I know now that the sound, by giving my patron assurance that he whom he sought was not there, but in his closet, led to my admission; and that without that assurance my lord would have left me to wait at the door. As it was, he said nothing to me, but went on; and I following him in my innocence through the doorway, came, at the same moment he did, on a scene as rare as it is by me well remembered.
A SLIGHT GENTLEMAN AMBLED AND PACED IN FRONT OF A CHILD
We stood on the threshold of a wide and splendid gallery, set here and there with huge china vases, and hung with pictures; which even then I discerned to be of great beauty, and afterwards learned were of no less value. Letting my eyes travel down this vista, they paused naturally on a spot under one of the windows; where with his back to us and ribbons in his hands, a slight gentleman, who stooped somewhat and was dressed in black, ambled and paced in front of a child of four or five years old. The wintry sunlight which fell in cold bars on the floor, proved his progress to be more showy than real; nevertheless the child shrieked in its joy, and dancing, jerked the ribbons and waved a tiny whip. In answer, the gentleman whose long curled periwig bobbed oddly on his shoulders — he had his back to us — pranced more and more stoutly; though on legs a little thin and bent.
A long moment I stared at this picture, little thinking on what I gazed; nor was it until a gentleman seated at a side table not far from the pair, rose hurriedly from his chair and with a guttural exclamation came towards us, that I remarked this third occupant of the gallery. When I did so, it was to discern that he was angry, and that my lord was taken aback and disturbed. It even seemed to me that my patron made a hasty movement to withdraw. Before he could do so, however, or I who, behind him barred the way, could take the hint, the gentleman in black, warned of our presence by the other’s exclamation, turned to us, and still standing and holding the ribbons in his hands looked at us.
He had a long sallow face, which seemed the sallower for the dark heavy wig that fell round it; a large hooked nose and full peevish lips; with eyes both bright and morose. I am told that he seldom smiled, and never laughed, and that while the best tales of King Charles’s Court passed round him, he would stand abstracted, or on occasion wither the teller by a silent nod. The Court wits who dubbed my Lord Nottingham, Don Dismallo, could find no worse title for him. Yet that he had a well of humour, deeply hidden and rarely drawn upon, no one could doubt who saw him approach us, a flicker of dry amusement in his eyes giving the lie to his pursed-up lips and the grimness of his visage.
“Your Grace is always welcome,” he said, speaking in English a little broken and guttural. “And yet you might have come more à propos, I confess.”
“A thousand pardons, sir,” my lord answered, bowing until his knee well-nigh touched the ground. “I thought that you were in your closet, sir, or I should have taken your pleasure before I intruded.”
“But you have news?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ha! And this person” — he looked fixedly at me— “is concerned.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then, my Lord Buck—” and with that he turned and addressed the child who was still tugging at the ribbons, “Il faut partir! Do you hear me, you must go? Go, petit vaurien! I have business.”
The child looked at him boldly. “Faut il?” said he.
“Oui! oui! Say merci, and go.”
“Merci, Monsieur,” the boy answered. And then to us with a solemn nod. “J’ai eu sa Majesté for my chevaux!”
“Cheval! Cheval!” corrected the gentleman in black. “And be off.”
CHAPTER XXIV
Apprised by what I heard, not only that I stood in the Gallery of Kensington Court — a mansion which His Majesty had lately bought from Lord Nottingham, and made his favourite residence — but that the gentleman in black whom I had found so simply employed was no other than the King himself, I ask you to imagine with what interest I looked upon him. He whom the old King of France had dubbed in bitter derision, the “Little Squire of —— ,” and whom two revolutions had successfully created Stadtholder of Holland and Sovereign of these Isles, was at this time forty-six years old, already prematurely bent, and a prey to the asthma which afflicted his later life. Reserved in manner, and sombre, not to say melancholy, in aspect, hiding strong passions behind a pale mask of stoicism as chilling to his friends as it was baffling to his enemies, he was such as a youth spent under the eyes of watchful foes, and a manhood in the prosecution of weighty and secret designs, made him. Descended on the one side from William the Silent, on the other from the great Henry of France, he was thought to exhibit, in more moderate degree, the virtues and failings which marked those famous princes, and to represent, not in blood only, but in his fortunes, the two soldiers of the sixteenth century whose courage in disaster and skill in defeat still passed for a proverb; who, frequently beaten in the field, not seldom garnered the fruits of the campaign, and rose, Antæus-like, the stronger from every fall.
