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ODDSFISH!
BY
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
Author of "Come Rack! Come Rope!", "Lord of the World," "Initiation,"
etc.
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1914
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
I wish to express my gratitude for great help received in the writing of
this book to Miss MacDermot, Miss Stearne and others, as well as to
three friends who submitted to hearing it read aloud in manuscript, and
who assisted me by their criticisms and suggestions.
Further, I think it worth saying that in all historical episodes in this
book I have taken pains to be as accurate as possible. The various
plots, the political movements, and the closing scenes of Charles II's
life are here described with as much fidelity to truth as is compatible
with historical romance. In particular, I do not think that the King
himself is represented as doing or saying anything--except of course to
my fictitious personages--to which sound history does not testify. I
have also taken considerable pains in the topographical descriptions of
Whitehall.
PROLOGUE
The day from which I reckon the beginning of all those adventures which
occupied me in the Courts of England and France and elsewhere, was the
first day of May in the year sixteen hundred and seventy-eight--the day,
that is, on which my Lord Abbot carried me from St. Paul's-without-the-
Walls to the Vatican Palace, to see our Most Holy Lord Innocent the
Eleventh.
It had been a very hot day in Rome, as was to be expected at that
season; and I had stayed in the cloister in the cool, as my Lord Abbot
had bidden me, not knowing whether it would be on that day or another,
or, indeed, on any at all, that His Holiness would send for me. I knew
that my Lord Abbot had been to the Vatican again and again on the
business; and had spoken of me, as he said he would, not to the Holy
Father only, but to the Cardinal Secretary of State and to others; but I
did not know, and he did not tell me, as to whether that business had
been prosperous; though I think he must have known long before how it
would end. An hour before _Ave Maria_, then, he sent to me, as I walked
in the cloisters, and when I came to him, told me, all short, to dress
myself in my old secular clothes, as fine as I could, and to be ready to
ride with him in half an hour, because our Most Holy Lord had consented
to receive me one hour after _Ave Maria_. He said nothing more to me
than that; he did not tell me how I was to bear myself, nor what I was
to say, neither as I stood in his cell, nor as we rode as fast as we
could, with the servants before and behind, into Rome and through the
streets of it. I knew nothing more than this--that since neither I nor
my novice-master were in the least satisfied as to my vocation, and
since I had considerable estates of my own in France (though I was an
Englishman altogether on my father's side), and could speak both French
and English with equal ease, and Italian and Spanish tolerably--that
since, in short, I was a very well-educated young gentleman, and looked
more than my years, and bore myself--(so I was told)--with ease and
discretion in any company, and could act a part if it were required of
me--I might perhaps be of better service to the Church in some secular
employment than in sacred. This was all that I knew. The rest my Lord
Abbot left to my own wits to understand, and to our Holy Father, if he
would, to discover to me: and that, indeed, was presently what he did.
* * * * *
I had been within the Vatican before three or four times, both when I
had first come to Rome four years ago, and once as attendant upon my
Lord Abbot; but never before had I felt of such importance within those
walls; for this time it was myself to whom the Holy Father was to give
audience, and not merely to one in whose company I was. I was in secular
clothes too--the peruke, buckles, sword, and all the rest, which I had
laid aside two years ago, though these were a little old and
tarnished--and I bore myself as young men will (for I was only
twenty-one years old at that time), with an air and a swing; though my
heart beat a little faster as we passed through the great rooms, after
leaving our cloaks in an antechamber and arranging our dress after the
ride; and at last were bidden to sit down while the young Monsignore who
had received us in the last saloon went in to know if the Holy Father
were ready to see us.
It was a smaller room--this in which we sat--than the others through
which we had passed, and in which the crimson liveried servants were;
and its walls were all covered with hangings from cornice to floor. That
which was opposite to me presented, I remember, Jacob receiving the
blessing which his brother Esau should have had; and I wondered, as I
sat there, whether I myself were come, as Jacob, to get a blessing to
which I had no right. Idly Lord Abbot said nothing at all; for he was a
stout man and a little out of breath; and almost before he had got it
again, and before I was sure as to whether I were more like to the liar
Jacob, who won a blessing when he should not, or to unspiritual Esau,
who lost a blessing which he should have had, the young Monsignore in
his purple came back again, and, bowing so low that we saw the little
tonsure on the top of his head, beckoned to us to enter.
