When I recovered my senses I was on my back in one of eighteen beds, in a long white-walled room, having barred windows, and a vaulted ceiling. A woman, garbed strangely in black, and with a queer white cap drawn tight round her face, leaned over me, and with her finger laid to her lips, enjoined silence. Here and there along the wall were pictures of saints; and at the end two candles burned before a kind of altar. I had an idea that I had been partly conscious, and had lain tossing giddily with a burning head, and a dreadful thirst through days and nights of fever. Now, though I could scarcely raise my head, and my brain reeled if I stirred, I was clear-minded, and knew that the bone of my leg was broken, and that for that reason I had a bed to myself where most lay double. For the rest I was so weak I could only cry in pure gratitude when the nun came to me in my turn, and fed me, and plain, stout, and gentle-eyed, laid her fingers on her lip, or smiling, said in her odd English "Quee-at, quee-at, monsieur!"
In face of the blessings which the Protestant Succession, as settled in our present House of Hanover, has secured to these islands, it would little become me to find a virtue in papistry; and my late lord, who early saw and abjured the errors of that faith, would have been the last to support or encourage such a thesis. Notwithstanding which, I venture to say that the devotion of these women to their calling is a thing not to be decried, merely because we have no counterpart of it, nor the charity of that hospital, simply because the burning of candles and worshipping of saints alternate with the tendance of the wretched. On the contrary, it seems to me that were such a profession, the idolatrous vows excepted, grafted on our Church, it might redound alike to the credit of religion--which of late the writings of Lord Bolingbroke have somewhat belittled--and to the good of mankind.
So much with submission; nor will the most rigid of our divines blame me, when they learn that I lay ten weeks in the Maison de Dieu at Dunquerque, dependent for everything on the kind offices of those good women; and nursed during that long period with a solicitude and patience not to be exceeded by that of wife or mother. When I had so far recovered as to be able to leave my bed, and move a few yards on crutches, I was assisted to a shady courtyard, nestled snugly between the hospital and the old town wall. Here, under a gnarled mulberry tree which had sheltered the troops of Parma, I spent my time in a dream of peace, through which nuns, apple-faced and kind-eyed, flitted laden with tisanes, or bearing bottles that called for the immediate attention of M. le Medecin's long nose and silver-rimmed spectacles. Occasionally their Director would seat himself beside me, and silently run through his office: or instruct me in the French tongue, and the evils of Jansenism--mainly by means of the snuff-box which rarely left his fine white hands. More often the meagre apothecary, young, yellow, dry, ambitious, with a hungry light in his eyes, would take an English lesson, until the coming of his superior routed him, and sent him to his gallipots and compounding with a flea in his ear.
Such were the scenes and companions that attended my return to health; nor, my spirits being attuned to these, should I have come to seek or desire others, though enhanced by my native air--a species of inertia, more easily excused by those who have viewed French life near at hand, than by such as have never travelled--but for an encounter as important in its consequences as it was unexpected, which broke the even current of my days.
It was no uncommon thing for the nuns to bring one of my own countrymen to me, in the fond hope that I might find a friend. But as these persons, from the nature of the case, were invariably Jacobites, and either knowing something of my story, thought me well served, or coming to examine me, shied at the names of Mr. Brome and Lord Shrewsbury, such efforts had but one end. When I heard, therefore, for the fourth or fifth time that a compatriot of mine, amiable, and of a vivacitytout-â-fait marveilleusewas coming to see me, I was as far from supposing that I should find an acquaintance, as I was from anticipating the interview with pleasure. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when Sœur Marie called me into the garden at the appointed time; and, her simple face shining with delight, led me to the old mulberry tree, where, who should be sitting but Mary Ferguson!
She had as little expected to meet me as I to meet her, but coming on me thus suddenly, and seeing me lame, and in a sense a cripple, reduced, moreover, by the long illness through which I had passed, she let her feelings have way. Such tenderness as she had entertained for me before welled up now with irresistible force, and giving the lie to a certain hoydenish hardness, inherent in a disposition which was never one of the most common, in a moment she was in my arms. If she did not weep herself, she pardoned, and possibly viewed with pleasure, those tears on my part, which weakness and surprise drew from me, while a hundred broken words and exclamations bore witness to the gratitude she felt on the score of her escape.
Thus brought together, in a strange country, and agitated by a hundred memories, nothing was at first made clear, except that we belonged to one another, and Sœr Marie had long fled to carry the tale with mingled glee and horror into the house, before we grew sufficiently calm to answer the numberless questions which it occurred to each to ask.
At length Mary, pressed to tell me how she had fared since her escape, made one of the odd faces I could so well remember. And "Not as I would, but as I could," she said, dryly. "By crossing with letters."
"Crossing?" I exclaimed.
"To be sure," she answered. "I go to and from London with letters."
"But should you be taken?" I cried, with a vivid remembrance of the terror into which the prospect of punishment had thrown her.
She shrugged her shoulders; yet suppressed, or I was mistaken, a shudder. Then "What will you?" she said, spreading out her little hands French fashion, and making again that odd grimace. "It is the old story. I must live, Dick. And what can a woman do? Will Lady Middleton take me for her children'sgovernante?Or Lady Melfort find me a place in her household? I am Ferguson's niece, a backstairs wench of whom no one knows anything. If I were handsome now,bien!As I am not--to live I must risk my living."
"You are handsome enough for me!" I cried.
She raised her eyebrows, with a look in her eyes that, I remember, puzzled me. "Well, may be," she said a trifle tartly. "And the other is neither here nor there. For the rest, Dick, I live at Captain Gill's, and his wife claws me Monday and kisses me Tuesday."
"And you have taken letters to London?" I said, wondering at her courage.