That, in all stations, as a private person, a Stadtholder and a King, his late Majesty remembered the noble sources whence he sprang, was proved, I think, not only by the exactness with which his life was wrought to the pattern of those old mottoes of his house, Sœvus tranquillus in Undis, and Tandem fit Surculus arbor, whereof the former was borne, I have read, by the Taciturn, and the latter by Maurice of Nassau — but of two other particulars of which I beg leave to mention. The first was that more majorum he took naturally and from the first the lead as the champion of the Protestant religion in Europe; the second, that though he had his birth in a republic, and was called to be King by election (so that it was no uncommon thing for some of his subjects to put slights upon him as little more than their equal — ay, and though he had to bear such affronts in silence), he had the true spirit and pride of a King born in the purple, and by right divine. Insomuch that many attributed to this the gloom and reserve of his manners; maintaining that these were assumed less as a shield against the malice of his enemies, than as a cloak to abate the familiarity of his friends.
And certainly some in speaking of him of late years belittle his birth no less than his exploits, when they call him Dutch William, and the like; speaking in terms unworthy of a sovereign, and as if he had drawn his blood from that merchant race, instead of — as the fact was — from the princely houses of Stuart, Bourbon, Nassau, and Medici; and from such ancestors as the noble Coligny and King Charles the Martyr. But of his birth, enough.
For the rest, having a story to tell, and not history to write, I refrain from recalling how great he was as a statesman, how resourceful as a strategist, how indomitable as a commander, how valiant when occasion required in the pitched field. Nor is it necessary, seeing that before the rise of my Lord Marlborough (who still survives, but alas, quantum mutatus ab illo!) he had no rival in any of these capacities, nor in the first will ever be excelled.
Nor, as a fact, looking on him in the flesh as I then did for the first time, can I say that I saw anything to betoken greatness, or the least outside evidence of the fiery spirit that twice in two great wars stayed all the power of Louis and of France; that saved Holland; that united all Europe in three great leagues; finally, that leaping the bounds of the probable, won a kingdom, only to hold it cheap, and a means to farther ends. I say I saw in him not the least trace of this, but only a plain, thin, grave, and rather peevish gentleman, in black and a large wig, who coughed much between his words, spoke with a foreign accent, and often lapsed into French or some strange tongue.
He waited until the door had fallen to behind the child, and the long gallery lay silent, and then bade my lord speak. “I breathe better here,” he said. “I hate small rooms. What is the news you have brought?”
“No good news, sir,” my patron answered. “And yet I can scarcely call it bad. In the country it will have a good effect.”
“Bien! But what is it?”
“I have seen Ferguson, sir.”
“Then you have seen a d —— d s
coundrel!” the King exclaimed, with an energy I had not expected from him; and, indeed, such outbreaks were rare with him. “He is arrested, then?”
“No, sir,” the Duke answered. “I trust, however, that he will be before night.”
“But if he be free, how came you in his company?” the King asked, somewhat sharply.
My lord hesitated, and seemed for a moment at a loss how to answer. Being behind him, I could not see his face, but I fancied that he grew red, and that the fourth person present, a stout, burly gentleman, marked with the small-pox, who had advanced and now stood near the King, was hard put to it not to smile. At last, “I received a letter, sir,” my lord said, speaking stiffly and with constraint, “purporting to come from a third person — —”
“Ah!” said the King, drawling the word, and nodding dry comprehension.