* * * * *
By the time that, behind my Lord Abbot, I had performed the three
genuflections and, at the third, was kissing the ring of our Most Holy
Lord, I had already taken into my mind something of the room I was in
and of him who sat there, wheeled round in his chair to greet us. The
room was far more plain than I had thought to find it, though pretty
rich too. The walls had sacred hangings upon them; but it was so dark
with the shuttered windows that I could not make out very well what
their subjects were. A dozen damask and gilt chairs stood round the
walls, and three or four tables; and, in the centre of all, where I was
now arrived, stood the greatest table of all, carved of some black wood,
and at the middle of one side the chair in which sat the Holy Father
himself.
He had very kind but very piercing eyes: this was the first thing that I
thought; his hair beneath his cap, as well as his beard, was all
iron-grey; his complexion was a little sallow, and seemed all the more
sallow because of his red velvet cap and white soutane; (for he wore no
cloak because of the heat). As soon as I had kissed his ring he bade me
stand up--(speaking in Italian, as he did all through the audience)--and
then beckoned me to a chair opposite to his, and my Lord Abbot to
another on one side. And then at once he went on to speak of the
business on which we were come--as if he knew all about it, and had no
time to spend on compliments.
Now our Holy Father Innocent the Eleventh was, I suppose, one of the
greatest men that ever sat in Peter's Seat. I would not speak evil, if I
could help it, of any of Christ's Vicars; but this at least I may
say--that Pope Innocent reformed a number of things that sorely needed
it. He would have no nepotism at the Papal Court; men stood or fell by
their own merits: so I knew very well that my estates in France, even
if they had been ten times as great, would serve me nothing at all. He
was very humble too--(he asked pardon, it was said, even of his own
servants if he troubled them)--so I knew that no swashbuckling air on my
part would do me anything but harm--(and, indeed, that was all laid
aside, willy nilly, so soon as I came in)--since, like all humble men he
esteemed the pride, even of kings, at exactly its proper worth, which is
nothing at all. He was, too, a man of great spirituality, so I knew that
my having come to St. Paul's as a novice and now wishing to leave it
again, would scarcely exalt me in his eyes. I felt then a very poor
creature indeed as I sat there and listened to him.
"This, then, is Master Roger Mallock," he said to my Lord Abbot, "of
whom your Lordship spoke to me."
"This is he, Holy Father," said my Lord.
"He has been a novice for two years then; and his superiors are not sure
of his vocation?"
"Yes, Holy Father."
The Pope looked again at me then, and I dropped my eyes.
"And you yourself, my son?" he asked.
"Holy Father," I said, "I am sure that at present I have no vocation.
What God may give me in the future I do not know. I only know what He
has not given me in the present."
Innocent tightened his lips at that; but I think it was to prevent
himself smiling.
"And he is an English gentleman," he went on presently, "and he has
estates in France that bring him in above twenty thousand francs yearly;
and he is twenty-one years of age; and he is accustomed to all kinds of
society, and he is a devoted son of Holy Church, and he speaks French
and English and Italian and Spanish and German--"
"No, Holy Father, not German--except a few words," I said.
"And he is discreet and courageous and virtuous--"
"Holy Father--" I began in distress, for I thought he was mocking me.
"And he desires nothing; better than to serve his spiritual superiors
in any employment to which they may put him--Eh, my son?"
I looked into the Pope's face and down again; but I said nothing.
"Eh, my son?" he said again with a certain sharpness.
"Holy Father, I have been taught never to contradict my superiors; but
indeed in this--"
"Bravo!" said Innocent.
Then he turned to my Lord Abbot, as if I were no longer in the room.
"The question," he said, "is not only whether this young gentleman is
capable of hearing everything and saying nothing, of preserving his
virtue, of handling locked caskets without even desiring to look inside
unless it is his business, of living in the world yet not being of
it--but whether he is willing to do all this without being paid for
it--except perhaps his bare expenses."
My Lord Abbot said nothing.
"I can have a thousand paid servants," said Innocent, "who are worth
exactly their wages; but, since money cannot buy virtue or discretion or
courage, in such servants I cannot demand those things. And I can have a
thousand foolish servants who could earn no wages anywhere because of
their foolishness, and these never have discretion and not often either
virtue or courage. But what I wish is to have servants who are as wise
sons to me--who have all these things, and will use them for love's
sake--for the love of Holy Church and of Christ and His Mother, and who
will be content with the wages that These give."
