless terror and to regain her calm.
The Duke went back with dragging feet and scowling brow to be greeted by a storm of derision upon which in more sober mood his guests would hardly have ventured. He attempted to laugh with them, to dissemble the extent to which he had been galled. But he hardly made a success of it, and there was distinct ill-temper in the manner in which he flung himself down into his great chair. Mr. Etheredge, leaning across Miss Howden, laid a white jewelled hand on his friend’s arm.
He alone of all the company, although he had probably drunk more deeply than any, showed no sign of intoxication beyond the faint flush about his eyes.
“I warned you,” he said, “that the little prude is virtuous, and that she will require much patience. This is your chance to exercise it.”
Towards midnight, when all the guests but Etheredge had departed, and the candles lighting the disordered room were guttering in their sconces, the Duke sat alone in council with the younger libertine. He had dismissed his servants; the doors were closed, and they were entirely private.
The Duke unburdened himself, bitterly and passionately. The patience which Etheredge counselled was altogether beyond him, he confessed. More than ever now, when, by the exercise of it, by moving circuitously to his ends, he had so scared the little prude that he was worse off than at the outset.
Etheredge smiled.
“You’re a prodigiously ungrateful fellow. You go clumsily to work and then you blame me for the failure of your endeavours. Had you asked me, I could have told you what must happen with a parcel of fools and sluts who haven’t learnt the art of carrying their wine in decent fashion. Had she arrived at the appointed time, whilst they were still sober, all might have been well. She might have come to share, in part, at least, their intoxication, and so she would have viewed their antics through eyes that wine had rendered tolerant and kindly. As it is, you merely offended her by a disgusting spectacle; and that is very far from anything that I advised.”
“Be that as it may,” said the ill-humoured Duke, “there is a laugh against me that is to be redeemed. I am for directer measures now.”
“Directer measures?” Etheredge’s brows went up. Heuttered a musical, scornful little laugh. “Is this your patience?”
“A pox on patience....”
“Then she is not for you. Wait a moment, my sweet Bucks. I have no illusions as to what you mean by direct measures. You are probably more sober than I am; but then I am more intelligent than you. Out of my intelligence let me inform your sobriety.”
“Oh, come to the point.”
“I am coming to it. If you mean to carry the girl off, I’ll be reminding you that at law it’s a hanging matter.”
The Duke stared at him in disdainful amazement. Then he uttered a sharp laugh of derision.
“At law? Pray, my good George, what have I to do with the law?”
“By which you mean that you are above it.”
“That is where usually I have found myself.”
“Usually. The times are not usual. The times are monstrous unusual. Rochester, no doubt, thought as you do when he carried off Miss Mallet on Friday night. Yet Rochester is in the Tower in consequence.”
“And you think they’ll hang him?” Buckingham sneered.
“No. They won’t hang him, because the abduction was an unnecessary piece of buffoonery—because he is ready to mend Miss Mallet’s honour by marrying her.”
“Let me perish, George, but you’re more drunk than I thought. Miss Mallet is a person of importance in the world with powerful friends....”
“Miss Farquharson, too, has friends. Betterton is her friend, and he wields a deal of influence. You don’t lack for enemies to stir things up against you....”
“Oh, but a baggage of the theatre!” Buckingham was incredulously scornful.
“These baggages of the theatre are beloved of the people,and the mood of the people of London at present is not one I should care to ruffle were I Duke of Buckingham. There is a war to excite them, and the menace of the plague to scare them into making examinations of conscience. There are preachers, too, going up and down the Town, proclaiming that this is a visitation of God upon the new Sodom. The people are listening. They are beginning to point to Whitehall as the source of all the offences that have provoked the wrath of Heaven. And they don’t love you, Bucks, any more than they love me. They don’t understand us, and—to be plain—our names, yours and mine and several others, are beginning to stink in their nostrils. Give them such an argument as this against you, and they’ll see the law fulfilled. Never doubt that. The English are an easy-going people on the surface, which has led some fools to their undoing by abusing them. The spot where His Majesty’s father lost his head is within easy view of these windows.
“And so I tell you that the thing which you intend to do, which would be fraught with risks at any time, is certain destruction to you at this present. The very eminence upon which you count for safety would prove your undoing. The fierce light that beats upon a throne beats upon those who are about it. A more obscure man might do this thing with less risk to himself than you would run.”
