Shrewsbury Part 24

"It should, sir. Doubtless, sir, we English have our faults; but we are not fond of a.s.sa.s.sins."

"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By this time Lord Portland had withdrawn through a door at the farther end of the gallery.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 complain 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. "G.o.d 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 grat.i.tude, 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 appet.i.te, 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!"

"Caesar," the King said quietly, "lets none but Caesar 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; G.o.d 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."

"Something has disturbed you," said the King intervening with much kindness. "Take time! And in the meanwhile, listen to me. As to the general distaste you express for my service, I will not, and I do not, do you the injustice to attribute it--whatever you say yourself--to your fears of what may happen in a possible event; I mean, _l'ancien regime rest.i.tue_. If such fears weighed so heavily with you, you would neither have signed the Invitation to me, nor come to me eight years ago. But I take it with perhaps some apprehensions of this kind, you have--and this is the real gist of the matter--a natural distaste for affairs, and a natural p.r.o.neness to be on good terms with all, rogues as well as good men. It irks you to sign a death-warrant, to send one to Newgate, and another to--bah, I forget the names of your prisons; to know that your friends abroad are not as well placed at St.

Germain's as they were at St. James's! You have no care to push an advantage, no anxiety to ruin a rival; you would rather trust a man than bind him. In a word, my lord, you have no taste for public life in dangerous and troubled times such as these; although perforce you have played a high part in it."

"Sir!" the Duke cried, with an anxiety and eagerness that touched me, "you know me better than I know myself. You see my failings, my unfitness; and surely, seeing them so clearly, you will not refuse to----"

"Release you?" the King said smiling. "That does not follow. For consider, my lord, you are not the only one in the world who pursues perforce a path for which he has little taste. To be King of England has a higher sound than to be Stadtholder of Holland. But to be a King and no King; to see your way clearly and be thwarted by those who see no fool of the field; to have France by the throat and be baffled for the lack of ten thousand men or a million guilders; above all, to be served by men who have made use of you--who have one foot on either sh.o.r.e, and having betrayed their old Master to gain their ends, would now betray you to save their necks. This, too, forms no bed of roses!

But I lie on it! I lie on it!" he concluded phlegmatically; and as he spoke he took a pinch of snuff. "In fine, my lord," he continued, "to be high, or what the world calls high, is to be unhappy."

The Duke sighed. "You, sir, have those qualities which fit you for your part," he said sadly. "I have not."

"Have I?"

The King said no more, but the gesture with which he held out his hands, as if he bade the other mark his feebleness, his short breath, his hacking cough, his pallor, had more meaning than many words. "No, my lord," he continued after a pause, "I cannot release you. I cannot afford to release you, because I cannot afford to release the one man who does not day by day betray me, and who never has betrayed me!"

"I would to heaven that you could say that!" the Duke cried, much moved.

"I can, my friend," the King answered, with a gesture of kindness. "It was nothing, and it is forgotten. I have long ceased to think of it.

But, _c'est vrai!_ I remember when I say I can trust no one else. I do my good Somers an injustice. He is a dry man, however, like myself, and poor company, and does not count for much."

My lord, contending with his feelings, did not answer, and the King who, while speaking, had seated himself in a high-backed chair, in which he looked frailer and more feeble than when on his legs, let a minute elapse before he resumed in a different and brisker tone, "And now tell me what has troubled our good Secretary to-day?"

"The Duke of Berwick, sir, is in London."

To my astonishment, and I have no doubt to the Duke's, the King merely nodded. "Ah!" he said. "Is he in this pretty plot, then?"

"I think not," the Duke answered. "But I should suppose----

"That he is here to take advantage of it," the King said. "Well, he is his uncle's own nephew. I suppose Ferguson sold him--as he has sold every one all his life?"

"Yes, sir. But not, I think, with the intention that I should carry out the bargain."

"Eh?"

"It is a long tale, sir," the Duke said rather wearily. "And having given your Majesty the information----"

"You need not tell the tale? Well, no, for I can guess it!" the King answered. "The old rogue, I suppose, was for ruining you with me if you hid the news; and for d.a.m.ning you with King James if you informed: which latter he did not think likely, but that instead he would have a hold on you."

The Duke in a tone of much surprise acknowledged that he had guessed rightly.

"Well, it was a pretty dilemma," said the King with a sort of gusto.

"And where is M. FitzJames in hiding?"

"At Dr. Lloyd's in Hogsden Gardens," my lord answered. But he could not conceal his gloom.

"He must be arrested," said the King. "A warrant must be issued. Will you see to it with the others?"

My lord a.s.sented; but with such a sigh that it required no wizard to discern both the cloud that hung over him, and also that now he had done what Ferguson had dared him to do, the consequences lay heavy on him. The King, after considering him a moment with a singular expression, between amus.e.m.e.nt and reproach, broke the silence.

"See here, my lord," he said with good nature. "I will tell you what to do. Sit down now, and here, and write a line to Monsieur, bidding him begone; and send it by a private hand, and the warrant by a messenger an hour later."

The Duke stared at the King in astonishment. "But he will escape, sir," he faltered.

"So much the better," the King answered indifferently. "If we take him what are we to do with him? Besides, to tell you the truth, my lord, he did me a great service eight years ago."

"He, sir?"

"Yes," said the King smiling. "He induced his father to fly the country, when, if he had stayed--but you know that story. So do you warn him, and the sooner he is beyond La Manche the better."

The Duke looked unhappy. "I dare not do it, sir," he said at last, after a pause.

"Dare not do it? When I authorise it? Why not?"