Show me how I can serve you. Your baggage is at the inn? It shall be
brought here at once, for I would not forgive myself if one recommended
to me by so old a friend slept at a public hostelry."
The young man bowed. "I will not refuse your hospitality, my lord, for
I am here to beg an hour of most private conversation. I come not from
France, but from the North."
A curious embarrassment twisted the other's face.
"You have the word?" he asked in a low voice.
"I am _Alcinous_, of whom I think you have been notified."
Lord Cornbury strode off a few steps and then came back. "Yes," he said
simply, "I have been notified. I expected you a month back. But let me
tell you, sir, you have arrived in a curst inconvenient hour. This
house is full of Whiggish company. There is my sister Queensberry, and
there is Mr Murray, His Majesty's Solicitor. . . . Nay, perhaps the
company is the better cloak for you. I will give you your private hour
after supper. Meantime you are Captain Maclean--of Lee's Regiment, I
think, in King Louis' service--and you have come from Paris from Paul
de Tremouille on a matter of certain gems in my collection that he
would purchase for the Duc de Bouillon. You are satisfied you can play
that part, sir? Not a word of politics. You do not happen to be
interested in statecraft, and you have been long an exile from your
native country, though you have a natural sentiment for the old line of
Kings. Is that clear, sir? Have you sufficient of the arts to pose as a
virtuoso?"
Alastair hoped that he had.
"Then let us get the first plunge over. Suffer me to introduce you to
the company."
The sound of their steps on the terrace halted the strollers. A lady
turned, and at the sight of the young man her eyebrows lifted. She was
a slight figure about the middle size, whose walking clothes followed
the new _bergère_ fashion. Save for her huge hooped petticoats, she
was the dainty milkmaid, in her flowered chintz, her sleeveless coat,
her flat straw hat tied with ribbons of cherry velvet, her cambric
apron. A long staff, with ribbons at the crook, proclaimed the
shepherdess. She came toward them with a tripping walk, and Alastair
marked the delicate bloom of her cheeks, unspoiled by rouge, the flash
of white teeth as she smiled, the limpid depth of her great childlike
eyes. His memory told him that the Duchess had passed her fortieth
year, but his eyes saw a girl in her teens, a Flora of spring whose
summer had not begun.
"Kitty, I present to you Captain Maclean, a gentleman in the service of
His Majesty of France. He has come to me on a mission from Paul de
Tremouille--a mission of the arts."
The lady held out a hand. "Are you by any happy chance a poet, sir?"
"I have made verses, madam, as young men do, but I halt far short of
poetry."
"The inspiration may come. I had hoped that Harry would provide me with
a new poet. For you must know, sir, that I have lost all my poets. Mr
Prior, Mr Gay, Mr Pope--they have all been gathered to the shades. I
have no one now to make me verses."
"If your Grace will pardon me, your charms can never lack a singer."
"La, la! The singers are as dry as a ditch in mid-summer. They sigh and
gloom and write doleful letters in prose. I have to fly to Paris to
find a well-turned sonnet. . . . Here we are so sage and dutiful and
civically minded. Mary thinks only of her lovers, and Mr Murray of his
law-suits, and Mr Kyd of his mortgage deeds, and Kit Lacy of fat
cattle--nay, I do not think that Kit's mind soars even to that height."
"I protest, madam," began a handsome sheepish young gentleman behind
her, but the Duchess cut him short.
"Harry!" she cried, "we are all Scotch here--all but you and Kit, and
to be Scotch nowadays is to be suspect. Let us plot treason. The King's
Solicitor cannot pursue us, for he will be _criminis particeps_."
Mr Murray, a small man with a noble head and features so exquisitely
moulded that at first sight most men distrusted him, pointed to an
inscription cut on the entablature of the house.
"_Deus haec nobis otia fecit_," he read, in a voice whose every tone
was clear as the note of a bell. "We dare not offend the _genius loci_,
and outrage that plain commandment."
"But treason is not business."
"It is apt to be the most troublous kind of business, madam."
"Then Kit shall show me the grottos." She put an arm in the young
man's, the other in the young girl's, and forced them to a pace which
was ill suited to his high new hunting boots. Alastair was formally
introduced to the two men remaining, and had the chance of observing
the one whom the Duchess had called Mr Kyd. He had the look of a
country squire, tall, heavily built and deeply tanned by the sun. He
had brown eyes, which regarded the world with a curious steadiness, and
a mouth the corners of which were lifted in a perpetual readiness for
laughter. Rarely had Alastair seen a more jovial and kindly face, which
was yet redeemed from the commonplace by the straight thoughtful brows
and the square cleft jaw. When the man spoke it was in the broad
accents of the Scotch lowlands, though his words and phrases were those
of the South. Lord Cornbury walked with Mr Murray, and the other ranged
himself beside Alastair.