He stopped suddenly and looked at me quickly again; and my heart burned
in my breast; for this that he was saying was all that I most desired;
and I saw by that that my talk must have been reported to him. I loved
Holy Church then, and the cause of Jesus and Mary, as young men do love,
and as I hope to love till I die. I asked nothing better than to serve
such causes as these even to death. It was not for lack of ardour that I
wished to leave the monastery; it was because, truthfully, I had a
fever on me of greater activity; because, truthfully, I was not sure of
my vocation; because, truthfully, I doubted whether such gifts and such
wealth and such education as were mine could not be used better in the
world than in the cloister. I knew that I could take a place to-morrow
in either the French or the English Court, without disgracing myself or
others; and it was precisely of this that I had spoken to my Lord Abbot;
and here was our Holy Father himself putting into words those very
ambitions that I had. I met his eyes, and knew that I was beginning to
flush.
"Well, my son?" he said.
"Holy Father," I said, "my virtues and capacities, such as they are, I
must leave to my superiors. But my desires are those of which your
Holiness has spoken. I ask no wages: I ask only to be allowed to serve
whatever cause my superiors may assign to me."
He continued to look at me, and for very shame I presently dropped my
eyes again.
"Well, my Lord Abbot?" he said again. "Let us hear what you have to
say."
Then my lord began to speak; and before he was half-done I wished myself
anywhere else in the world. For, as great men alone are capable, he
could be as lavish of praise as of blame. He said that I was all that of
which His Holiness had spoken; that I had been obedient and exact as a
novice; and he said other things too of which even under obedience I
could not speak. Then too he added what he had never said to me before,
that he was not sure that I had no vocation; but that since God spoke
through exterior circumstances as well as through interior drawings, His
Holy Will seemed to point, at least at present, to a life in the world
for me; that he was sure I would be as obedient there as here; that I
had learned not only to use my tongue but, what is much harder, to hold
it. And he ended by begging the Holy Father to take me into his service
and to use me in the ways in which perhaps I might be useful. All this,
of course, I now understand to have been rehearsed before; but just at
that time I had no more than a suspicion that this was so.
When he had finished, His Holiness once more turned and looked at me;
and I upon the ground: and then at last he spoke.
"My son," he said, "you have heard what his Reverence has said of you;
and I too have heard it, and not to-day for the first time. It seems
that you are right in thinking that for the present at any rate you have
no vocation to Holy Religion. Well, then, the question is as to what is
your Vocation, for Our Lord never leaves any man without a Vocation of
some kind. You are very young for such service as that on which we think
to send you; for we shall send you to the Court of England first, and
then perhaps now and again to France; but you look five years at least
older than your age, and, I am told, have ten times its discretion. I
need not tell you that you will have no very heavy mission given to you
at first; you must mix freely with the world and use your wits and see
what is best to be done, sending back reports to the Cardinal Secretary.
You will live at your own charges, as you yourself have said that you
wished to do; but you may draw upon us here for any journeys that you
may undertake upon our business up to a certain amount. In a word you
will be in the diplomatic service of the Holy See, though without direct
office or commission beyond that which I now give you myself. You will
have full liberty to make a career for yourself in the English or French
Courts, so long as this comes always second to your service to
ourselves. If you acquit yourself well--in the way which will be
explained to you later--you may make a career with us too, and will have
rewards if you want them: but for the present there must be no talk of
that. As you must be in the world yet not of it; so you must be of the
Court of Rome yet not in it. It is a delicate position that you will
hold; and, to compensate for the informality of it, you will have the
more liberty on your side, to make a career, as I have said, or to
marry, if God calls you to that, or in any other way.... Does that
content you, my son?"
I do not know what I said; for all that the Holy Father had told me was
what I myself had said to my Lord Abbot. I knew that affairs in England
were in a very strange condition, that the Duke of York who was next
heir to the throne was a Catholic, and that Charles himself was
favourably disposed to us; and I knew a number of other things too which
will appear in the course of this tale; and I had said to my Lord that
sometimes even a hair's weight will make a balance tip; and had asked
again and again if I might not, with my advantages, such as they were,
be of more service to Holy Church in a more worldly place than the
cloister; and now here was our Most Holy Lord himself granting and
confirming all that I had wished.