"Three times," she answered, nodding soberly. "And to Tunbridge once. A woman passes. A man would be taken. So Mr. Birkenhead says. But----" and with the word she broke off abruptly, and stared at me; and continued to stare at me, her face which was rounder and more womanly than in the old days, falling strangely.
p347SHE LISTENED IN SILENCE, STANDING OVER ME WITH SOMETHING OF THE SEVERITY OF A JUDGE
It wore such a look indeed, that I glanced over my shoulder thinking that she saw something. Finding nothing, "Mary!" I cried. "What is it? What is the matter?"
"Are you the man who came with Sir John Fenwick to the shore?" she cried, stepping back a pace--she had already risen, "And betrayed him? Dick! Dick, don't say it!" she continued hurriedly, holding out her hands as if she would ward off my words. "Don't say that you arethatman! I had forgotten until this moment whom I came to see; who, they said, was here."
Her words stung me, even as her face frightened me. But while I winced a kind of courage, born of indignation and of a sense of injustice long endured, came to me; and I answered her with spirit. "No," I said, "I am not that man."
"No?" she cried.
"No!" I said defiantly. "If you mean the man that betrayed Sir John Fenwick. But I will tell you what man I am--if you will listen to me."
"What are yon going to tell me?" she answered, the troubled look returning. And then, "Dick, don't lie to me!" she cried quickly.
"I have no need," I said. And with that, beginning at the beginning, I told her all the story which is written here, so far as it was not already known to her. She listened in silence, standing over me with something of the severity of a judge, until I came to the start from London with Matthew Smith.
There she interrupted me. "One moment," she said in a hard voice; and she fixed me with keen, unfriendly eyes. "You know that Sir John Fenwick was taken two days later, and is in the Tower?"
"I know nothing," I said, holding out my hands and trembling with the excitement of my story, and the thought of my sufferings.
"Not even that?"
"No, nothing; not even that," I said.
"Nor that within a month, in all probability, he will be tried and executed!"
"No."
"Nor that your master is in peril? You have not heard that Sir John has turned on him and denounced him before the Council of the King?"
"No," I said. "How should I?"
"What?" she cried incredulously. "You do not know that with which all England is ringing--though it touches you of all men?"
"How should I?" I said feebly. "Who would tell me here? And for weeks I have been ill."
She nodded. "Go on," she said.
I obeyed. I took up the thread again, told her how we reached Ashford, how I saw Sir John, how I fled, and how I was pursued; finally how I was received on board the boat, and never, until the following day, when Birkenhead flung it in my teeth, guessed that I had forestalled Sir John, and robbed him of his one chance of escape. "For if I had known," I continued warmly, "why should I fly from him? What had I to fear from him? Or what to gain, if Smith with a pistol were not at my heels, by leaving England? Gain?" I continued bitterly, seeing that I had convinced her. "WhatdidI gain? This! This!" And I touched my crippled leg.
"Thank God!" she said, with emotion. "Thank God, Dick. But----"
"But what!" I retorted sharply; for in the telling of the story I had come to see more clearly than before how cruelly I had been treated. "But what?"
"Well, just this," she said gently. "Have you not brought it on yourself in a measure? If you had been more--that is, I mean, if you had not been so----"
"So what?" I cried querulously, seeing her hesitate.
"Well, so quick to think that it was Matthew Smith--and a pistol," she answered, smiling rather heartlessly. "That is all."
"There was a mist," I said.
She laughed in her odd way. "Of course, Dick, there was a mist," she agreed. "And you cannot make bricks without straw. And after all you did make bricks in St. James's Square, and it is not for me to find fault. But there is a thing to be done, and it must be done." And her lips closed firmly, after a fashion I remembered, and still remember, having seen it a hundred times since that day, and learned to humour it. "One that must be done!" she continued. "Dick, you will not leave the Duke to be ruined by Matthew Smith? You will not lie here and let those rogues work their will on him? Sir John has denounced him."
"And may denounce me!" I said, aghast at the notion. "May denounce me," I continued with agitation. "Willdenounce me. If it was not the Duke who was at Ashford, it was I!"
"And who are you?" she retorted, with a look that withered me. "Who will care whether you met Sir John at Ashford or not? King William--call him Dutchman, boor, drunkard, as it's the fashion this side, call him I say what you will--at least he flies at high game, and does not hawk at mice!"
"Mice?"
"Ay, mice!" she answered with a snap of her teeth--and she looked all over the little vixen she could be. "For what are we? What are we now? Still more, what are we if we leave the Duke to his enemies, leave him to be ruined and disgraced, leave him to pay the penalty, while you, the cause of all this, lie here--lie safe and snug? For shame, Dick! For shame!" she continued with such a thrill in her voice that the pigeons feeding behind her fluttered up in alarm, and two or three nuns looked out inquisitively.
I had my own thoughts and my own feelings about my lord, as he well knew in after years. I challenge any to say that I lacked either respect or affection for him. But a man's wits move more slowly than a woman's, and the news came on me suddenly. It was no great wonder if I could not in a moment stomach the prospect of returning to risk and jeopardy, to the turmoil from which I had been so long freed, and the hazards of a life and death struggle. In the political life of twenty years ago men carried their necks to market. Knowing that I might save the Duke and suffer in his place--the fate of many a poor dependant; or might be confronted with Smith; or brought face to face with Ferguson; or perish before I reached London in the net in which my lord's own feet were caught, I foresaw not one but a hundred dangers; and those such as no prudent man could be expected to regard with equanimity, or any but a harebrained girl would encounter with a light heart.
Still I desired to stand well with her; and that being so I confess that it was with relief I remembered my lameness; and named it to her. Passing over the harshness of her last words, "You are right," I said. "Something should be done. But for me it is impossible at present. I am lame, as you see."
"Lame?" she cried.
"More than lame," I answered--but there was that in her tone which bade me avoid her eyes. "A cripple, Mary."
"No, not a cripple," she answered.
"Yes," I said.
"No, Dick," she answered in a voice low, but so grave and firm that I winced. "Let us be frank for once. Not a cripple, but a coward."
"I never said I was a soldier," I answered.
"Nor I," she replied, wilfully misunderstanding me. "I said, a coward! And a coward I will not marry!"