His grace discarded at last his incredulous scorn, and gave himself up to gloomy thought. Etheredge, leaning back in his chair, watched him, faintly, cynically amused. At length the Duke stirred and raised his handsome eyes to his friend’s face.
“Don’t sit there grinning—damn you!—advise me.”
“To what end, since you won’t follow my advice?”
“Still, let me hear it. What is it?”
“Forget the girl, and look for easier game. You are hardly young enough for such an arduous and tiring hunt as this.”
His grace damned him roundly for a scoffer, and swore that he would not abandon the affair; that, at whatever cost, he would pursue it.
“Why, then, you must begin by effacing the bad impression you have made to-night. That will not be easy; indeed, it is the most difficult step of all. But there are certain things in your favour. For one, you were not, for a wonder, drunk, yourself, when you rose to welcome her. Let us hope that she observed it. Pay her a visit on Monday at the theatre to tender your most humble apologies for the disgraceful conduct of your guests. Had you known them capable of such abandoned behaviour, you would never have bidden her make one of such a company. You will profess yourself glad that she departed instantly; that is what you would, yourself, have advised.”
“But I pursued her. My lackeys sought to stay her coach.”
“Naturally—so that you might make her your apologies, and approve a departure which in the circumstances you must have urged. Damme, Bucks! You have no invention, and you desire to deem yourself a dramatist.”
“You think she will believe me?” His grace was dubious.
“That will depend upon your acting, and you are reputed something of an actor. God knows you played the mountebank once to some purpose. Have you forgotten?”
“No, no. But will it serve, do you think?”
“As a beginning. But you must follow it up. You must reveal yourself in a new character. Hitherto she has known you, first by repute and to-night by experience, a rake. That in itself makes her wary of you. Let her behold you as a hero; say, as a rescuer of beauty in distress—herself in the distressful part. Deliver her from some deadly peril, and thereby earn her gratitude and her wonder at your prowess.Women love a hero. So be heroical, and who knows what good fortune may attend your heroism.”
“And the deadly peril?” quoth the Duke gloomily, almost suspecting that his friend was rallying him. “Where shall I find that?”
“If you wait to find it, you may have long to wait. You must, yourself, provide it. A little contriving, a little invention, will soon supply what you lack.”
“Can you propose anything? Can you be more than superiorly vague?”
“I hope so. With a little thought....”
“Then, in God’s name, think.”
Etheredge laughed at his host’s vehemence. He brimmed himself a cup of wine, surveyed the rich glow of it in the candlelight and drank it off.
“Inspiration flows. Invention stirs within me. Now listen.” And sitting forward he propounded a plan of campaign with that rascally readiness of wit that was at once his glory and his ruin.
Ned Tucker did not long leave his proposal to Holles unconfirmed. He sought him in the matter again at the Paul’s Head three days later, on the Sunday, and sat long in talk with him in the little parlour, to the profound disquieting of Mrs. Quinn, who had observed from the gentleman’s bearing and apparel that he was a person of consequence.
He found the Colonel a little more malleable to-day, a little less insistent upon serving only governmentsin esse. The fact was that, as day followed day without word from Albemarle, Holles approached the conclusion that things were indeed as Tucker had represented them. His hopes sank, and his dread of that score of his which was daily mounting at the Paul’s Head added to his despair.
Still, he did not altogether yield to Tucker’s persuasions; but neither did he discourage him when the latter promised to visit him again on the morrow, bringing another old friend of their Parliament days. And on the Monday, true to his promise, Tucker came again, accompanied this time by a gentleman some years his senior, named Rathbone, with whom Colonel Holles recalled some slight acquaintance. This time they came with a very definite proposal, empowered, so they told him, by one whose name they would not yet utter, but which, if uttered, must remove his every doubt.
“For that, Randal, you will accept our word, I know,” said the grave Tucker.
Holles nodded his agreement, and the proposal was disclosed. It offered him a position which in an establishedgovernment would have been dazzling. It was dazzling even as things were, to one in his desperate case, driven to the need of making a gambler’s throw. If on the one side he probably set his head, at least the stake they offered could hardly have been greater.
And they tempted him further by revelations of how far their preparations were advanced, and how thorough these were.