"There! there!" he said to me presently, when I had tried to say what
was in my heart. "Go and serve God in this way as well as you can; and
remember that you can be as well sanctified in the Court of a King as in
a cloister--and better, if it is the Court that is your Vocation. Go and
do your best, my son; and we shall see what you can make of it."
* * * * *
When we were outside again I saw that my Lord Abbot's face was all
suffused, as was my own, for there was something strangely fiery and
keen and holy about Innocent; but he said nothing, except that we must
now go and see His Eminence the Cardinal Secretary of State, for I was
to receive my more particular instructions from him.
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
I came to London on the fifteenth of June, having left it seven years
before in company with my father, to go to Paris, two years before he
died.
It was drawing on to sunset as we rode up through the Southwark fields
and, at the top of a little eminence in the ground saw for the first
time plainly all the City displayed before us.
We came along the Kent road, having caught sight again and again of such
spires as had risen after the Great Fire, and of the smoke that rose
from the chimneys; but I may say that I was astonished at the progress
the builders had made from what I could remember of seven years before.
Then there had still been left great open spaces where there should have
been none; now it was a city once more; and even the Cathedral shewed
its walls and a few roofs above the houses. The steeples too of Sir
Christopher Wren's new churches pricked everywhere; though I saw later
that there was yet much building to be done, both in these and in many
of the greater houses. My man James rode with me; (for I had been
careful not to form too great intimacies with the party with whom I had
ridden from Dover); and I remarked to him upon the matter.
"And there, sir," he said to me, pointing to it, "is the monument no
doubt that they have raised to it."
And so we found it to be a day or two later--a tall pillar, with an
inscription upon it saying that the Fire had been caused by the
Papists--a black lie, as every honest man knows.
By the time that we came to London Bridge the sun was yet lower, setting
in a glory of crimson, so that it was hard to see against it much of
Westminster, across the Southwark marshes and the river; but yet I could
make out the roofs of the Abbey and of some of the great buildings of
Whitehall, where my adventures, I thought, were to lie. But between
that and the other end of London Bridge, just before we set foot on it,
the rest of the City was plain enough; and, indeed, it was a splendid
sight to see the river, all, as it seemed, of molten gold with the
barges and the wherries plying upon it, and the great houses on the
banks and their gardens coming down to the water-gates, and the forest
of chimneys and roofs and steeples behind, and all of a translucent blue
colour. The sounds of the City, too, came to us plainly across the
water--the chiming of bells and the firing of some sunset gun, and even
the noise of wheels and the barking of dogs and the crowing of
cocks--all in a soft medley of human music that made my heart rejoice;
for in spite of my long exile abroad and my French and Italianate
manners, I counted myself always an Englishman.
Now the first design that I had in mind, and for which I had made my
dispositions, was to go straight to my lodging that had been secured for
me by my cousin Tom Jermyn, where he was to meet me, and where he too
would lie that night. It was with him that I was to present my letters
at Whitehall in a day or two, after I had bought my clothes and other
necessaries; in short he was to be my _cicerone_ for a while--for he was
a Catholic too, like myself--but he was not to be told that I had come
on any mission at all, until at anyrate I had well tested his
discretion.
* * * * *
Now the mission on which I had been instructed by the Cardinal Secretary
was in one sense a very light one, and in another a very difficult one;
for its express duties were of the smallest.
Affairs in England at this time were in a very strange condition. First,
the Duke of York, who was heir to the throne, was a declared Catholic;
and then the King himself was next door to one, in heart at anyrate.
Certainly he had never been reconciled to the Church, though the report
among some was that he had been, during his life in Paris: but in heart,
as I have said, he was one, and waited only for a favourable occasion to
declare himself. For he had been so bold seventeen years before, as to
send to Rome a scheme by which the Church of England was to be reunited
to Rome under certain conditions, as that the mass, or parts of it,
should be read in English, that the Protestant clergy who would submit
to ordination should be allowed to keep their wives, and other matters
of that kind. His answer from Rome, sent by word of mouth only, was that
no scheme could be nearer to the heart of His Holiness; but that he must
not be too precipitate. Let him first show that his subjects were with
him in his laudable desires; and then perhaps the terms of the matter
might be spoken of again. For the King himself, and indeed even the Duke
too at this time (though later he amended his life), Catholic in spirit,
were scarce Christian in life. The ladies of the Court then must not be
overlooked, for they as much as any statesman, and some think, more,
controlled the king and his brother very greatly at this time.
