With the least inclination towards merriment I must have laughed at
the face of horror with which Mr. Martin, when he went a few minutes
later, to expel the last stragglers, came on me where I stood, trying
to efface myself behind the door. He dared not speak, for the Duke was
standing at the table a few paces from him; and I would not budge.
Fortunately I remembered that a still tongue was all he need wish; and
I laid my finger on my lips and nodded to him. This a little
encouraged him, but not much; and in his fear of what I might, in
spite of my promise, let out, if I were left alone with his master, he
was still in two minds whether he should eject me or not, when the
Duke spoke.
"Is Price there?" he said with his face averted, and his hands still
busy with the papers. "The man I sent for."
"Yes, your Grace," Martin answered, making hideous faces at me.
"Then leave us. Shut the door."
If my lord had spoken the moment that was done and we were alone, I
think it would have relieved me. But he continued to search among the
papers on the table, and left me to sink under the weight of the
stately room with its ordered rows of books, its ticking dial, and the
mute busts of the great dead. The Duke's cloak lay across a chair, his
embroidered star glittering on the breast; his sword and despatch-box
were on another chair; and a thing that I took to be the signet
gleamed among the papers on the table. From the lofty mantel-piece of
veined marble that, supported by huge rampant dogs, towered high above
me (the work as I learned afterwards of the great Inigo Jones), the
portrait of a man in armour, with a warden in his mailed hand, frowned
down on me, and the stillness continuing unbroken, and all the things
I saw speaking to me gravely and weightily, of a world hitherto
unknown to me--a world wherein the foot exchanged the thick pile of
carpets for the sounding tread of Parian, and orders were obeyed
unspoken, and sable-vested servants went to and fro at a sign--a world
of old traditions, old observances, and old customs revolving round
this man still young, I felt my spirits sink--the distance was so
great from the sphere I had known hitherto. Every moment the silence
grew more oppressive, the ticking of the clock more monotonous; it was
an immense relief when the Duke suddenly spoke, and addressing me in
his ordinary tone, "You can write?" said he.
"Yes, your Grace."
"Then sit here," he replied, indicating a seat at the end of the
table, "and write what I shall tell you."
And before I could marvel at the ease of the transition, I was seated,
quietly writing; what I can no longer remember, for it was the first
only of many hundred papers, of private and public importance, which I
was privileged to write for his signature. My hand shook, and it is
unlikely that I exhibited much of the natural capacity for such work
which it has been my lot to manifest since; nevertheless, his Grace
after glancing over it, was pleased to express his satisfaction. "You
learned to do this with Brome?" said he.
"Yes, your Grace."
"Then how," he continued, seating himself--I had risen
respectfully--"Tell me what happened to you yesterday."
I had no choice but to obey, but before I told my story, seeing that
he was in a good humour and so favourably inclined to me, I spoke out
what was in my mind; and in the most moving terms possible I conjured
him to promise me that I should not be forced to be an evidence. I
would tell him all, I would be faithful and true to him, and ask
nothing better than to be his servant--but be an informer in court I
dared not.
"You dare not?" he said, with an odd look at me. "And why not, man?"
But all I could answer was, "I dare not!"
"Are you afraid of these villains?" he continued, impatiently. "I tell
you, we have them: it is they who have to fear!"
But I still clung to my point. I would tell, but I would give no
evidence; I dared not.
"I am afraid, Mr. Price," he said at that, and with an air of some
contempt, "that you are something of a coward!"
I answered, grovelling before him, that it might be--it might be;
but----
"But--who of us is not?" he answered, with a sudden gesture between
scorn and self-reproof. "Do you mean that, man?" And he fixed his eyes
on me. "Well, it is true. Who of us is not?" he repeated, slowly; and
turning from me, he began to pace the room, his hands clasped behind
him; so that before he had made a single turn it was easy to see that
he had forgotten my presence. "Who of us is not afraid--if not of
these scoundrels, still of the future, of the return, of Jacobus
_iracundus et ingens_, of another 29th of May? To be safe now and to
be safe then--who is not thinking of that and living for that, and
planning for that?"
[Illustration: AND TURNING FROM ME, HE BEGAN TO PACE THE ROOM, HIS
HANDS CLASPED BEHIND HIM]
He was silent a moment, then with something of anger in his voice, "My
Lord Marlborough, dipped to the lips in '88, who shall say that for
all that he has not made his peace? And has good reason to urge us to
let sleeping dogs lie? And Godolphin, is it only at Newmarket he has
hedged--that he says, the less we go into this the better? And
Sunderland who trusts no one and whom no one trusts? And Leeds--all
things for power? And Clarendon, once pardoned? And Russell, all
temper? Who knows what pledges they have given, or may give?