“Heaven,” said Rathbone, “is on our side. It has sent this plague to stir men to bethink themselves of the rulers they have chosen. Our agents have discovered four cases in the City to-day: one in Wood Street, one in Fenchurch Street, and two in Crooked Lane. The authorities hoped to keep it from the knowledge of the people. But we are seeing to that. At this moment our preachers are proclaiming it, spreading terror that men may be driven by it to the paths of righteousness.”
“When the devil was sick the devil a monk would be,” said Holles. “I understand.”
“Then you should see that all is ready, the mine is laid,” Tucker admonished him. “This is your opportunity, Randal. If you delay now....”
A tap at the door interrupted him. Tucker bounded up, propelled by his uneasy conspirator’s conscience. Rathbone, too, glanced round uneasily.
“Why, what’s to startle you?” said the Colonel quietly, smiling to behold their fears. “It is but my good hostess.”
She came in from the common room bearing a letter that had just been brought for Colonel Holles.
He took it, wondering; then, observing the great seal, a little colour crept into his cheeks. He spread the sheet, and read, under the observing eyes of his friends and his hostess, and they were all alike uneasy.
Twice he read that letter before he spoke. The unexpectedhad happened, and it had happened at the eleventh hour, barely in time to arrest him on the brink of what might well prove a precipice. Thus he saw it now, his vision altering with his fortunes.
“Luck has stood your friend sooner than we could have hoped,” wrote Albemarle. “A military post in the Indies has, as I learn from letters just received, fallen vacant. It is an important command full worthy of your abilities, and there, overseas, you will be safe from all inquisitions. If you will wait upon me here at the Cockpit this afternoon, you shall be further informed.”
He begged his friends to excuse him a moment, took pen, ink, and paper from the sideboard and quickly wrote a few lines in answer.
When Mrs. Quinn had departed to convey that note to the messenger, and the door had closed again, the two uneasy conspirators started up. Questions broke simultaneously from both of them. For answer Holles placed Albemarle’s letter on the table. Tucker snatched it up, and conned it, whilst over his shoulder Rathbone read it, too.
At last Tucker lowered the sheet, and his grave eyes fell again upon Holles.
“And you have answered—what?” he demanded.
“That I will wait upon his grace this afternoon as he requires of me.”
“But to what end?” asked Rathbone. “You can’t mean that you will accept employment from a government that is doomed.”
The Colonel shrugged. “As I have told Tucker from the first, I serve governments; I do not make them.”
“But just now....” Tucker was beginning.
“I wavered. It is true. But something else has been flung into the scales.” And he held up Albemarle’s letter.
They argued with him after that; but they argued vainly.
“If I am of value to your government when you shall have established it, you will know where to find me; and you will know from what has happened now that I am trustworthy.”
“But your value to us is now, in the struggle that is coming. And it is for this that we are prepared to reward you richly.”
He was not, however, to be moved. The letter from Albemarle had reached him an hour too soon.
At parting he assured them that their secret was safe with him, and that he would forget all that they had said. Since, still, they had disclosed no vital facts whose betrayal could frustrate their purpose, it was an almost unnecessary assurance.
They stalked out resentfully. But Tucker returned alone a moment later.
“Randal,” he said, “it may be that upon reflection you will come to see the error of linking yourself to a government that cannot endure, to the service of a king against whom the hand of Heaven is already raised. You may come to prefer the greatness that we offer you in the future to this crust that Albemarle throws you at the moment. If you are wise, you will. If so, you know where to find me. Seek me there, and be sure of my welcome as of my friendship.”
They shook hands and parted, and with a sigh and a smile Holles turned to load himself a pipe. He was not, he thought, likely to see Tucker again.
That afternoon he waited upon Albemarle, who gave him particulars of the appointment he had to offer. It was an office of importance, the pay was good, and so that Holles discharged his duties well, which the Duke had no occasion to doubt, there would be even better things in store for him before very long.
“The one thing to efface the past is a term of service now, wheresoever it may be. Hereafter when I commend you forsome other place, here at home, perhaps, and I am asked what are your antecedents, I need but point to the stout service you will have done us in the Indies, and men will inquire no further. It is a temporary exile, but you may trust me to see that it endures no longer than is necessary.”
No such advocacy was needed to induce Holles to accept an office that, after all, was of an importance far beyond anything for which he could reasonably have hoped. He said so frankly by way of expressing his deep gratitude.
“In that case, you will seek me again here to-morrow morning. Your commission shall be meanwhile made out.”