With that we looked at one another: and I saw that her face was white. "Was it a coward saved your life--in the Square?" I muttered at last.
"No," she answered. "But it was a coward played the sneak for Ferguson. And a coward played the rogue for Smith! It was a coward lost Fenwick--because he dare not look behind! And a coward who will now sacrifice his benefactor, to save his own skin. Andyouonly know in how many other things you have played the craven. But the rather for that, up, now, and play the man! You have a chance now! Do this one brave thing and all will be forgiven. Oh, Dick, Dick!" she continued--and with a sudden blaze in her face she stooped and threw her arms round me, "if you love me, do it! Do it for us both! Do it--or if you cannot, God knows it were better we were hung, than married!"
I cannot hope to describe the fervour, which she threw into these last words, or the effect which they wrought on me, weakened as I was by long illness. In a voice broken by tears I conjured her to give me time--to give me time; a few days in which to consider what I would do.
"Not a day!" she answered, springing from me in fresh excitement, and as if my touch burned her. "I will give you no time. You have had a lifetime, and to what purpose? I will give you no time. Do you give me your word."
"To go to England?"
"Yes."
I was ashake from head to foot; and groaned aloud. In truth if I had known the gallows to be the certain and inevitable end of the road, on which I was asked to enter, I could not have been more sorely beset; between rage and fear, and shame of her and desire for her. But while I hung in that misery, she continuing to stand over me, I looked, as it happened, in her face; and I saw that it was no longer hot with anger, but sad and drawn as by a sharp pain. And I gave her my word, trembling and shaking.
"Now," said she, "are you a brave man; and perhaps the bravest."
That the arrest of Sir John Fenwick, reported in London on the 13th of June, was regarded by all parties as an event of the first magnitude, scarce exceeded in importance by a victory in Flanders or a defeat in the Mediterranean, is a thing not to be denied at this time of day; when men, still in their prime, can recall the commotion occasioned by it. The private animosity, which was believed to exist between Sir John and the King, and which dated, if the gossip of Will's and Garraway's went for anything, not from the slight which he had put upon the late Queen, but from a much earlier period, when he had served under William in Flanders, aroused men's curiosity, and in a sense their pity; as if they were to see here the end of a Greek drama.
Nor, apart from the public and general interest, which Sir John's birth and family connections, no less than his share in the plot, considerably augmented, was there any faction which could view his arrest with indifference. He had been so deep in the confidence of St. Germain's that were he to make a discovery, not Tories and Jacobites only lay at his mercy, but all that large class among the Whigs who had stooped to palter with James. These, as they were the more culpable had also more to fear. Trembling at the prospect of a disclosure which must convict them of practices at variance with their most solemn professions, they were supported by none of those sentiments of loyalty, honourable if mistaken, which excused the others; while as each fondly thought his perfidy unknown to his neighbour, and dreaded nothing so much as detection by the rank and file of the party, he found the burden of apprehension weigh the more heavily, because he had none to share it with him.
The absence of the King, who was campaigning in Flanders, aggravated the suspense; which prevailed so widely for the reasons above, and others, that it is not too much to say that barely four politicians could be found of the first or second rank who were not nearly concerned in the question of Sir John Fenwick's silence. Of these, however, I make bold to say that my lord was one; and though the news that Sir John, who lay in the Tower, had sent for the Duke of Devonshire may have excited a passing feeling of jealousy in his mind--since he and not the other Duke was the person to whom Sir John might more fitly unbosom himself--I am confident, and, indeed, had it from his own lips, that at this time he had no notion of any danger threatening himself.
His eyes were first opened by the Earl of Marlborough; who, calling upon him one day, ostensibly on business connected with the Princess Anne (to whom the King had been reconciled before his departure), presently named Sir John. From this to the statement made to the Duke of Devonshire, and the rumours of its contents which filled the coffee-houses, was but a step. The Earl seemed concerned; my lord, in his innocence, sceptical.
At length the latter spoke out what was in his mind. "To tell you the truth, my lord," he said frankly, "I think it is a mare's nest. I don't believe that any statement has been made."
The Earl looked astonished. "May I ask why not?" he said.
"Because, unless I am much mistaken," my lord answered smiling, "the Duke would have brought it straight to me. And I have heard nothing of it."
"You have not asked the Duke?"
"Of course not."
"But--he was with Sir John," the Earl persisted steadily. "There is no doubt of that, is there?"
"Oh, no."
"Well, then, is not that in itself strange?"
"I think not, there have always been friendly relations," my lord continued, "between the Duke and Sir John."
"Just so," Lord Marlborough answered, taking a pinch of snuff. "Still, do those relations warrant the Lord Steward in visiting him now?"
The Secretary looked a little startled. "Well, I don't know," he said. "But the Duke of Devonshire's patriotism is so well established----"
"That he may steal the horse, while we look over the wall," Lord Marlborough answered, taking him up with a smile. "Be that as it may," he continued, "and I am sure that the same may be said of the Duke of Shrewsbury,"--here the two noblemen bowed to one another--"I think your Grace's information is somewhat faulty on this point. I happen to know that immediately after the interview a special messenger left Devonshire House for Loo; and that the matters he carried were reduced into writing by his Grace's own hand. That being so, Duke, you are better qualified to draw the inference than I am."
My lord, at that, looked grave and nodded, being convinced; and I do not doubt that he felt the slight which the other Duke's silence implied. But though, of all the men I have ever met, he was the most sensitive, he was the last also, to wear his heart on his sleeve; and not only did he refrain from complaint of his colleague's conduct, but he hastened to dispel by a word or two the effect of his momentary gravity. "Ah, then I can guess what happened," he said, nodding his comprehension. "I have no doubt that Sir John made it a term that his discovery should be delivered to the King at first hand--and to no one else."
Lord Marlborough rose. "Duke," he said firmly, "I think it is fair that I should be more frank with you. The reason you give is not the reason they are giving in the coffee-houses--for the Lord Steward's reticence."