But this was not all. Next, the King was embroiled in a great number of
ways. The more extreme of his Protestant subjects feared and hated the
Catholic Church as much as good Catholics hate and fear the Devil; and
although for the present our people had great liberty both at Court and
elsewhere, no man could tell when that liberty might be curtailed. And,
indeed, it had been to a great part already curtailed five years before
by the Test Act, forbidding the Catholics to hold any high place at the
Court or elsewhere, though this was largely evaded. There was even a
movement among some of them, and among the most important of them too,
in the House of Lords and elsewhere, to exclude the Duke of York from
the succession; and they advanced amongst themselves in support of this
the fear that a French army might be brought in to subdue England to the
Church. And, worst of all, as I had learned privately in Rome, there was
some substance in their fear, though few else knew it; since the King
was in private treaty with Louis for this very purpose. Again, a further
embroilment lay in the propositions that had been made privately to the
King that he should rid himself of his Queen--Catherine--on the pretext
that she had borne no child to him, and could not, and marry instead
some Protestant princess. Lastly, and most important of all, so greatly
was Charles turned towards the Church, that he had begged more than
once, and again lately, that a priest might be sent to him to be always
at hand, in the event of his sudden sickness, whom none else knew to be
a priest; and it was this last matter, I think, that had determined the
Holy Father to let me go, as I had wished, though I was no priest, to
see how the King would bear himself to me; and then, perhaps afterwards,
a priest might be sent as he desired.
This then was the mission on which I was come to London.
I was to present myself at Court and place myself at His Majesty's
disposal. The letters that I carried were no more than such as any
gentleman might bring with him; but the King had been told beforehand
who I was, and that I was come to be a messenger or a go-between if he
so wished, with him and Rome. So much the King was told, and the Duke.
But on my side I was told a little more--that I was to do my utmost, if
the King were pleased with me, to further his conversion and his
declaration of himself as a Catholic; that I was to mix with all kinds
of folks, and observe what men really thought of all such matters as
these, and send my reports regularly to Rome; that I was to place myself
at the King's service in any way that I could--in short that I was to
follow my discretion and do, as a layman may sometimes even more than a
priest, all that was in my power for the furtherance of the Catholic
cause.
Now it may be wondered perhaps how it was that I, who was so young,
should be entrusted with such matters as these. Here then, I am bound to
say, however immodest it may appear, that I have had always the art of
making friends easily and of commending myself quickly. I had lived too
in the societies of both Paris and Rome; and I had the accomplishments
of a gentleman as well as his blood. I was thought a pleasant fellow,
that is to say, who could make himself agreeable; and I certainly had
too--and I am not ashamed to say this--but one single ambition in the
world, and that was to serve God's cause: and these things do not always
go together in this world. Last of all, it must be observed, that no
very weighty secrets were entrusted to me: I bore no letters; and I had
been told no more of affairs in general than such as any quick and
intelligent man might pick up for himself. Even should I prove
untrustworthy or indiscreet, or even turn traitor, no very great harm
would be done. If, upon the other hand, I proved ready and capable, all
that I could learn in England and, later perhaps, in France, would serve
me well in the carrying out of weightier designs that might then be
given into my charge.
Such then I was; and such was my mission, on this fifteenth day of June,
as I rode up with James my man--a servant found for me in Rome, who had
once been in the service of my Lord Stafford--to the door of the
lodgings engaged for me in Covent Garden Piazza above a jeweller's shop.
* * * * *
It was after sunset that we came there; and all the way along the
Strand, until we nearly reached the York Stairs, I had said nothing to
my man, but had used my eyes instead, striving to remember what I could
of seven years before. The houses of great folk were for the most part
on my left--Italianate in design, with the river seen between them, and
lesser houses, of the architecture that is called "magpie," on the
right. The way was very foul, for there had been rain that morning, and
there seemed nothing to carry the filth away: in places faggots had been
thrown down to enable carts to pass over. The Strand was very full of
folk of all kinds going back to their houses for supper.
Covent Garden Piazza was a fairer place altogether. It was enclosed in
railings, and a sun-dial stood in the centre; and on the south was the
space for the market, with a cobbled pavement. To the east of St. Paul's
Church stood the greater houses, built on arcades, where many
fashionable people of the Court lived or had their lodgings, and it was
in one of these that I too was to lodge: for I had bidden my Cousin
Jermyn to do the best he could for me, and his letter had reached me at
Dover, telling me to what place I was to come.