The Colonel departed jubilant. At last—at long last—after infinite frowns, Fortune accorded him a smile. And she accorded it in the very nick of time, just as he was touching the very depths of his despair and ready to throw in his lot with a parcel of crazy fanatics who dreamed of another revolution.
So back to the Paul’s Head he came with his soaring spirits, and called for a bottle of the best Canary. Mrs. Quinn read the omens shrewdly.
“Your affairs at Whitehall have prospered, then?” said she between question and assertion.
Holles reclined in an armchair, his legs, from which he had removed his boots, stretched luxuriously upon a stool, his head thrown back, a pipe between his lips.
“Aye. They’ve prospered. Beyond my deserts,” said he, smiling at the ceiling.
“Never that, Colonel. For that’s not possible.” She beamed upon him, proffering the full stoup.
He sat up to take it, and looked at her, smiling.
“No doubt you’re right. But I’ve gone without my deserts so long that I have lost all sense of them.”
“There’s others who haven’t,” said she; and timidly added a question upon the nature of his prosperity.
He paused to drink a quarter of the wine. Then, as he set down the vessel on the table at his elbow, he told her.
Her countenance grew overcast. He was touched to note it, inferring from this manifest regret at his departure that he had made a friend in Mrs. Quinn.
“And when do you go?” she asked him, oddly breathless.
“In a week’s time.”
She considered him, mournfully he thought; and he also thought that she lost some of her bright colour.
“And to the Indies!” she ejaculated slowly. “Lord! Among savages and heathen blacks! Why, you must be crazed to think of it.”
“Beggars may not choose, ma’am. I go where I can find employment. Besides, it is not as bad as you imagine.”
“But where’s the need to go at all, when, as I’ve told you already, such a man as yourself should be thinking of settling down at home and taking a wife?”
She realized that the time had come to deliver battle. It was now or never. And thus she sent out a preliminary skirmishing party.
“Why, look at yourself,” she ran on, before he could answer. “Look at the condition of you.” And she pointed a denunciatory finger at the great hole in the heel of his right stocking. “You should be seeking a woman to take care of you, instead of letting your mind run on soldiering in foreign parts.”
“Excellent advice,” he laughed. “There is one difficulty only. Who takes a wife must keep a wife, and, if I stay in England, I shan’t have enough to keep myself. So I think it’ll be the Indies, after all.”
She came to the table, and leaned upon it, facing him.
“You’re forgetting something. There’s many a woman well endowed, and there’s many a man has taken a wife with a jointure who couldn’t ha’ taken a wife without.”
“You said something of the kind before.” Again he laughed. “You think I should be hunting an heiress. You think I have the figure for the part.”
“I do,” said she, to his astonishment. “You’re a proper man, and you’ve a name and a position to offer. There’s many a wealthy woman of modest birth would be glad of you, as you should be glad of her, since each would bring what the other lacks.”
“Faith! You think of everything. Carry your good offices further than mere advice, Mrs. Quinn. Find me this wealthy and accommodating lady, and I’ll consider the rejection of this Indian office. But you’ll need to make haste, for there’s only a week left.”
It was a laughing challenge, made on the assumption that it would not be taken up, and, as she looked away uncomfortably under his glance, his laughter increased.
“That’s not quite so easy as advising, is it?” he rallied her.
She commanded herself, and looked him squarely in the eyes.
“Oh, yes, it is,” she assured him. “If you was serious I could soon produce the lady—a comely enough woman of about your own age, mistress of thirty thousand pounds and some property, besides.”
That sobered him. He stared at her a moment; the pipe between his fingers.
“And she would marry a vagabond? Odds, my life! What ails her?”
“Naught ails her. If you was serious I’d present her.”
“’Sblood! you make me serious. Thirty thousand pounds! Faith, that is serious enough. I could set up as a country squire on that.”
“Then why don’t you?”
Really, she was bewildering, he thought, with her calm assumptions that it was for him to say the word.
“Because there’s no such woman.”
“And if there was?”
“But there isn’t.”
“I tell you there is.”
“Where is she, then?”
Mrs. Quinn moved away from the table, and round to his side of it.
“She is ... here.”
“Here?” he echoed.
She drew a step or two nearer, so that she was almost beside him.
“Here in this room,” she insisted, softly.
He looked up at her, still uncomprehending. Then, as he observed the shy smile with which she sought to dissemble her agitation, the truth broke upon him at last.