Devonshire--Devonshire only has to lose, and stands to lose with me.
With me!"
As he spoke thus he seemed to be so human, and through the robe of
state and stateliness in which he lived the beating of the poor human
heart was so plainly visible, that my heart went out to him, and with
an eagerness and boldness that now surprise me, I spoke to him.
"But, your Grace," I said, "while the King lives all goes well, and
were anything to happen to him----"
"Yes?" said he, staring at me, and no little astonished at the
interruption.
"There is the Princess Anne. She is here, she would succeed, and----"
"And my Lord Marlborough!" said he, smiling. "Well, it may be. But who
taught you politics, Mr. Price?"
"Mr. Brome," said I, abashed. "What I know, your Grace."
"Ha! I keep forgetting," he answered, gaily, "that I am talking to one
of the makers of opinion--the formers of taste. But there, you shall
be no evidence, I give you my word. So tell me all you know, and what
befell you yesterday."
I had no desire but to do so--on those terms, and one small matter
excepted--and not only to do that, but all things that could serve
him. Nevertheless, and though I had high hopes of what I might get by
his grace and favour, I was far from understanding that that was the
beginning of twenty years of faithful labour at his side; of a matter
of fifteen thousand papers written under his eye; of whole ledgers
made up, of estate accompts balanced and tallies collected; of many
winters and summers spent among his books, either in the placid shades
of Eyford or in the dignified quiet of St. James's Square. But, as I
have said, though I did not foresee all this, I hoped much, and more
as, my tale proceeding, my lord's generous emotion became evident.
When I had done, he said many kind things to me respecting the peril I
had escaped; and adding to their value by his manner of saying them,
and by the charm which no other so perfectly possessed, he left me at
last no resource but to quit the room in tears.
Treated thus with a kindness as much above my deserts as it was
admirable in one of his transcendent rank, and assured, moreover, by
my lord's own mouth that henceforth, in gratitude for the service I
had done him in Ferguson's room, he would provide for me, I should
have stood, I ought to have stood, in the seventh heaven of felicity.
But as suffering moves unerring on the track of weakness, and no man
enjoys at any moment perfect bliss, I had first to learn the fate of
the girl whose evasion I had contrived. And when a cautious search and
questions as crafty had satisfied me that she had really effected her
escape from the house--probably in a man's dress, for one of the
lacqueys complained of the loss of a suit of clothes--I had still a
care; and a care which gnawed more sharply with every hour of ease and
safety.
Needless to say, the one matter on which I had been reticent, the one
actor whose presence on the scene I had not disclosed to my lord, lay
at the bottom of my anxiety. Kind in action and generous in intention
as the Duke had shown himself, his magnanimity had not availed to oust
from my mind the terror with which Smith's threats had imbued it; nor
while confessing all else had I been able to bring myself to denounce
the conspirator or detail the terms on which he had set me free.
Though I had all the inducement to speak, which the certainty that his
arrest would release me, could present, even this, and the security of
the haven in which I lay, failed to encourage me to the point of
hazard. So strong was the hold on my fears which this man had
compassed; and so complete the slavery to which he had reduced my
will.
But though at the time of confession, I found it a relief to be silent
about him, this same silence presently left me alone to cope with him,
and with fears sufficiently poignant, which his memory awakened: the
result being that with prospects more favourable and a future better
assured than I had ever imagined would be mine, or than any man of my
condition had a right to expect, I still found this drop of poison in
my cup. It was not enough that all things--and my patron--favouring
me, I sank easily into the position of his privy clerk, that I
retained that excellent room in which I had first been placed, that I
found myself accepted by the household as a fact--so that never a man
saved from drowning by a strand had a right to praise his fortune as I
had; nor that, the wind from every quarter, seeming at the same time
to abate, the prisoners went for trial, and nothing said of me, while
Ferguson, of whose complicity no legal proof could be found, lay in
prison under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, and kept silence;
nor even that a note came from Mary, ostensibly from Dunkirk, and
without compromising me informed me of her safety. It was not enough,
I say, that each and all of these things happened beyond my hopes; for
in the midst of my prosperity, whether I stood writing at my lord's
elbow in the stillness of the stately library, or moved at ease
through the corridor, greeted with respect by my fellow-servants, and
with civility by all, I was alike haunted by the thought and terror of
Smith, and the knowledge that at any moment, the conspirator might
appear to hurl me from this paradise. The secrecy which I had
maintained about him doubled his power; even as the ease and luxury in
which I lived presented in darker and fouler colours the sordid scenes
and perils through which I had waded to this eminence.