"No!" said my lord, with a faint note of scorn in his voice.
"No," said the Earl. "On the contrary, they say at Will's--and for the matter of that at the St. James's too, that the statement is kept close because it touched men in power."
"In power?" said my lord, with the same note in his voice. "In the Council, do you mean?"
"Yes; three men."
"Do they name them?"
"Certainly," said my Lord Marlborough, smiling. "And they join with the three one who is not in power."
"Ah!"
"Myself."
Nothing could exceed the placid indifference, as natural as it was free from exaggeration, which the Earl contrived to throw into his last word. Yet my lord started, and shuffled uneasily in his chair. Knowing something, and perhaps suspecting more, aware of the character which his enemies attributed to Lord Marlborough, he would not have been the statesman he was, if he had not fancied an ulterior design, in an admission not a little embarrassing. He confined himself, therefore, to a polite shrug expressive of incredulity, and to the words "Credat Judæus."
"Just so," said Lord Marlborough, whose erudition was not on a par with the marvellous strategical powers he has since displayed. "What, then, will your Grace say--to Ned Russell?"
"The First Lord of the Admiralty? Ishenamed?"
"In the coffee-houses."
"Ah!"
"Lord Godolphin!"
"Impossible!"
"Not so impossible as the fourth," Lord Marlborough answered, with a light laugh, in which courtesy, amusement, and a fine perception of the ridiculous were nicely mingled. "Can you not guess, Duke?"
But my lord, too prudent to suggest names in that connection, shook his head. "Who could?" he said, raising his eyebrows scornfully. "They might as well name me, as some you are mentioning."
Lord Marlborough laughed softly. "My very dear Duke," he said, "that is just what they are doing! They do name you. You are the fourth."
I believe that my lord had so little expected the answer that for a space he remained, staring at the speaker, in equal surprise and dismay. Then his indignation finding vent: "It is not possible!" he cried. "Even in the coffee-houses! And besides, if your story is true, my lord, the Duke of Devonshire alone knows what Sir John has discovered, and whom he has accused!"
Lord Marlborough pursed up his lips. "Things get known--strangely," he said. "For instance, the shadow which came between your Grace and His Majesty in '90--probably you supposed it to be known to the King only, or if to any besides, to Portland at most? On the contrary, there was scarce a knot of chatterers at Garraway's but whispered of your dinners with Middleton, and meetings with Montgomery, watched for the event, and gave the odds on St. Germain's in guessing."
The Earl spoke in his airiest manner, took snuffin medio, and with a carelessness that none could so well affect, avoided looking at his hearer. Nevertheless, the shaft went home. My lord, smitten between the joints of his harness, suffered all that a proud and sensitive man, apprised on a sudden that his dearest secrets were the property of the market-place, could suffer; and rage dissipating the composure which self-respect would fain have maintained, "My lord, this is going too far!" he gasped. "Who gave your lordship leave to--to touch on a matter which concerns only myself?"
"Simply this later matter," the Earl answered in a plain, matter-of-fact tone that at once sobered the Duke, and seemed to justify his own interference. "If there is anything at all in this rumour--if Sir John has really said anything, I take it that the old gossip is at the bottom of it."
The Duke stared before him with a troubled face; and did not answer. To some it might have seemed the most natural course to carry the war into the informant's country, and by a dry question or a pregnant word suggest that at least as good grounds existed for the imputation cast onhim. But such a line of argument was beneath the dignity, which was never long wanting, to my lord; and he made no attempt to disturb the other's equanimity or question his triumph. After a time, however, "I beg your pardon," he said. "I forgot myself and spoke hastily. But he is a most impudent fellow!"
"A d----d impudent fellow," the Earl cried, with more fervour than he had yet exhibited.
"And he is playing an impudent game," my lord continued, thoughtfully. "But a dangerous one."
"As he will find to his cost, before he has done!" Lord Marlborough answered. "It is cunningly thought of. If he will save his head he must give up some one. So, as he will not give up his friends he will ruin his enemies; if the King is a fool, and can spare us."
"The King is no fool!" said the Duke, rather coldly. It was no secret that between William and Lord Marlborough love was not lost.
"Well, that may be a good thing for us!" the Earl answered lightly. He had not the reputation even with his friends of setting his feelings before his interest; nor probably in all England was there a man who looked out on the world with a keener eye to benefit by the weaknesses of men and make profit of their strength.
I know that it ill-becomes one in my station to carp at the great Duke, as men now style him; though of all his greatness, genius, and courage, there remains but a poor drivelling childishness, calling every minute for a woman's tendance. And far am I from giving voice or encouragement to the hints of those, who, hating him, maintain that in future times things incredibly base will be traced to his door. But truth is truth; that he knew more of the matter now threatening and stood to lose more by it than my lord, I have little doubt; nor that this being so, the real object of his visit was to ensure the solidity of the assailed phalanx, and particularly to make it certain that the Secretary, whose weight with the King was exceeded only by his popularity with the party, should not stand aloof from the common hazard.
Having attained this object, so far as it could be obtained in a single interview, and finding that the Duke, in spite of all his efforts to the contrary, continued moody and distraught, he presently took his leave. But to my lord's astonishment, he was announced again ten minutes later. He re-entered with profuse apologies.
"I went from your Grace's to the Venetian Ambassador's on the farther side of the Square," he said. "There I heard it confidently stated that Goodman, one of the two witnesses against Sir John, had absconded. Have you heard it, Duke?"
"No," my lord answered with some dryness. "And I am sure that it is not true."
"You would have heard it?"
"Necessarily."
"Nevertheless, and craving your pardon," the Earl answered slowly, "I think that there is something in it. If he has not been induced to go, I fancy from what I hear that he is hesitating."
"Then he must be looked to."
"Yet! were he to go, you see--it would make all the difference--to Sir John," the Earl said. "There would be only Porter; and the Act requires two witnesses."
