M. de Rondiniacque had little reason to hope for anything better than
a second rebuff if he pursued the Prince to plead Royston's cause in
the garden. He therefore sat him down in the hall where they had
left him, to ponder miserably enough the mischief he had done. But
scarce, being wont at times to speak to himself aloud, had he cried:
"_Mort de ma vie!_ but if poor Royston suffer for this, I will
forswear all and turn monk" (wholly forgetting, as he was at times
not a little used, the grave cause of his expatriation), when there
ran lightly out from the shelter formed by the hanging that was
before the door that leads to the kitchens, who but little Prue?
Now, it was not far from this door that Mr. Bentinck had stood while
he read the letters brought by the courier, and it was at this point
that Prudence now paused, and stooping, raised from the floor a sheet
of thin paper, twice folded, which it soon appeared she had from her
cover observed that gentleman to let fall. Holding this behind her
back, she addressed M. de Rondiniacque.
"'T is a mighty fine business, Master Foreigner," she said. "See how
you have embroiled everything with this love of kissing! It is like
enough you have by this means cost an honest man his life."
"'T is all true that you say," replied he; "yet I cannot tell how you
should know it, if you have not wilfully listened since ever your
mistress sent you from this place."
"I came between that door and its curtain," she replied, "in the same
moment that Sir Michael did ask the Prince the reason of his
churlishness. So it was not long before I heard good Mr. Royston
tell how he did use the sword for Sir Michael's daughter. And I were
a ninnyhammer indeed, if I could not from that tell the rest of the
tale. Therefore, I say again, that 't is all your fault, ill man
that you are!"
"It is mine, indeed," said De Rondiniacque sadly.
Then did Prudence pull a very long and solemn face.
"Do you repent of your sins?" she asked.
"Most heartily I do," he answered.
"And would you atone?" she continued.
"Most gladly--but how?" he asked.
"Will you leave kissing forever," she demanded with great severity,
"if I do put you in the way to make amends?"
"Ay, that, and more!" he cried, in reckless penitence, "do but show
me the way."
"Nay, softly," she answered. "'T will take three at least, and one
of them a woman of a very pretty wit, even if I be not mistaken, to
undo the mischief one witless man can work with this same foolish
kissing."
"Have done with your gibes!" said De Rondiniacque angrily. "I would
not kiss you again if you asked it." For which discourtesy Mistress
Prue deferred her revenge, thinking, as she has told me, that it was
but his sorrow and zeal of penitence made the gentleman speak so
unmannerly.
"Hark then to me," she said. "As I stood there by the door, where I
could hear all and see not a little, after that the Prince had said
they would walk a turn in the garden, and while they were taking away
poor Mr. Royston a prisoner, the sour-faced man in black drew the
Prince aside so that they almost touched the curtain that hid me.
And there for a little space they stood, talking soft and low. What
is he--the surly one, I mean, that had the papers?"
"That is Mr. Bentinck," replied De Rondiniacque, with some
impatience. "Well, what said they?"
"The Prince was minded that Sir Michael spoke truth, but the man in
black that they must use all means to lay hands on the priest; he
said, too, that in his letter was a paper with every mark of this
priest's person, so as it might be his very portrait cunningly
painted; and he said that he cared not a groat for Sir Michael, nor
for poor Mr. Royston, so he might come at the priest. They are
mightily in love with this priest, Mr. Mar-all, and I do think----"
"Did you hear his description?" interrupted De Rondiniacque. "Did
Bentinck read it to the Prince?"
"They should do that in the air, said the Prince. And as they went I
saw how this Mr. _Benting_, as you call him, did search among the
papers in his hands as if he had lost one of them. And 't is little
wonder," added she, "that he could not find it, for His Highness's
great boot had it fast under heel the while they talked; and to that
heel it stuck for three good strides of their passage to the other
door. See the mark of his tread." And she showed him the paper she
had found, with its impress of a muddy heel. "And I do think," said
Prudence, "that it is, perhaps, by the grace of God, that same paper
that tells of this priest's person."
"I see little good in it for us, even if it be so," said he; "but let
me read." And, leaning over her as she unfolded the paper, he put an
arm round her waist. But Prue twisted sinuously from his grasp.
"Nay, Mr. Mar-all," she cried, "I will read it myself. I can read a
bold hand o' write near as well as print." And then, after peering
closely for a while at the crabbed, slanting, and unfamiliar
characters upon the paper, she said dolefully: "Alack-aday! 't is an
outlandish thing, and will not be read. I vow 't is French lingo!"
M. de Rondiniacque snatched the paper from her hand.
"I will read it for you, my pretty one," he said.
"I am not that, thank Heaven!" says Prue, bridling, as he hastily
scanned the writing.
"What! not pretty?" he asked, toying with her as it were by rote of
habit, while eyes and mind were both upon his reading.
"That I hope I am," replied Prue, "but not yours. Your love is
unlucky." Then, as she saw that she was like to get little sport
while he still would read: "Can you read French, sir?" she asked.
"What else?" he answered. "Do I not speak it since I was weaned?"
"Ay, to speak it," said she; "that I can understand, being
natural-like to a poor thing hearing no better from a child. But to
read it--'t is wonderful indeed. Come, do it into English for me."
Then, hearing a footstep without, she cried: "Have you mastered it?
For I think he returns," and as M. de Rondiniacque looked up from
reading the last words, she snatched from him the paper and hid it in
her bosom.