As I sat on my horse, waiting while my man went in to one of the
doorways to inquire, a gentleman ran suddenly out of another, with no
hat on his head.
"Why, you are my Cousin Roger, are you not?" he cried from the steps.
"Then you are my Cousin Tom Jermyn," I said.
"The very man!" he cried back; and ran down to hold my stirrup.
All the way up the stairs he was talking and I was observing him. He
seemed a hearty kind of fellow enough, with a sunburnt face from living
in the country; and he wore his own hair. He was still in riding-dress;
and he told me, before we had reached the first landing, that he was
come but an hour ago from his house at Hare Street, in Hertfordshire.
"And I have brought little Dorothy with me," he cried. "You remember
little Dorothy? She is a lady of quality now, aged no less than sixteen;
and is come up to renew her fal-lals for her cousin's arrival; for you
must come down with us to Hare Street when your business is done."
I cannot say that even after all this heartiness, I thought very much of
my Cousin Tom. He spoke too loud, I thought, on the common stair: but I
forgot all that when I came into the room that was already lighted with
a pair of wax candles and set eyes on my Cousin Dorothy, who stood up as
we came in, still in her riding-dress, with her whip and gloves on the
table. Now let me once and for all describe my Cousin Dorothy; and then
I need say no more. She was sixteen years old at this time--as her
father had just told me. She was of a pale skin, with blue eyes and
black lashes and black hair; but she too was greatly sunburnt, with the
haymaking (as her father presently told me again; for she spoke very
little after we had saluted one another). She was in a green skirt and a
skirted doublet of the same colour, and wore a green hat with a white
feather; but those things I did not remember till I was gone to bed and
was thinking of her. It is a hard business for a lover to speak as he
should of the maid who first taught him his lessons in that art; but I
think it was her silence, and the look in her eyes, that embodied for me
at first what I found so dear afterwards. She was neither tall nor
short; she was very slender; and she moved without noise. All these
things I write down now from my remembrance of the observations that I
made afterwards. It would be foolish to say that I loved her so soon as
I saw her; for no man does that in reality, whatever he may say of it
later; I was aware only that here was a maid whose presence made the
little room very pleasant to me, and with whom taking supper would be
something more than the swallowing of food and drink.
The rooms of my lodging were good enough, as I saw when my Cousin Tom
flung open the doors to show me them all. They were three in number:
this room into which we had first come from the stairs was hung in green
damask, with candles in sconces between the panels of the stuff; the
door on the left opened into the room where my Cousin Dorothy would lie,
with her maid; and that on the right my Cousin Tom and I would share
between us. The windows of all three looked out upon the piazza.
He said a great number of times that he was sorry that he had brought up
his daughter without giving me warning; but that the maid had set her
heart on it and would take no denial. (This I presently discovered to be
wholly false.) For a week, he said, and no more, I should be
discommoded; and after that, when I had come back from Hare Street, I
should be able to entertain my friends in peace.
I answered him, of course, with the proper compliments; but I liked his
manner less than ever. He was too boisterous, I thought, on a first
meeting; and too hearty in his expressions of goodwill. When we were set
down to supper, he began again, with what I thought a good deal of
indiscretion.
"So you are come from Rome!" he said loudly, "and from a monastery too,
as I hear. Well, no man loves a monk more than I do--in their
monasteries; but I am glad you are not to be one. We will teach him
better here--eh, Dolly, my dear?"
It was only my man James who was in the room when he spoke; yet as soon
as he was gone out to fetch another dish I thought I had best say a
word.
"Cousin," I said, "with your leave; I think it best not to speak of
monasteries--"
He interrupted me.
"Why, you need fear nothing," he cried. "We Catholics are all in the
fashion these days. Why, there is Mr. Huddleston that goes about in his
priest's habit: and the Capuchins at St. James', and the very Jesuits
too--"
"I think it would be better not--" I began.
"Oho!" cried Cousin Tom. "That is in the wind, is it? Why, I'll be as
mum as a mouse!"