“On the faith of which, believing it to be from that other — if you understand, sir — —”
“I understand perfectly,” said the King, and coughed.
“I was induced,” my lord said doggedly, “to give the villain a meeting. And learned, sir, partly from him, and partly from this man here” — this more freely— “enough to corroborate the main particulars of Mr. Prendergast’s story.”
“Ah?” said the King. “Good. And the particulars?”
“That Sir George Barclay, the person mentioned by Mr. Prendergast, is giving nightly rendezvous in Covent Garden to persons mainly from France, who are being formed by him into a band; the design, as stated by Prendergast, to fall on your Majesty’s person in the lane between Fulham Green and the river on your returning from hunting.”
“Does he agree as to the names?” the King asked, looking at me.
“He knows no names, sir,” the Duke answered, “but he saw a number of the conspirators at the Seven Stars in Covent Garden last night, and heard them speak openly of a hunting party; with other things pointing the same way.”
“Was Barclay there?”
“He can speak to a person who I think can be identified as Barclay,” my lord answered. “He cannot speak to Charnock — —”
“That is the Oxford man?”
“Yes, sir — or Porter, or King; or the others by those names. But he can speak to two of them under the names by which Prendergast said that they were passing.”
“C’est tout! Well, it does not seem to me to be so simple!” the King said with a touch of impatience. “What is this person’s name, and who is he?”
The Duke told him that I had been Ferguson’s tool.
“That rogue is in it then?”
“He is privy to it,” the Duke answered.
His Majesty shrugged his shoulders, as if the answer annoyed him. “You English draw fine distinctions,” he said. “Whatever you do, however, let us have no repetition of the Lancashire fiasco. You will bear that in mind, my lord, if you please. Another of Taafe’s pseudo plots would do us more harm in the country than the loss of a battle in Flanders. Faugh! we have knaves at home, but you have a breed here — your Oates’s and your Taafes and your Fullers — for whom breaking on the wheel is too good!”
“There are rogues, sir, in all countries,” my lord answered somewhat tartly. “I do not know that we have a monopoly of them.”
“The Duke of Shrewsbury is right there, sir,” the gentleman behind the King who had not yet spoken, struck in, in a good-natured tone. “They are things of which there is no scarcity anywhere. I remember — —”
“Taisez! Taisez!” cried the King brusquely, cutting short his reminiscences — whereat the gentleman, smiling imperturbably, took snuff. “Tell me this. Is Sir John Fenwick implicated?”
“There may be evidence against him,” my lord answered cautiously.
The King sneered openly. “Yes,” he said. “I see Porter and Goodman and Charnock are guilty! But when it touches one of yourselves, my lord, then ‘There is evidence against him,’ or ‘It is a case of suspicion,’ or — oh, you all hang together!” And pursing up his lips he looked sourly at us. “You all hang together!” he repeated. “I stand to be shot at — c’est dommage. But touch a noble, and Gare la Noblesse!”
“You do us an injustice, sir,” my lord cried warmly. “I will answer for it — —”
“Oh, I do you an injustice, do I?” the King said, disregarding his last words. “Of course I do! Of course you are all faithful, most faithful. You have all taken the oath. But I tell you, my Lord Shrewsbury, the King to whom you swore allegiance, the King crowned in ‘89 was not William the Third, but Noblesse the first! La Noblesse! Yes, my lord, you may look at me, and as angrily as you like; but it was so. Par dieu et diable, you tie my hands! You tie my hands, you cling to my sword, you choke my purse! I had as much power in Holland as I have here. And more! And more!”
He would have gone farther, and with the same candour I think; but at that the gentleman who had interrupted him before, struck in again, addressing him rapidly in what I took to be Dutch, and doubtless pointing out the danger of too great openness. At any rate I took that to be the gist of his words, not only from his manner, but from the fact that when he had done — the King looking gloomy and answering nothing — he turned to my lord.