The clay stem of his pipe snapped between his fingers, and he dived after the pieces, glad of any pretext to remove his eyes from her face and give him a moment in which to consider how he should conduct himself in this novel and surprising situation.
When he came up again, his face was flushed, which may have been from the lowering of his head. He wanted to laugh; but he realized that this would be utterly unpardonable. He rose, and set the pieces of the broken pipe on the table. Standing thus, his shoulder to her, he spoke gently, horribly embarrassed.
“I ... I had no notion of ... of your meaning....” And there he broke down.
But his embarrassment encouraged her. Again she came close.
“And now that you know it, Colonel?” she whispered.
“I ... I don’t know what to say.”
His mind was beginning to recover its functions. He understood at last why a person of his shabby exterior andobvious neediness should have been given unlimited credit in this house.
“Then say nothing at all, Colonel dear,” she was purring. “Save that you’ll put from you all notion of sailing to the Indies.”
“But ... but my word is pledged already.” It was a straw at which he clutched, desperately. And it was not a very fortunate one, for it suggested that his pledged word was the only obstacle.
The effect was to bring her closer still. She was almost touching him, as he stood there, still half averted, and she actually leaned against him, and set a hand upon his shoulder as she spoke, coaxingly, persuasively.
“But it was pledged before ... before you knew of this. His grace will understand. He’ll never hold you to it. You’ve but to explain.”
“I ... I couldn’t. I couldn’t,” he cried weakly.
“Then I can.”
“You?” He looked at her.
She was pale, but resolute. “Yes, me,” she answered him. “If your pledge is all that holds you, I’ll take coach at once and go to Whitehall. George Monk’ll see me, or if he won’t his Duchess will. I knew her well in the old days, when I was a young girl, and she was a sempstress glad to earn a groat where she could. Nan Clarges’ll never deny herself to an old friend. So if you but say the word, I’ll soon deliver you from this pledge of yours.”
His face lengthened. He looked away again.
“That is not all, Mrs. Quinn,” he said, very gently. “The truth is ... I am not of a ... a nature to make a woman happy.”
This she deemed mere coyness, and swept it briskly aside. “I’d take the risk of that.”
“But ... but ... you see I’ve lived this roving life ofmine so long, that I do not think I could ever settle. Besides, ma’am, what have I to offer?”
“If I am satisfied with my bargain, why take thought for that?”
“I must. The fact is, I am touched, deeply touched. I did not think I had it in me to arouse the affection, or even the regard, of any woman. Even so, ma’am, whilst it moves me, it does not change my purpose. I am not a marrying man.”
“But....”
He raised a hand, dominantly, to check her. He had found the correct formula at last, and he meant to keep to it.
“Useless to argue, ma’am. I know my mind. My reasons are as I have said, and so is the fact. I am touched; I am prodigiously touched, and grateful. But there it is.”
His firmness turned her white with mortification. To have offered herself, and to have been refused! To have this beggar turn his shoulder upon her, finding her so little to his taste that not even her thirty thousand pounds could gild her into attractiveness! It was a bitter draught, and it called up bitterness from the depths of her soul. As she considered him now with her vivid blue eyes, her face grew mottled. She was moved to sudden hatred of him. Nothing short of killing him could, she felt, extinguish that tormenting hate.
She felt impelled to break into violent recriminations, yet could find nothing upon which to recriminate. If only she could have thrown it in his face that he had afforded her encouragement, trifled with her affections, lured her on, to put this terrible affront upon her, she might have eased herself of some of the gall within her. But she could charge him with nothing that would bear the form of words.
And so she considered him in silence, her abundant bosom heaving, her eyes growing almost baleful in their glance, whilst he stood awkwardly before her, his gaze averted,staring through the open window, and making no attempt to add anything to what already he had said.
At last on a long indrawn breath she moved.
“I see,” she said quietly. “I am sorry to have....”
“Please!” he exclaimed, throwing up his hand again to arrest her, an infinite pity stirring in him.
She walked to the door, moving a little heavily. She opened it, and then paused under the lintel. Over her shoulder she spoke to him again.
“Seeing that things is like this, perhaps you’ll make it convenient to find another lodging not later than to-morrow.”
He inclined his head a little in agreement.
“Naturally....” he was beginning, when the door closed after her with a bang and he was left alone.
“Phew!” he breathed, as he sank limply into his chair again. He passed a hand wearily across his brow, and found it moist.