I did not know what he meant; and I supposed that he did not know
himself, unless indeed by sheer blundering he had pitched upon the truth
that I was come on a mission. But so soon as James was in the room
again, he began upon the other tack, and talked of Prince this and the
Duke of that, with whom I might be supposed to be on terms of intimacy,
winking on me all the while, so that my man saw it. However, I answered
him civilly. I could do no less; for he was my cousin, and in a manner
my host; and, most of all, I must depend upon him for a few days at
least, to tell me how I must set about my audiences and my personal
affairs.
My Cousin Dorothy said little or nothing all this time; but sat with
downcast eyes, giving a look now and again at the table to see if we had
all that we needed; for she was housekeeper at Hare Street, her mother
having died ten years before, and she herself being the only child. She
did not look at me at all, or shew any displeasure; and yet it seemed to
me that she was not best pleased with her father's manners. Once,
towards the end of supper, when James came behind him with the wine-jug,
I saw her shake her head at him; and, indeed, Cousin Tom was already
pretty red in the face with all that he had drunk.
When the meal was finished at last, and the table cleared, and the
servants gone downstairs to their own supper, he began again with his
talk, stretching his legs in the window-seat where he sat; while I sat
still in my chair wheeled away from the table, and my Cousin Dorothy
went in and out of the rooms, bestowing the luggage that she and her
maid had unpacked. I watched her as she went to and fro, telling myself
(as some lads will, who pride themselves on being come to manhood) that
she was only a little maid.
"As to your affairs, Cousin Roger," he said, "they will soon be
determined. I take it that when you have kissed His Majesty's hand and
paid your duty to the Duke, you will have done all that you should for
the present."
I did not contradict him; but he was not to be restrained.
"You are come to seek your fortune, no doubt:" (he winked on me again as
he said this, to draw attention to his discretion); "and there is
nothing else in the world but that, no doubt, that brings you to
England." (He said this with an evident irony that even a child would
have understood.) "Not that you have not a very pretty fortune already:
I understand that it is near upon a thousand pounds a year; and great
estates in Normandy too, when you shall be twenty-eight years old. I am
right, am I not?"
Now he was right; but I wondered that he should take such pains to know
it all.
"There or thereabouts," I said.
"That condition of twenty-eight years is a strange one," he went on.
"Now what made your poor father fix upon that, I wonder?"
I told him that my father held that a man's life went by sevens, and
that every man was a boy till he was twenty-one, a fool till he was
twenty-eight, and a man, by God's grace, after that.
"Ah, that was it, was it?" he said, stretching his legs yet further. "I
have often wondered as to how that was."
And that shewed me that his mind must have run a good deal upon my
fortunes; but as yet I did not understand the reason.
When, presently, my Cousin Dorothy had shut the door of her room, and
my man was gone down again to the horses, he began again on his old
tack.
"You and I, Cousin Roger," he said, "will soon understand one another. I
knew that as soon as I clapped eyes on you. Come, tell me what your
business is here. I'm as close as the grave over a friend's secrets."
"My dear cousin," I said, "I do not know what business you mean. Was not
my letter explicit enough? I am come to live here as an English
gentleman. What other business should I have?"
He winked again at me.
"Yes, yes," he said. "And now having done your duty to your discretion,
do it to your friendship for me too. I know very well that a man who
comes from a Roman monastery, with letters from the French ambassador,
does not come for nothing. Is there some new scheme on hand?--for the
honour of Holy Church, no doubt?"
I thanked God then that I had said not one word in my letter that
Shaftesbury himself might not have read. I had been in two minds about
it; but had determined to wait until I saw my cousin and learned for
myself what kind of man he was.
"My dear cousin," I said again, "even if I had come on some such
mission, I should assure you, as I do now, that it was nothing of the
kind. How else could such missions be kept secret at all? It would be a
_secretum commissum_ in any case; as the theologians would say. I can
but repeat what I said in my letter to you; and, if you will think of
it, you will see that it is not likely that any matter of importance
would be entrusted to a young man of my age."
That seemed to quiet him. I have often noticed that to appeal to the
experience and wisdom of a fool is the surest way to content him.