“The King trusts your Grace,” he said bluntly. “He has never said as much to an Englishman before. I am sure that the trust is well placed and that his Majesty’s feelings will go no farther.”
The Duke bowed. “Your Majesty authorises me to take the necessary steps then,” he said, speaking somewhat drily, but otherwise ignoring what had passed. “To secure your safety, sir, as well as to arrest the guilty, no time should be lost. Warrants should be issued immediately, and these persons taken up.”
“Before Ferguson can warn them,” the King said in his ordinary tone. “Yes, see to it, my lord; and let the Council be recalled. The guards, too, should be doubled, and the regiment Prendergast mentioned displaced. Cutts must look to that, and do you, my lord,” he continued rapidly, addressing the gentleman beside him, whom I now conjectured to be Lord Portland, “fetch him hither and lose no time. Take one of my coaches. It is a plot, if all be true, should do us good in the country. And that, I think, is your Grace’s opinion.”
“It should, sir. Doubtless, sir, we English have our faults; but we are not fond of assassins.”
“And you are confident that tins is no bubble?” the King said thoughtfully.
“Yes, sir, I am.”
By this time Lord Portland had withdrawn through a door at the farther end of the gallery. The King, taking a turn this way and that, with his hands clasped behind him, and his head bent low, so that his great wig almost hid his features, seemed to be lost in thought. After waiting a moment the Duke coughed, and this failing to attract the King’s attention, he ventured to address him. “There is another matter I have to mention to you, sir,” he said, with a touch of constraint in his tone.
The King paused in his walk, and looked sharply at him. “Ah, of course,” he said, nodding. “Did you see Lord Middleton.”
The Duke could not hide a start. “Lord Middleton, sir?” he faltered.
The King smiled coldly. “The letter,” he said, “was from him, I suppose?”
My lord rallied himself. “No, sir, it was not,” he answered, with a flash of spirit. “It purported to be from him.”
“Yet you went — wherever you went — thinking to see him?” his Majesty continued, smiling rather disagreeably.
“I did,” my lord answered, his tone betraying his agitation. “But to do nothing to the prejudice of your service, sir, and what I could to further your interests — short of giving him up. He is my relative.”
The King shrugged his shoulders.
“And for years,” my lord cried warmly, “was my intimate friend.”
The King shrugged his shoulders again. “We have fought that out before,” he said, with a sigh of weariness. “And more than once. For the rest in that connection and whatever others may say, Lord Shrewsbury has no ground to com
plain of me.”
“I have cause, sir, to do far otherwise!” the Duke answered in a tone suddenly changed and so full of emotion that it was not difficult to discern that he had forgotten my presence; which was not wonderful, as I stood behind him in the shadow of the doorway, whither out of modesty I had retreated. “God knows I remember it!” he continued. “Were it not for that, if I were not bound to your Majesty by more than common ties of gratitude, I should not be to-day in a service which — for which I am unfit! The daily duties of which, performed by other men with indifference or appetite, fill me with pity and distaste! the risks attending which — I speak without ceremony, sir — make me play the coward with myself a hundred times a day!”
“Cæsar,” the King said quietly, “lets none but Cæsar call him coward.”
Kindly as the words were uttered, and in a tone differing much from that which the King had hitherto used, the Duke took no heed of them. “Others wish for my place; God knows I wish they had it!” he cried, his agitation growing rather than decreasing. “Every hour, sir, I pray to be quit of the faction and perjury in which I live! Every hour I loathe more deeply the work I have to do and the people with whom I have to do it. I never go to my office but my gorge rises; nor leave it but I see the end. And yet I must stay in it! I must stay in it! I tell you, sir,” he continued impetuously, “on the day that you burned those letters you but freed me from one slavery to fling me into another!”
“Yet an honest one!” said the King in a peculiar tone.
My lord threw up his hands. “You have a right to say that, sir. But if anyone else — or, no I — I forget myself.”
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