Colonel Holles hummed softly to himself as he dressed with care to keep his momentous appointment at the Cockpit, and when his toilet was completed you would scarcely have known him for the down-at-heel adventurer of yesterday, so fine did he appear.
Early that morning he had emptied the contents of his purse upon the bed, and counted up his fortune. It amounted to thirty-five pounds and some shillings. And Albemarle had promised him that, together with his commission, he should that morning receive an order on the Treasury for thirty pounds to meet his disbursements on equipment and the rest. He must, he considered, do credit to his patron. He argued that it was a duty. To present himself again at Whitehall in his rags were to disgrace the Duke of Albemarle; there might be introductions, and he would not have his grace blush for the man he was protecting.
Therefore, immediately after an early breakfast—at which, for once, he had been waited upon, not by Mrs. Quinn, but by Tim the drawer—he had sallied forth and made his way to Paternoster Row. There, yielding to the love of fine raiment inseparable from the adventurous temperament and to the improvident disposition that accompanies it, and also having regard to the officially military character he was about to assume, he purchased a fine coat of red camlet laced with gold, and small-clothes, stockings, and cravat in keeping. By the time he added a pair of boots of fine Spanish leather, a black silk sash, a new, gold-broidered baldric, and a black beaver with a trailing red plume, he found that fully three quarters of his slenderfortune was dissipated, and there remained in his purse not above eight pounds. But that should not trouble a man who within a couple of hours would have pocketed an order upon the Treasury. He had merely anticipated the natural course of events, and counted himself fortunate to be, despite his reduced circumstances, still able to do so.
He had returned then with his bundle to the Paul’s Head, and, as he surveyed himself now in his mirror, freshly shaven, his long thick gold-brown hair elegantly curled, and a clump of its curls caught in a ribbon on his left, the long pear-shaped ruby glowing in his ear, his throat encased in a creaming froth of lace, and the fine red coat that sat so admirably upon his shoulders, he smiled at the memory of the scarecrow he had been as lately as yesterday, and assured himself that he did not look a day over thirty.
He created something of a sensation when he appeared below in all this finery, and, since it was unthinkable that he should tread the filth of the streets with his new Spanish boots, Tim was dispatched for a hackney-coach to convey the Colonel to Whitehall.
It still wanted an hour to noon, and this the Colonel considered the earliest at which he could decently present himself. But early as it was there was another who had been abroad and at the Cockpit even earlier. This was His Grace of Buckingham, who, accompanied by his friend Sir Harry Stanhope, had sought the Duke of Albemarle a full hour before Colonel Holles had been ready to leave his lodging.
A gentleman of the Duke’s eminence was not to be kept waiting. He had been instantly admitted to that pleasant wainscoted room overlooking the Park in which His Grace of Albemarle transacted business. Wide as the poles as were the two dukes asunder, the exquisite libertine and the dour soldier, yet cordial relations prevailed between them. Whilst correct and circumspect in his own ways of life,Monk was utterly without bigotry and as utterly without prejudices on the score of morals. Under his dour taciturnity, and for all that upon occasion he could be as brave as a lion, yet normally he was of the meekness of a lamb, combined with a courteous aloofness, which, if it earned him few devoted friends, earned him still fewer enemies. As a man gives, so he receives; and Monk, being very sparing both of his love and his hate, rarely excited either passion in others. He was careful not to make enemies, but never at pains to make friends.
“I desire your leave to present to your grace my very good friend Sir Harry Stanhope, a deserving young soldier for whom I solicit your grace’s good offices.”
Albemarle had heard of Sir Harry as one of the most dissolute young profligates about the Court, and, observing him now, his grace concluded that the gentleman’s appearance did justice to his reputation. It was the first time that he had heard him described as a soldier, and the description awakened his surprise. But of this he betrayed nothing. Coldly he inclined his head in response to the diving bow with which Sir Harry honoured him.
“There is no need to solicit my good offices for any friend of your grace’s,” he answered, coldly courteous. “A chair, your grace. Sir Harry!” He waved the fop to the second and lesser of the two chairs that faced his writing-table, and when they were seated he resumed his own place, leaning forward and placing his elbows on the table. “Will your grace acquaint me how I may have the honour of being of service?”
“Sir Harry,” said Buckingham, leaning back in his armchair, and throwing one faultlessly stockinged leg over the other, “desires, for certain reasons of his own, to see the world.”