He began then to talk of the Court; and it would not be decent of me to
record even a tenth part of the gossip he told me regarding the
corruption that prevailed in Whitehall. Much of it was no doubt true;
and a great deal more than he told me in some matters; but it came
pouring out from him, and with such evident pleasure to himself, that it
was all I could do to preserve a pleasant face towards him. He told me
of the little orange-girl, Nell Gwyn, who was now just twenty-eight
years old; and how she lived here and there as the King gave her
houses--in Pall Mall, and in Sandford House in Chelsea, and at first at
the "Cock and Pie" in Drury Lane; and how her hair was of a reddish
brown, and how, when she laughed her eyes disappeared in her head; and
of the Duchess of Cleveland, that was once Mrs. Palmer and then my Lady
Castlemaine, now in France; and of the Duchess of Portsmouth, and her
son created Duke of Richmond three years ago; and of the mock marriage
that was celebrated, in my Lord Arlington's house at Euston, seven years
ago between her and the King. And these things were only the more decent
matters of which he spoke; and of all he spoke with that kind of
chuckling pleasure that a heavy country squire usually shews in such
things, so that I nearly hated him as he sat there. For to myself such
things seem infinitely sorrowful; and all the more so in such a man as
the King was; and they seemed the more sorrowful the more that I knew of
him later; for he had so much of the supernatural in him after all, and
knew what he did.
Then presently my Cousin Jermyn began upon the Duke; and at that I
nearly loosed my tongue at him altogether. For I knew very well that the
guilt of the Duke was heavier even than the guilt of the King, since
James had the grace of the Sacraments to help him and the light of the
Faith to guide him. But I judged it better not to shew my anger, since I
was, as the Holy Father had told me, to be "in the world," though
interiorly not of it: and so I feigned sleep instead, and presently had
to snore aloud before my cousin could see it: and, as he stopped
speaking, my Cousin Dorothy came in to bid us good-night.
"Why, I have been half asleep," I said. "I am tired with my journey.
What were you saying, cousin?"
He leered again at that, as if to draw attention to his daughter's
presence.
"Why, we were talking of high matters of state," he said, "when you fell
asleep--matters too high for little maids to hear of. Give me a kiss, my
dear."
When she came to me, I kissed her on the forehead, and not upon the
cheek which she offered me.
"Is that the Italian custom?" cried my Cousin Tom. "Why, we can teach
you better than that--eh, Dolly?"
She said nothing to that; but looked at me a little anxiously and then
at the table where the wine stood; and I thought that I understood her.
"Well, cousin," I said, "I, too, had best be off to bed. We had best
both go. I do not want to lie awake half the night; and if you wake me
when you come to bed, I shall not sleep again."
He tried to persuade me to stay and drink a little more; but I would
not: and for very courtesy he had to come with me.
In spite of my drowsiness, however, when I was once in bed and the light
was out I could not at once sleep. I heard the watchman go by and cry
that it was a fine night; and I heard the carriages go by, and the
chairs; and saw the light of the links on the ceiling at the end of my
bed; and I heard a brawl once and the clash of swords and the scream of
a woman; as well as the snoring of my Cousin Tom, who fell asleep at
once, so full he was of French wine. But it was not these things that
kept me awake, except so far as they were signs to me of where I was.
For here I was in London at last, which, whatever men may say, is the
heart of the world, as Rome is the heart of the Church; and there,
within a gunshot, was the gate of Whitehall where the King lived, and
where my fortunes lay. Neither was I here as a mere Englishman come home
again after seven years, but as a messenger from the Holy See, with work
both to find and to do. To-morrow I must set out, to buy, as I may say,
the munitions of war--my clothes and my new periwigs and my swords and
my horses; and then after that my holy war was to begin. I had my
letters not only to the Court, but to the Jesuits as well--though of
these I had been careful to say nothing to my cousin; for I could
present these very well without his assistance. And this holy war I was
to carry on by my own wits, though a soldier in that great army of
Christ that fights continually with spiritual weapons against the
deceits of Satan.
I wondered, then, as I lay there in the dark, as to whether this war
would be as bloodless as seemed likely; whether indeed it were true (and
if true, whether it were good or bad) that Catholics should again almost
be in the fashion, as my cousin had said. There were still those old
bloody laws against us; was it so sure that they would never be revived
again? And if they were revived, how should I bear myself; and how would
my Cousin Jermyn, and all those other Catholics of whom London was so
full?
Of all these things, then, I thought; but my last thoughts, before I
commended myself finally to God and Our Lady, were of my Cousin
Dorothy--that little maid, as I feigned to myself to think of her. Yes;
I would go down to Hare Street in Hertfordshire so soon as I
conveniently could, without neglecting my business. It would be pleasant
to see what place it was that my Cousin Dorothy called her home.