And at Whitehall itself he discovered fresh evidences of the growing panic. There was an activity and bustle such as he had not found there on his former visit to Albemarle. And he guessed, before he was told, that it was the bustle of imminent departure.
The Court had taken fright before the spread of the plague, which its own wickedness was already being accused of having attracted, and was on the eve of removing itself beyond its reach.
At first Holles feared that he had come too late. That no doubt the duke, too, would be at his preparations for departure. In this, however, he was mistaken. He was ushered into the presence of Albemarle, and found the great man unmoved either by the plague in the town or by the ferment in the palace. He appeared to survey the one and the other with a characteristic phlegm of mind that sorted well with his slow-moving, fleshy bulk.
When Holles expressed polite fears that he came inopportunely, that he intruded, perhaps, upon the duke’s dispositions to accompany the Court, Albemarle reassured him. His Grace was to remain, to represent the king, and hold the reins of Government what time his Majesty took himself to the more salubrious airs of Salisbury, accompanied by his Court, his mistresses, and his lap dogs, human and canine. You are not to suppose that his Grace expressed himself in any such terms. These are no more than the colonel’s mental translation of what he said.
Having been invited by the duke to state in what his Grace could have the happiness of serving him, Holles came bluntly to the point.
“It is in the matter of that post in the Indies. I have considered, and, if it please your Grace, I will accept it.”
Albemarle’s big, swarthy face was darkened by regret.
“If it please me?” said he. “It would have pleased me excellently, as I told you. But you have been over long considering. The office was bestowed but yesterday upon young Stanhope, whose father sought it of me with a recommendation from his Majesty. I am sorry, Holles. I would have served you. But you had left the matter undecided, the office was vacant, and the King’s wish—”
He shrugged regretfully, and looked at Holles.
The colonel’s heart sank within him like a stone through water. The post scorned until this moment instantly became, now that it was snatched from out his closing grasp, of all things in the world the most desirable. Its loss seemed an emblem of the evil fortune that had ever pursued him, thrusting him lower and lower into the mire of misadventure. It seemed as if life’s every door must be barred against him in the very moment that he set his hand upon the latch.
He swallowed his mortification.
“A pity,” he said, as coolly as he might. “I’ve been a fool in the matter. Yet, since my need grows urgent, if your Grace had aught else to offer—”
His Grace pursed his thick lips, and shook his great black head slowly, regretfully.
“At the moment there is nothing — that is, nothing abroad, and, as I have told you, at home I dare offer you nothing for both our sakes. To do so were to draw attention to you, and attention might cost you your head on the score of what is passed. This post in Bombay was greatly coveted, as I told you. Young Stanhope was overjoyed to obtain it. Something else may offer; but in the present confusion, with war impending and the plague spreading here, appointments will be hard to seek for awhile. And I do not think you are wise to tarry in town. But should you do so, and I should hear of aught, I will send you word.”
“I have nothing to lose but my life,” said Holles, coldly. “And when it is so a man reckons little the loss of that. I would even risk an office at home—”
“But I would not risk the bestowing of it,” said the duke. “Myself, I might be called to account. Where are you lodged, that I may send to you, should anything offer?”
“Until they fling me into the street or send me to the stews for debt I am at the Paul’s Head in Paul’s Yard.”
“If I can do aught to alleviate your present stress,” said the duke kindly, “there is my own purse. I am desirous above all of proving myself your friend.”
But to that offer of money Holles returned an almost curt refusal. It awoke in him a pride long dead. He had taken money from others for questionable services; he had bubbled men at dice and at cards and in other ways. But Albemarle had known him in the days of his eager, honest youth, before the blighting hand of misfortune had made a scoundrel of him, and whatever betide, however fallen he might be, he would that Albemarle should continue to respect him.
The refusal was spontaneous and impulsive — instinctive almost — yet as he dismally retraced his way towards the City, and looked into the blackness of the future, he felt no slightest regret for that proud impulse that had made him reject pecuniary assistance. It was the last flicker of a pride that was near extinction.
Chapter II.
Whatever may have been lacking in his moral equipment, Colonel Holles possessed in an extraordinary degree that resilience of temperament which is the first essential of your true adventurer. Suspense he could never bear with any equanimity. Whilst waiting — as he had often waited — to see which way the tide of fortune would turn for him, he was given to impatience and despondency. But when adversity stood to be faced, there was no man could face it better, once the first shock of disappointment were overcome. He had a way of accepting the situation, however desperate, and making the best of it without further repining for the good things missed.
Thus was it now. Though he stumbled out of Whitehall with black despair in his heart, yet before he had reached Temple Bar the cloud had lifted. There remained that revolutionary venture to which Tucker and Rathbone had been committed by Danvers, and to which, in their turn, they sought to commit himself. Since it was now the best — indeed, the only thing — that offered he must take it. Fate had decided the matter, and before Fate’s decision he resolutely put aside the distaste he had for the folly of treason to a reigning Government. Having accepted thus the situation, he came to consider it more closely, and even to find it good. After all, Tucker had been right. The way to fortune lay in being a successful revolutionary — as witness the success of that fellow Albemarle whom he had just visited. What George Monk had achieved, Edward Holles could achieve.