Albemarle had no illusions as to what those reasons were. It was notorious that Harry Stanhope had not only gamedaway the inheritance upon which he had entered three years ago, but that he was colossally in debt, and that, unless some one came to his rescue soon, his creditors might render life exceedingly unpleasant for him. He would not be the first gay butterfly of the Court to make the acquaintance of a sponging house. But of that thought, as it flashed through the mind of the Commander-in-Chief, no indication showed on his swart, set face and expressionless dark eyes.
“But Sir Harry,” Buckingham was resuming after the slightest of pauses, “is commendably moved by the wish to render his absence from England of profit to His Majesty.”
“In short,” said Albemarle, translating brusquely, for he could not repress a certain disdain, “Sir Harry desires an appointment overseas.”
Buckingham dabbed his lips with a lace handkerchief. “That, in short,” he admitted, “is the situation. Sir Harry will, I trust, deserve well in your grace’s eyes.”
His grace looked at Sir Harry, and found that he did nothing of the kind. From his soul, unprejudiced as he was, Albemarle despised the mincing fop whom he was desired to help to cheat his creditors.
“And the character of this appointment?” he inquired tonelessly.
“A military character would be best suited to Sir Harry’s tastes and qualities. He has the advantage of some military experience. He held for a time a commission in the Guards.”
“In the Guards!” thought Albemarle. “My God! What a recommendation!” But his expression said nothing. His owlish eyes were levelled calmly upon the young rake, who smiled ingratiatingly, and thereby, did he but know it, provoked Albemarle’s disgust. Aloud, at length, he made answer: “Very well. I will bear in mind your grace’s application on Sir Harry’s behalf, and when a suitable position offers....”
“But it offers now,” Buckingham interjected languidly.
“Indeed?” The black brows went up, wrinkling the heavy forehead. “I am not aware of it.”
“There is this command in Bombay, which has fallen vacant through the death of poor Macartney. I heard of it last night at Court. You are forgetting that, I think. It is an office eminently suitable to Sir Harry here.”
Albemarle was frowning. He pondered a moment; but only because it was ever his way to move slowly. Then he gently shook his head and pursed his heavy lips.
“I have also to consider, your grace, whether Sir Harry is eminently suitable to the office, and, to be quite frank, and with all submission, I must say that I cannot think so.”
Buckingham was taken aback. He stared haughtily at Albemarle. “I don’t think I understand,” he said.
Albemarle fetched a sigh, and proceeded to explain himself.
“For this office—one of considerable responsibility—we require a soldier of tried experience and character. Sir Harry is no doubt endowed with many commendable qualities, but at his age it is impossible that he should have gained the experience without which he could not possibly discharge to advantage the onerous duties which would await him. Nor is that the only obstacle, your grace. I have not only chosen my man—and such a man as I have described—but I have already offered, and he has already accepted, the commission. So that the post can no longer be considered vacant.”
“But the commission was signed only last night by His Majesty—signed in blank, as I have reason to know.”
“True. But I am none the less pledged. I am expecting at any moment now, the gentleman upon whom the appointment is already conferred.”
Buckingham did not dissemble his annoyance. “May oneinquire his name?” he asked, and the question was a demand.
Albemarle hesitated. He realized the danger to Holles in naming him at this unfortunate juncture. Buckingham might go to any lengths to have him removed, and there was that in Holles’s past, in his very name, which would supply abundant grounds. “His name would not be known to your grace. He is a comparatively obscure soldier, whose merits, however, are fully known to me, and I am persuaded that a fitter man for the office could not be found. But something else will, no doubt, offer within a few days, and then....”
Buckingham interrupted him arrogantly.
“It is not a question of something else, your grace, but of this. I have already obtained His Majesty’s sanction. It is at his suggestion that I am here. It is fortunate that the person you had designated for the command is obscure. He will have to give way, and you may console him with the next vacant post. If your grace requires more explicit instruction I shall be happy to obtain you His Majesty’s commands in writing.”