My lord lifted his eyebrows; that two witnesses were required in a case of treason was too trite a statement to call for comment. Then seeing the other's drift, he smiled. "That were to lick the platter, my lord, in order to keep the fingers clean," he said.
Lord Marlborough laughed airily. "Well put," he said, not a whit abashed. "So it would. You are right, Duke, as you always are. But I have detained you too long." With which, and another word of apology, he took his leave a second time.
That he left an unhappy man behind him, none can doubt, who knew the Duke's sensitive nature, and respect for his high position and dignity. To find that the weakness, venial and casual, of which he had been guilty years before in stooping to listen to Lord Middleton's solicitations--a fault which he had fancied known only to the King and by him forgiven--to find that this was the property of the public, was burden enough; but to learn that on this was to be founded a fresh charge, for the proper refutation of which the past must be raked up, was torture intolerable. In a fine sense of the ridiculous, my lord excelled any man of his time; he could feather therefore out of his own breast the shafts of evil that would be aimed at the man, who, one of the seven to bring over William in '88, had stooped in '89 to listen to the Exile! He could see more clearly than any all the inconsistency, all the folly, all the weakness of the course, to which he had, not so much committed himself, as been tempted to commit himself. The Minister unfaithful, the patriot importuned, were parts in which he saw himself exposed to the town, to the sallies of Tom Brown, and the impertinences of Ned Ward; nay, in proportion as he appreciated the grandeur of honest rebellion, of treason, open and declared, he felt shame for the pettiness of the part he had himself played, a waverer when trusted, and a palterer when in power.
Such reflections weighed on him so heavily that though one of the proudest and therefore to those below him one of the most courteous and considerate of men, he could scarcely bring himself to face his subordinates, when the hour came for him to attend the office. Sir John Trumball still deferred to him, Mr. Vernon still bowed until the curls of his wig hid his stout red cheeks, the clerks where he came still rose, pale, smug, and submissive, in his honour. But he fancied--quite falsely--something ironical in this respect; he pictured nods and heard words behind his back; and suspecting the talk, which hushed at his entrance rose high on his departure, to be at his expense, he underwent a score of martyrdoms before he returned to St. James's Square.
Meanwhile the absence of the King aggravated his position; firstly, by depriving him of the only confidant his pride permitted him; secondly, by adding to his troubles the jealousies which invariably attend government by a Council. Popularly considered, he was first Minister of the Crown, and deepest in the King's confidence. But the knowledge that one of his colleagues withheld a matter from him, and was in private communication with William in respect to it, was not rendered less irksome by the suspicion, amounting almost to a certainty, that his own concern in the business was that of a culprit. This it was which first and most intimately touched his dignity; and this it was which at the end of a fortnight of suspense drove him to a desperate resolution. He would broach the matter to the Duke of Devonshire; and learn the best and the worst of it.
Desiring to do this in a manner the least formal he took occasion to dismiss his coach at the next Council meeting, and telling the Duke that he wished to mention a matter to him, he begged a seat in his equipage. But whether the Lord Steward foresaw what was coming and parried the subject discreetly, or my lord's heart failed him, they reached the Square, and nothing said, except on general topics. There, my lord's people coming out to receive them, it seemed natural to ask the Duke of Devonshire to enter; but my lord, instead, begged the Duke to drive him round and round a while; and when they were again started, "I have not been well lately," he said--which was true, more than one having commented on it at the Council Table--"and I wished to tell you, that I fear I shall find it necessary to go into the country for a time."
"To Roehampton?" said his companion, after a word or two of regret.
"No, to Eyford."
For a moment his Grace of Devonshire was silent; and my lord without looking at him had the idea that he was startled. At length as the coach went by London House, "I would not do that--just at this time," he said, quietly.
"Why not?" asked my lord.
"Because--well, for one thing, the King's service may suffer."
"That is not your reason!" quoth my lord, stubbornly. "You are thinking of the Fenwick matter."
Again the other Duke delayed his answer: but when he spoke his voice was both kind and earnest. "Frankly, I am," he said. "If you know so much, Duke, you know that it would have an ill-appearance."
"How?" said my lord. "Let me tell you that all Sir John knows or can know, the King knows--and has known for some time."
This time there was no doubt that the Lord Steward was startled. "You cannot mean it, Duke," he said, in a constrained voice, and with a gesture of reproach. "You cannot mean that it was with his Majesty's knowledge you had a meeting with Sir John, he being outlawed at the time and under ban? That were to make His Majesty at best an abettor of treason; and at worst a viler thing! For to incite to treason and then to persecute the traitor--but it is impossible!"
"I have not the least notion what your Grace means," my lord said, in a freezing tone. "What is this folly about a meeting with Sir John?"
The Duke of Devonshire was as proud as my patron; and nothing in the great mansion which he was then building in the wilds of the Derbyshire Peak was likely to cause the gaping peasants more astonishment than he felt at this setback. "I don't understand your Grace," he said, at last, in a tone of marked offence.
"Nor I you," my lord answered, thoroughly roused.
"I am afraid--I have said too much," said the other, stiffly.
"Or too little," my lord retorted. "You must go on now."
"Must? Must?" quoth the Duke, whose high spirit had ten years before led him to strike a blow that came near to costing him his estate.
"Ay, must--in justice," said my lord. "In justice to me as well as to others."
After a brief pause, "That is another thing," answered the Lord Steward civilly. "But--is it possible, Duke, that you know so much, and do not know that Sir John asserts that you met him at Ashford two days only before his capture, and entrusted him with a ring and a message--both for St. Germain's?"
"At Ashford?"
"Yes."
"This is sheer madness," my lord cried, holding his hand to his head. "Are you mad, Devonshire, or am I?"
Whether the Duke, having heard Sir John's story and marked his manner of telling it, had prejudged the cause, or thought that my lord over-acted surprise, he did not immediately answer; and when he did speak, his tone was dry, though courteous. "Well, of course--it may be Sir John who is mad," he said.