By the time he was come to the Fleet, he already saw himself a man of substance and position under the Commonwealth which he should have assisted to restore. He strode briskly up the Hill towards St. Paul’s, almost rejoicing that Fate should have taken the matter out of his hands and decided it for him. He confessed himself something of a fool for not having sooner seized the golden opportunity which his friends had offered him. But he would seize it now, and as a beginning there should be an immediate dissipation of his present difficulties. Danvers would no doubt dispose of ample funds, and to win to his side a soldier of Colonel Holles’ experience would be willing to advance a sum sufficient to remove his present embarrassment.
In this mood of resolve he came to Paul’s Yard, to find a crowd assembled before the door of the Paul’s Head tavern. It was composed of people of all degrees, merchants, shopkeepers, ‘prentices, horseboys, scavengers, rogues from the alleys that lay behind the Old ’Change, idlers and sharpers from Paul’s Walk, with a sprinkling of town gallants and soldiers. And, notwithstanding the efforts of the constable and watchmen summoned by Mrs. Bankes to disperse it, this crowd was steadily swelling and all in a simmer of excitement.
With a premonition of evil in his heart, the colonel stood at gaze a moment, then advanced and questioned a soberly clad City gentleman who tip-toed about the skirts of the gathering. The City gentleman looked him up and down with the evident mistrust with which men of his kind must ever visit a ruffler who looks his trade. Nevertheless, perhaps because he had also the timidity of his kind, and beheld in the man who addressed him one whom it was safer to answer than affront, he gave him the information that he sought.
“They’ve lighted on a plot to destroy the Government,” he said. “A scoundrelly plot to murder the king, seize the Tower and burn the City, no le
ss. Save us! These be villainous times, with the plague all about and treason and sedition in our very midst. They came from the Tower not half an hour since and arrested a couple of the plotters at the Paul’s Head here — a knavish-looking pair they was, especially one of them whom they called Tucker. ’Tis said they’ve carried them to Newgate, so I hope they’ll hang them. We want no revolutions and no Commonwealth. The Monarchy may seem to some to have its faults, but there is no Government without faults, and at least we have been prosperous since the glorious restoration of his Majesty — God save him!”
The fellow spoke, of course, from his own point of view. He was a glover and dealer in minor fopperies which did not thrive under republican austerity. Being astride of his hobby, he would have rambled on, descanting upon the open-handedness of courtiers and those who hung about a king, and the stinginess of those who favoured a Commonwealth, but something in the colonel’s face gave him pause.
“Why, sir,” he cried, “you seem took aback. They’d not be friends of yours, these traitorous fellows?”
He would have recalled the words no sooner were they uttered, terrified by the sudden wrath that seemed to blaze upon him from the ruffler’s eyes.
“Friends of mine, d’ye say, you greasy hog?”
The colonel glared a moment, looked as if he would strike the citizen, then swung on his heel and strode briskly away.
Thus had the last door been slammed in his face by Fortune, and his own escape from being caught in it as it closed had been of the narrowest. Indeed, he was by no means sure even now that all was well. He had kept company with those two plotters, and when that was coupled with his antecedents, provided these should become known, it might prove enough to send him to share their fate, which, after all, would be none so great an injustice seeing what his intentions had been. It may be that his consciousness of those intentions magnified his apprehension of the doom that overhung him. He saw Mrs. Bankes demanding payment now by means of a threat more formidable than that of merely turning him out of doors or handing him over to the law for debt. She had greedily eyed that jewel in his ear more than once when insisting that he should pay his growing score. At last, it seemed to him, the hour was come against which he had treasured up that ruby. It was all that had stood between himself and utter destitution, if not, indeed, the very gallows.
Wearily, then, he took his dejected way down Cheapside, looking for a likely shop in which to transmute that ruby into gold. The street, ever a busy one, was more than ordinarily thronged at present, the usual traffic being swelled by the many people of wealth who, taken with panic at the encroachment of the pestilence, were on their way to the Lord Mayor’s to obtain the exacted bills of health that should permit them to follow the example of the Court and remove themselves to the country. These, in their coaches and chairs, crowded the issues of almost every street from Wood Street to Ironmonger Lane.
To all this the colonel paid no heed. But one chair he met, coming westwards, was destined to draw his attention, in consequence of a wild-eyed fanatic who followed after it screaming foul denunciation.
“There goes one of those who have drawn the Lord’s judgment upon this impious city!” he was shouting; and men were halting to look where he pointed. “There sits a play-house wanton in her silks and velvets while the God-fearing go in rags, and the wrath of Heaven smites us with a sword of pestilence for the sins she brings among us.”
Two or three of the scurvy sort, that are ever on the watch for such opportunities, hung now upon the skirts of the fanatic.
“’Tis Sylvia Farquahrson of the Duke’s Playhouse, a daughter of Belial,” raged her persecutor. “’Tis for the sins of her kind that we are suffering, and shall suffer until the iniquities of this city shall be no more!”