Albemarle was checkmated. He sat there grim and impassive as if he were carved of stone. But his mind was a seething cauldron of anger. It was always thus. The places of trust, the positions demanding experienced heads and able hands that England might be served to the best advantage by her most meritorious sons, were constantly being flung away upon the worthless parasites that flocked about Charles’s lecherous Court. And he was the more angered here, because his hands were tied against resistance by the very identity of the man he was appointing. Had it been a question of any other man of Holles’s soldierly merit, but of such antecedents as would permit the disclosure of his name, he would clap on his hat and step across to the palace to argue the matter with the King. And he would know how toconduct the argument so as to prevail against the place-seeking insolence of Buckingham. But, as it was, he was forced to realize that he could do none of this without perhaps dooming Holles and bringing heavy censure fruitlessly upon himself. “Oddsfish!” the King would cry. “Do you tell me to my face that you prefer the son of a regicide to the friend of my friend?” And what should he answer then?
He lowered his eyes. The commission which was the subject of this discussion lay there on the table before him, the space which the name of Randal Holles was intended to occupy still standing blank. He was defeated, and he had best, for the sake of Holles as much as for his own, accept the situation without further argument.
He took up a pen, dipped it, and drew the document to him.
“Since you have His Majesty’s authority, there can be, of course, no further question.”
Rapidly, his quill scratching and spluttering across the sheet, he filled in the name of Sir Harry Stanhope, bitterly considering that he might as profitably have filled in Nell Gwynn’s. He dusted the thick writing with pounce, and proffered it without another word. But his looks were heavy.
Buckingham rose, smiling, and Sir Harry bounced up with him, smiling also. For the first and last time in the course of that short interview Sir Harry spoke.
“Your grace’s devoted servant,” he professed himself, bowing and smirking. “I shall study to discharge my office creditably, and to allay any qualms my youth may leave in your grace’s mind.”
“And youth,” said Buckingham, smiling, to reassure Albemarle, “is a fault that time invariably corrects.”
Albemarle rose slowly to his feet, and the others bowed themselves out of his presence.
Then he sat down again heavily, took his head in his hands, and softly loosed an oath.
Holles came an hour later, radiant with expectation, a gay, youthful-looking, commanding figure in his splendid red coat, to be crushed by the news that proved him Fortune’s fool again, as ever.
But he bore it well on the face of him, however deeply the iron was thrust into his soul. It was Albemarle who for once showed excitement, Albemarle who inveighed in most unmeasured terms against the corrupt influence of the Court and the havoc it was working.
“It needed a man for this office and they have constrained me to give it to a fribble, a dolly in breeches, a painted dawcock.”
Holles remembered Tucker’s denunciations of the present government and began to realize at last how right he was and how justified he and his associates might be of their conviction that the people were ready to rise and sweep this Augean stable clean.
Albemarle was seeking to comfort him with fresh hope. No doubt something else would offer soon.
“To be snatched up again by some debt-ridden pimp who wants to escape his creditors,” said Holles, his tone betraying at last some of the bitterness fermenting in his soul.
Albemarle stood sorrowfully regarding him. “This hits you hard, Randal, I know.”
The Colonel recovered and forced a laugh.
“Pooh! Hard hits have mostly been my portion.”
“I know.” Albemarle paced to the window and back, his head sunk between his shoulders. Then he came to a halt before the Colonel. “Keep me informed of where you are lodged, and look to hear from me again as soon as may be. Be sure that I will do my best.”
The Colonel’s glance kindled again. It was a flicker of the expiring flame of hope.
“You really think that something else will offer?”
His grace paused before answering, and, in the pause, the sorrowful gravity of his face increased.
“To be frank with you, Randal, I hardly dare tothinkit. Chances for such as you are, as you understand, not ... frequent. But the unexpected may happen sooner than we dare to hope. If it does, be sure I’ll not forget you. Be sure of that.”
Holles thanked him steadily, and rose to depart, his radiance quenched, despondency in every line of him.
Albemarle watched from under furrowed brows. As he reached the door the Duke detained him.
“Randal! A moment.”
The Colonel turned and waited whilst slowly Albemarle approached him. His grace was deep in thought, and he hesitated before speaking.
“You ... you are not urgently in need of money, I trust?” he said at last.
The Colonel’s gesture and laugh conveyed a shamefaced admission that he was.
Albemarle’s eyes considered him a moment still. Then, slowly, he drew a purse from his pocket. It was apparently a light purse. He unfastened it.
“If a loan will help you until....”
“No, no!” cried Holles, his pride aroused against accepting what amounted almost to alms.
Even so the repudiation was no more than half-hearted. But there was no attempt from Albemarle to combat it. He did not press the offer. He drew the purse-strings tight again, and his expression was almost one of relief.