"D----n Sir John," my lord answered, sitting up in the coach and fairly facing his companion. "You do not mean to tell me that you believe this story of a cock and a bull, and a--a----"
"A ring," said the Duke of Devonshire, quietly.
"Well?"
"Well, Duke, it is this way," the Lord Steward replied. "Sir John has something to say about three others. Lord Marlborough, Ned Russell, and Godolphin. And what he says about them I know in the main to be true. Therefore----"
"You infer that he is telling the truth about me?" cried my lord, fuming, yet covering his rage with a decent appearance since a hundred eyes were on them as they drove slowly round in the glass coach.
"Not altogether. There are other things."
"What other things?"
"The talk there was about your Grace and Middleton at the time of your resignation."
My lord groaned. "All the world knows that, it seems," he said. "And should know that I have never denied it."
"True."
"But this! It is the most absurd, the most ridiculous, the most fantastical story! How could I go out of town for twenty-four hours, and the fact not be known to half London? Let Sir John name the day."
"He has," the other Duke answered. "He lays it on the tenth of June."
"Well?"
"There was a Land Bank meeting of the Council on that day. But your Grace did not attend it."
p366HE SHUT HIMSELF IN WITH HIS TROUBLE
"No? No, I remember I did not. It was the day my mother was taken ill. She sent for me, and I lay at her house that night and the next."
His Grace of Devonshire coughed. "That is unfortunate," he said, and leaned forward to bow to the Bishop of London, whose chariot had just entered the Square.
"Why?" said my lord, ready to take offence at anything.
"Because, though I do not doubt your word, the world will require witnesses. And Lady Shrewsbury's household is suspect. Her Jacobite leanings are known, and her people's evidence would go for little. That that should be the day--but there, there, your Grace must take courage," the Duke continued kindly. "All that the party can do will be done. Within the week Lord Portland will be here bringing his Majesty's commands, and we shall then know what he proposes to do about it. If I know the King, and I think I do----"
But the picture which these words suggested to my lord's mind was too much for his equanimity. To know for certain that the King, who had extended indulgence to him once, was in possession of this new accusation, and perhaps believed it, that was bad enough. But to hear that Portland also was in the secret, and grim, faithful Dutchman as he was, might presently, in support of the low opinion of English fidelity which he held, quote him, the first Minister of England, was too much! In a hoarse voice he cut the Duke short, asking to be set down before they quarrelled; and his Grace, hastening with a hurried word of sympathy to comply, my lord stepped out, and looking neither to right nor left, passed into the house, and to the library, where, locking the door, he shut himself in with his trouble.
I have commonly reckoned it among my lord's greatest misfortunes that in a crisis of his affairs which demanded all the assistance that friendship, the closest and most intimate could afford, he had neither wife nor child to whom he could turn, and from whom, without loss of dignity, he might receive comfort and support. He was a solitary man; separated from such near relations as he had, by differences as well religious as political, and from the world at large by the grandeur of a position which imposed burdens as onerous as the privileges it conferred were rare.
To a melancholy habit, which some attributed to the sad circumstances attendant on his father's death, and others to the change of faith, which he had been induced to make on reaching manhood, he added a natural shyness and reserve, qualities which, ordinarily veiled from observation by manners and an address the most charming and easy in the world, were none the less obstacles, where friendship was in question. Not that of friendship there was much among the political men of that day, the perils and uncertainties of the time inculcated a distrust, which was only overcome where blood or marriage cemented the tie--as in the case of Lords Sunderland, Godolphin, and Marlborough, and again of the Russells and Cavendishes. But, be that as it may, my lord stood outside these bonds, and enjoyed and rued a splendid isolation. As if already selected by fortune for that strange combination of great posts with personal loneliness, which was to be more strikingly exhibited in the death-chamber of her late Majesty Queen Anne, he lived, whether in his grand house in St. James's Square, or at Eyford among the Gloucestershire Wolds, as much apart as any man in London or in England.
Withal, I know, men called him the King of Hearts. But the popularity, of which that title seemed the sign and seal, was factitious and unreal; born, while they talked with him, of his spontaneous kindness and boundless address; doomed to perish an hour later, of spite and envy, or of sheer inanition. Since the Duke was sensitive, over-proud for intimacy, flattered no man, and gave no man confidences.
Such an one bade fair, when in trouble, to eat out his heart. Prone to fancy all men's hands against him, he doubled the shame and outdid the most scandalous. So far, indeed, was he from deriving comfort from things that would have restored such men as my Lord Marlborough to perfect self-respect and composure, that I believe, and in fine had it from himself, that the letter which the King wrote to him from Loo (and which came to his hands through Lord Portland's, three days after the interview with his Grace of Devonshire) pained him more sensibly than all that had gone before.
"You may judge of my astonishment," His Majesty wrote, "at his effrontery in accusing you. You are, I trust, too fully convinced of the entire confidence which I place in you to think that such stories can make any impression on me. You will observe this honest man's sincerity, who only accuses those in my service, and not one of his own party."
It will be understood that that in His Majesty's letter which touched my lord home was less the magnanimity displayed in it than the remembrance that once before the Sovereign had dealt with the subject in the same spirit, and that now the world must know this. Of the immediate accusation, with all its details of time and circumstance, he thought little, believing, not only that the truth must quickly sweep it away, but that in the meantime few would be found so credulous as to put faith in it. But he saw with painful clearness that the charge would rub the old sore and gall the old raw; and he winced, seated alone in his library in the silence of the house, as if the iron already seared the living flesh. With throes of shame he foresaw what staunch Whigs, such as Somers and Wharton, would say of him; what thePostboyand theCourantwould print of him; what the rank and file of the party--exposed to no danger in the event of a Restoration, and consequently to few temptations to make their peace abroad--would think of their trusted leader, when they learned the truth.