The next moment Mr. William Bentinck entered the hall, walking slowly
and casting his eyes from side to side in anxious search of the floor
for the very thing she had hidden. When he perceived that he was not
alone, he asked with some eagerness whether by chance Lieutenant de
Rondiniacque had seen him drop a paper. That gentleman replying that
he had seen no paper fall, and proceeding with great appearance of
innocent good nature to peer about in the same search, Mr. Bentinck
turned his regard upon Prudence, who was about leaving the room.
She seemed, however, on a sudden to change her purpose, for, turning
again into the hall, she approached Mr. Bentinck, and, speaking with
a very fine assumption of timidity: "If it please your honor," she
said, "was it a very thin paper that you mislaid, and twice folded?"
"Yes," replied Mr. Bentinck very sharply. "Where is it?"
"La, now," cries Prue, "where did I lay it? I did think perhaps it
was of import, and know I did put it in safety."
"Then find it," growled he so angrily that poor Prue appeared much
frightened.
"Nay, sir," she pleaded very piteously, "do not so frown upon a poor
maid."
She looked around a little, as in great puzzlement; then, feeling
daintily beneath her stomacher, she produced the paper, crying
triumphantly that she had said it was safe, and here it was. Mr.
Bentinck was at once upon the paper like a hungry hawk, asking, so
soon as it was safe in his hand, whether she had read what was there
written. At which Prudence opened wide her blue eyes in an amazement
vastly childlike.
"And how does your honor think I should read French?" she asked.
"And how know 't was French," retorted her inquisitor, with bitter
keenness, "if you did not read?" But Prue was too strong for the
great statesman.
"Mercy on us, sir," she cried, clasping her hands most prayerfully,
"do not hang me! I' fecks I did try to read, and making nothing of
it, did know it for French."
When Mr. Bentinck, for all reply, had tushed, pshawed, and growled a
few words wholly inaudible, he turned sharply upon his heel and left
them.
And when he was well away M. de Rondiniacque, forgetful alike of
pious vow and petulant threat, seized Prudence in his arms and very
heartily embraced her.
"By all my Huguenot ancestors!" he cried, kissing her vigorously to
punctuate his oath, "but I do love thee, good wench." And 't is
enough proof that she forgave him this breach of decorum that she
said never a word of threat nor promise broken.
"Was it not purely done?" she said, pushing him away. "Now tell me
what was writ in the paper. Pray Heaven you did read enough."
"All," replied M. de Rondiniacque. "But, though I put much faith in
you, I know not yet what is your scheme, nor for what reason, if it
be of use to us, you have returned to the Dutchman his lost paper."
"'T is as needful he should know what there is written as we, if it
is as I guess," said Prue. "And that I cannot tell until you give me
its purport."
"Somewhat in this way it ran, then," rejoined M. de Rondiniacque:
"'Father Francis, otherwise and at present known as "James Marston,
of the City of Oxford," fat, short, red periwig, his own hair
tonsured----'"
Prue's head had so far nodded to each particular, but at this she
checked her pretty chin in mid-air. "Tonsured!" she cried; "and what
is that?"
"Shaven so," he replied, describing with his finger a ring upon the
top of his head. "There is much more in the paper, however."
"You have told me enough," said Prue, much elated. "Come with me,
and I will show you the man."
"But this is not the man that escaped our hands last night," said M.
de Rondiniacque, thoughtfully.
"What matter, Mr. Mar-plot? Can you not see it is the man they would
have? Come." And she seized him by the hand and ran for the door,
almost dragging him after her. But at that turn of the gallery that
leads to the stable-yard she paused a moment. "But in truth," she
said, "it does hurt me to betray the poor man."
"Betray!" cried M. de Rondiniacque.
"To be sure," answered Prue; "it will be nothing else. Since last
evening have I hid him in the barn loft. He told me he was a poor
soldier of His Highness that was to be hanged for stealing an old
hen. Now 't is a wicked thing indeed to steal a hen, but since the
hen was, he says, very tough and bad eating, I think it a worse thing
to hang the poor man for it. Moreover, I did once save my
grandfather when Kirke's men would have hanged him, and the mere name
of a rope would make me pity a very Judas."
"But what made you think him a soldier, and yet know him for a
priest?" asked M. de Rondiniacque, not a little puzzled.
"He has a sword and other vile things for killing," replied the
tender-hearted little fool, "and also a great cloak like those of the
Prince's guard."
"I begin to smoke the man," said the Lieutenant, remembering the
escape, after the affair in the orchard at Royston, of one of the
conspirators.
"But this morning, when I privily took him food," continued Prudence,
"the thing of steel, which is for all the world like those of your
men, was no longer upon his head. For he lay sleeping, and before I
had him awake I had well marked the little round spot atop of his
head, which had not long since certainly been shaven, having now but
a very short and stubby growth of hair upon it. And he made me
think, too, of a bad man that Farmer Kidd did tell me of. So I
thought he was perhaps the priest your Mr. _Benting_ hunts."
"'T is very like," said M. de Rondiniacque. "So lead me where he is,
child. In any case, he is a bad man."
"You would not have me betray a man for no reason but his badness,"
said the girl piteously.
"I would have you spend your pity first upon the good and innocent,"
replied M. de Rondiniacque, with some sternness; and then added:
"Moreover, the man is a Papist."
"A Papist! Ah! I do forget," cried Prue. "He must even make way
for better men." And with that she led him at once the same road
that the ale and beef had taken. From which it is clear that M. de
Rondiniacque's dealings with her kind had at least taught him the
dexterous art of matching a bad reason with a worse upon the other
side.
Such, then, was my little handmaid's great secret, which nothing,
perhaps, but her pique at her mistress's reticence could have induced
her so long to maintain.