He was alongside now of the chair, and thrusting forward his dirty, malevolent face to catch a glimpse of the woman he tormented. The knaves who had joined him were hustling the chairman, and the affair began to look as if it would have an ugly ending.
The colonel looked on, almost idly, all steeped as he was in the consideration of his own misfortunes, and thus the chair came abreast of him, and he had a glimpse of a woman’s white face of a rare loveliness, stamped now with a look of fear.
And then quite suddenly, emerging from the gathering passers-by, seeming almost to materialise on the spot, to come out of nowhere, appeared a tall gallant in a golden periwig and a blue velvet coat that was stiff with gold lace, a man no longer in his first youth, but of an extraordinary beauty of face and elegance of person. Two lackeys in livery followed at his heels, and a murmur ran through the crowd announcing his name.
“His Grace of Buckingham.”
Like a bolt from the blue he descended upon the fanatic, swung his gold-headed, beribboned ebony cane, and broke it in two across the zealot’s scurvy head, whilst his lackeys drove off the ruffians who had been threatening the chairmen.
Colonel Holles had stopped suddenly at sight of that gallant, and stood now gaping quite foolishly, a man profoundly amazed. People gathered round, and would have closed about the chair to gape and hinder in the aimless, stupid way of crowds. But the gentleman in blue stepped ahead, and waved the stump of cane that he still retained.
“Away! Give room!” he bade them, with the air of a prince speaking to his grooms, and so clove a passage in the gathering press through which the chairmen hurried after him with their burden.
The lackeys acted as a readguard; but none attempted to hinder or molest them, and none troubled to follow save only Colonel Holles. Mechanically he had turned, and, all else forgotten, stepped quickly after the chair, his eyes upon that splendid rescuer of threatened beauty.
Thus they came as far as Paternoster Row, where the traffic was slight. There the fine gentleman halted, and at a sign from him the men set down the chair. He advanced to the window of it, swept off his gold-laced hat, in which a drooping ostrich feather was held by a clasp of brilliants, and bowed until the curls of his peruke almost met across his face.
“I was never frightened in my life until to-day,” he said. “What imprudence, Sylvia, to show yourself in the City! None may call me devout, yet I thank Heaven I was there to save you from this peril.”
Holles stood by, looking on, none heeding him. He saw the lady in the chair lean forward, noted the white lustre of her beauty, and marvelled at the readiness with which she appeared to have recovered her composure. She was smiling slightly, a smile that curled her delicate lip and lent something hard and scornful to eyes that were naturally soft and gentle.
“Your Grace was very opportunely at hand,” was all she said; but there was a world of mocking meaning in her tone.
“I thank God for it and so may you, Sylvia,” was the quick answer.
“Is your Grace often east of Temple Bar?”
“Are you?” quoth his Grace, possibly for lack of better answer.
“So seldom that the coincidence transcends all that yourself or Mr. Dryden could have thought of for one of your plays.”
“Life is a marvellous coincident,” said he, as if determined not to perceive her raillery. “Coincidence is the salt that rescues existence from insipidity.”
“So? And it was to rescue that that you rescued me, and that you might rescue me no doubt you yourself contrived the danger.”
“Sylvia!” It was a cry of mingled pain and indignation. “Can you think it of me!”
“Think it of you! Lord! I knew it, sir, the moment I saw you take the stage at the proper cue, at what you would call the dramatic moment. Enter hero, very gallant! I was a fool in that I let myself be imposed upon by those other silly mummers, the first murderer and his myrmidons. Oh, sir, it was mightily contrived. It carried the groundlings in Cheapside quite off their feet, and they’ll talk of your brave carriage and mighty mien for a whole day at least. But you could scarce expect that it should cozen me, since I am in the play, as it were.”
It was said of him that he was the most impudent fello
w in England, this lovely, accomplished, foolish son of a man whose face had made his fortune. Yet under the whip of her raillery he stood in a hangdog attitude, utterly out of countenance.
“I vow — I vow you’re monstrously unjust,” he contrived at last to stammer. “You ever have and ever will think the worst of me.”
“Does your Grace wonder?” she asked him coolly.
“I would to Heaven I had left you to those knaves that persecuted you.”
“I wonder what turn the comedy would have taken had you failed to answer to your cue?” she mocked him. “Oh, but enough! I thank your grace for the entertainment, but since, as you see, it has proved unprofitable, I hope you will spare yourself the pains of providing another for me. After all, such amusement as it affords me scarce compensates for the trouble to which I am put by your clumsy contrivances. You get a forged message to me to send me into the City on a fool’s errand, and yet suppose I could be imposed upon by this paltry third act with its silly rescue of beauty in distress! Oh, sir, if you can take shame for anything, take shame for your invention. It explains the dulness of your plays.” She swung briskly to the foremost chairman. “Take up, Simon,” she bade him. “Let us on, and quickly, or I shall be late.”
She was obeyed and borne away, whilst his Grace stood crestfallen, white with anger, gnawing his lip, conscious that she had made him look a fool. Behind him his lackeys sought with pains to preserve a proper stolidity of countenance. At last he ground his heel in a sudden spasm of rage, and would have turned to follow, but that in that moment a hand touched his arm.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 510