On Marlborough and Russell, Godolphin and Sunderland, the breath of suspicion had blown: on him never, and he had held his head high. How could he meet them now? How could he face them? Nay, if that were all, how, he asked himself, could he face the honest Nonjuror? Or the honest Jacobite? Or the honest Tory? He, who had taken the oaths to the new government and broken them, who had set up the new government and deceived it, who had dubbed himself patriot--cui bono?Presently brooding over it, he came to think that there was but one man in England,turpissimus; that it would be better in the day of reckoning for the meanest carted pickpocket, whose sentence came before him for revision, than for the King's Secretary in his garter and robes!
Nor, if he had known all that was passing, and all that was being said, among those with whom his fancy painfully busied itself, would he have been the happier. For Sir John's statement got abroad with marvellous quickness. Before Lord Portland arrived from Holland the details were whispered in every tavern and coffee-house within the Bills. The Tories and Jacobites, aiming above everything at finding a counterblast to the Assassination Plot, the discovery of which had so completely sapped their credit with the nation, pounced on the scandal with ghoulish avidity, and repeated and exaggerated it on every occasion. Every Jacobite house of call, from the notorious Dog in Drury Lane, the haunt of mumpers and foot-pads, to the Chocolate House in St. James's rang with it. For Sir John, all (they said among themselves) that they had expected of him was surpassed by this. He was extolled to the skies alike for what he had done and for what he had not done; and as much for the wit that had confounded his enemies as for the courage that had protected his friends. For what Jacobite, seeing the enemy hoist with his own petard could avoid a snigger? Or hear the word Informer without swearing that Sir John was the most honest man who ever signed his name to a deposition.
The Whigs on the other hand, exasperated by an attack as subtle as it was unforeseen, denied the charges with a passion and fury that of themselves betrayed apprehension. Here, they said, was another Taafe; suborned by the same gang and the same vile machinations that had brought about the Lancashire failure, and hounded Trenchard to his death. Not content with threatening Sir John with the last penalties of treason and felony, and filling the Rose Tavern with protestations, which admitted the weight while they denied the truth of the charges brought against their leaders, the party called aloud for meetings, enquiries, and prosecutions; to which the leaders soon found themselves pledged, whether they would or no.
My lord out of sensitiveness, or that over-appreciation of what was due to himself and others which in a degree unfitted him for public life, had a week before this, pleading indisposition, begun to keep the house; and to all requests proffered by his colleagues that he would take part in their deliberations, returned a steadfast negative. This notwithstanding, everything that was done was communicated to him; and announcements of the meetings, which it was now proposed to hold--one at Lord Somers' in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the other at Admiral Russell's--would doubtless have been made to him within the hour. As it chanced, however, he received the news from another source. On the day of the decision, as he sat alone, dwelling gloomily on the past, the Square was roused at the quietest time of the forenoon by an arrival. With a huge chitter, the Countess's glass chariot, with its outriders, running footmen, and lolling waiting-women, rolled up to the door; and in a moment my lady was announced.
It is probable that there was no one whom he had less wish to see. But he could not deny himself to her; and he rose with an involuntary groan. The Countess on her side was in no better temper, as her first words indicated. "My life, my lord, what is this I hear," she cried roundly, as soon as the door closed upon her. "That you are lying down to be trodden on! And cannot do this, and will not do that, but pule and cry at home while they spin a rope for you! Sakes, man, play the one side, play the other side--which you please! But play it! play it!"
My lord, chagrined as much by the intrusion as by the reproach, answered her with more spirit than he was wont to use to her. "I thought, Madam," he answered sharply, "that the one thing you desired was my withdrawal from public life?"
"Ay, but not after this fashion!" she retorted, striking her ebony cane on the floor and staring at him, her reddled face and huge curled wig trembling. "If all I hear be true--and I hear that they are going to hold two inquests on you--and you continue to sit here, it will be a fine withdrawal! You will be doomed by James and blocked by William, and that d----d rogue John Churchill will wear your clothes! Withdrawal say you? No, if you had withdrawn six months ago when I bade you, you would have gone and been thanked. But now, the fat is in the fire, and, wanting courage, you'll frizzle, my lad."
"And whom have I to thank for that, Madam?" he asked, with bitterness.
"Why, yourself, booby!" she cried.
"No, Madam, your friends!" he replied--which was so true and hit the mark so exactly that my lady looked rather foolish for a moment. Without noticing the change, however, "Your friends. Madam," he continued, "Lord Middleton and Sir John Fenwick, and Montgomery, and the rest, whom you have never ceased pressing me to join! Who unable to win me will now ruin me. But you are right, Madam. I see, for myself now, that it is not possible to play against them with clean hands, and therefore I leave the game to them."
"Pack of rubbish!" she cried.
"It is not rubbish. Madam, as you will find," he answered coldly. "You say they will hold two inquests on me? There will be no need. Within the week my resignation of all my posts will be in the King's hands."
"And you?"
"And I, Madam, shall be on my way to Eyford."
Now there is nothing more certain than that for a year past the Countess had strained every nerve to detach the Duke from the Government, with a view to his reconciliation with King James and St. Germain's. But, having her full share of a mother's pride, she was as far from wishing to see him retire after this fashion as if she had never conceived the notion. And to this the asperity of her answer bore witness. "To Eyford?" she cried, shrilly. "More like to Tower Hill! Or the Three Trees and a thirteenha'penny fee--for that is your measure! God, my lad, you make me sick! You make me sick!" she continued, her wrinkled old face distorted by the violence of her rage, and her cane going tap-a-tap in her half-palsied hand. "That a son of mine should lack the spirit to turn on these pettifoggers!"
"Your friends, Madam," he said remorselessly.
"These perts and start-ups! But you are mad, man! You are mad," she continued. "Mad as King Jamie was when he fled the country--and who more glad than the Dutchman! And as it was with him so it will be with you. They will strip you, Charles. They will strip you bare as you were born! And the end will be, you'll lie with Ailesbury in the Tower, or bed with Tony Hamilton in a garret--là bas!"
"Which is precisely the course to which you have been pressing me," he replied with something of a sneer.
"Ay, with a full purse!" she screamed. "With a full purse, fool! With Eyford and fifty thousand guineas, my lad! But go, a beggar, as you'll go, and it is welcome you'll be--to the doorkey and the kennel, or like enough to King Louis' Bastile! Tell me, man, that this is all nonsense! That you'll show your face to your enemies, go abroad and be King again!"
My lord answered gravely that his mind was quite made up.
"To go?" she gasped. "To go to Eyford?" And raising her stick in her shaking hand, she made a gesture so menacing that, fearing she would strike him, my lord stepped back.
Nevertheless, he answered her firmly. "Yes, to Eyford. My letter to the King is already written."
"Then that for you, and your King!" she shrieked; and in an excess of uncontrolled passion, she whirled her stick round and brought it down on a stand of priceless Venice crystal which stood beside her; being the same that Seigniors Soranzo and Venier had presented to the Duke in requital of the noble entertainment which my lord had given to the Venetian Ambassadors, the April preceding. The blow shivered the vases, which fell in a score of fragments to the floor; but not content with the ruin she had accomplished, the Countess struck fiercely again and again. "There's for you, you poor speechless fool!" she continued. "That a son of mine should lie down to his enemies! There was never Brudenel did it. But your father, he too was a----"
"Madam!" he said, taking her up grimly. "I will not hear you on that!"
"Ay, but you shall hear me!" she screamed, and yet more soberly. "He, too, was a----"
"Silence!" he said; and this time, low as his voice rang, ay, and though it trembled, it stilled her. "Silence, Madam," he repeated, "or you do that, which neither the wrong you wrought so many years ago to him you miscall, nor those things common fame still tells of you, nor differences of creed, nor differences of party, have prevailed to effect. Say more of him," he continued, "and we do not meet again, my lady. For I have this at least from you--that I do not easily forgive."
She glared at him a moment, rage, alarm, and vexation, all distorting her face. Then, "The door!" she hissed. "The door, boor! You are still my son, and if you will not obey me, shall respect me. Take me out, and if ever I enter your house again----"
She did not complete the sentence, but lapsed into noddings and mowings and mutterings, her fierce black eyes flickering vengeance to come. However, my lord paid no heed to that, but glad, doubtless, to be rid of her visit even at the cost of his Venetian, offered her his arm in silence and led her into the hall and to her chariot.
She could not avenge herself on him; and it might be, she would not if she could. But there was one on whom her passion alighted, who with all her cunning little expected the impending storm. The most astute are sometimes found napping. And the smoothest pad-nag will plunge. Whether the favourite waiting-woman had overstepped her authority of late, presuming on a senility, which existed indeed, but neither absolutely blinded my lady nor was to be depended on in face of gusts of passion such as this; whether this was the case, I say, or Monterey, rendered incautious by success, was unfortunate enough to betray her triumph, by some look of spite and malice during the drive home, it is certain that at the door the storm broke. Without the least warning the Countess, after using her arm to descend, turned on her, a very Bess of Bedlam.
"And you, you grinning ape!" she cried, "you come no farther! This is no home of yours; begone, or I will have you whipped! You don't go into my house again!"
The astonished woman, taken utterly aback, and not in the least understanding, began to remonstrate. Her first thought was that the Countess was ill. "Your ladyship--is not well?" she cried, with solicitude veiling her alarm. "You cannot mean----"
"Ay, but I can! I can!" the old lady answered, mocking her. "You have done mischief enow, and do no more here! Where is that man of yours, who went, and never came back, and nought but excuses? And now this."
"Oh, my lady, what ails you?" the waiting-woman cried. "What does this mean?"
"You know!" said my lady with an oath. "So begone about your business, and don't let me see your face again or it will be the worse for you."
Disarmed of her usual address by the suddenness of the attack, the Monterey began to whimper; and again asked how she had offended her and what she had done to deserve this. "I, who have served you so long, and so faithfully?" she cried. "What have I done to earn this?"
"God and you know--better than I do!" was the fierce answer. And then, "Williams," the Countess cried to her major-domo, who, with the lacqueys and grooms, was standing by, enjoying the fall of the favourite--"see that that drab does not cross my threshold again; or you go, do you hear? Ay, mistress, you would poison me if you could!" the old lady went on, gibing, and pointing with her stick at the face, green with venom and spite, that betrayed the baffled woman's feelings. "Look at her! Look at her! There is Madame Voisin for you! There is Madame Turner! She would poison you all if she could. But you should have done it yesterday, you slut! You will not have the chance now. Put her rags out here--here on the road; and do you, Williams, send her packing, and see she takes naught of mine, not a pinner or a sleeve, or she goes to Paddington fair for it! Ay, you drab," my lady continued, with cruel exultation, "I'll see you beat hemp yet! and your shoulders smarting!"
"May God forgive you!" cried the waiting-woman, fighting with her rage.
"He may or He may not!" said the dreadful old lady, coolly turning to go in. "Anyway, your score won't stand for much in the sum, my girl."
And not until the Countess had gone in and Madame Monterey saw before her the grinning faces of the servants, as they stood to bar the way, did she thoroughly take in what had happened to her, or the utter ruin of all her prospects which this meant. Then, choking with passion, rage, despair, "Let me pass," she cried, advancing and trying frantically to push her way through them. "Let me pass, you boobies. Do you hear? How dare----"
"Against orders, Madame Voisin!" said the majordomo with a hoarse laugh; and he thrust her back. And when, maddened by the touch, and defeat, she flung herself on him in a frenzy, one of the lacqueys caught her round the waist lifting her off her legs, carried her out screaming and scratching, and set her down in the road amid the laughter of his companions.
"There," he said, "and next time better manners, mistress, or I'll drop you in the horse pond. You are not young enough, nor tender enough for these airs! Ten years ago you might have scratched all you pleased!"
"Strike you dead!" she cried, "my husband--my husband shall kill you all! Ay, he shall!"
"When he gets out of the Gatehouse, we will talk, mistress," the man answered. "But he's there, and you know it!"