"A pleasant habitation, you will doubtless be observing, sir. Since
you're from France you may have seen houses as grand, but there's not
the like of it in our poor kingdom of Scotland. In the Merse, which is
my country-side, they stick the kitchen-midden up against the
dining-room window, and their notion of a pleasance is a wheen grosart
bushes and gillyflowers sore scarted by hens."
Alastair looked round the flowery quincunx and the trim borders where a
peacock was strutting amid late roses.
"I think I would tire of it. Give me a sea loch and the heather and a
burn among birchwoods."
"True, true, a man's heart is in his calf-country. We Scots are like
Ulysses, and not truly at home in Phaeacia." He spoke the last word
with the slightest lift of his eyebrows, as if signalling to the other
that he was aware of his position. "For myself," he continued, "I'm aye
remembering sweet Argos, which in my case is the inconsiderable
dwelling of Greyhouses in a Lammermoor glen. My business takes me up
and down this land of England, and I tell you, sir, I wouldn't change
my crow-step gables for all the mansions ever biggit. It's a queer
quirk in us mercantile folk."
"You travel much?"
"I needs must, when I'm the principal doer of the Duke of Queensberry.
My father was man of business to auld Duke James, and I heired the job
with Duke Charles. If you serve a mighty prince, who is a duke and
marquis in two kingdoms and has lands and messuages to conform, you're
not much off the road. Horses' iron and shoe-leather are cheap in that
service. But my pleasure is at home, where I can read my Horace and
crack with my friends and catch trout in the Whitader."
Mr Kyd's honest countenance and frank geniality might have led to
confidences on Alastair's part, but at the moment Lord Cornbury
rejoined them with word that dinner would be served in half an hour. As
they entered the house, Alastair found himself beside his host and well
behind the others.
"Who is this Mr Kyd?" he whispered. "He mentioned Phaeacia, as if he
knew my character."
Lord Cornbury's face wore an anxious look. "He is my brother
Queensberry's agent. But he is also one of you. You must know of him.
He is _Menelaus_."
Alastair shook his head. "I landed from France only three weeks back,
and know little of Mr Secretary Murray's plans."
"Well, you will hear more of him. He is now on his way to Badminton,
for he is said to have Beaufort's ear. His connection with my brother
is a good shield. Lord! how I hate all this business of go-betweens and
midnight conclaves!" He looked at his companion with a face so full of
a quaint perplexity that Alastair could not forbear to laugh.
"We must creep before we can fly, my lord, in the most honest cause.
But our wings are fledging well."
A footman led him to his room, which was in the old part of the house
called the Leicester Wing, allotted to him, he guessed, because of its
remoteness. His baggage had been brought from the inn, and a porcelain
bath filled with hot water stood on the floor. He shaved, but otherwise
made no more than a traveller's toilet, changing his boots for silk
stockings and buckled shoes, and his bob for an ample tie-wig. The
mirror showed a man not yet thirty, with small sharp features, high
cheek bones, and a reddish tinge in skin and eyebrows. The eyes were of
a clear, choleric blue, and the face, which was almost feminine in its
contours, was made manly by a certain ruggedness and fire in its
regard. His hands and feet were curiously small for one with so deep a
chest and sinewy limbs. He was neat and precise in person and movement,
a little finical at first sight, till the observer caught his quick
ardent gaze. A passionate friend, that observer would have pronounced
him, and a most mischievous and restless enemy.
His Highland boyhood and foreign journeyings had not prepared him for
the suave perfection of an English house. The hall, paved with squares
of black and white marble, was hung with full-length pictures of the
Hyde and Danvers families, and the great figures of the Civil War. The
party assembled beneath them was a motley of gay colours--the Duchess
in a gown of sky-blue above rose-pink petticoats; the young girl, whose
name was Lady Mary Capell, all in green like a dryad; Mr Murray wore
black velvet with a fuller wig than was the fashion of the moment;
while Sir Christopher Lacy had donned the blue velvet and ermine collar
of the Duke of Beaufort's Hunt, a garb in which its members were
popularly believed to sleep. Mr Kyd had contented himself with a
flowered waistcoat, a plum-coloured coat and saffron stockings. Only
the host was in sad colours, and, as he alone wore his natural hair, he
presented a meagre and dejected figure in the flamboyant company.
The Duchess talked like a brook.
"Harry must show you the Vandykes," she told Mr Murray. "He knows the
age and tale of everyone as I know my boys' birthdays. I wish he would
sell them, for they make me feel small and dingy. Look at them! We are
no better than valets-de-chambre in their presence."
The major-domo conducted them to dinner, which was served in the new
Indian Room. On the walls was a Chinese paper of birds and flowers and
flower-hung pagodas; no pictures adorned them, but a number of
delicately carved mirrors; and at intervals tall lacquer cabinets
glowed on their gilt pedestals. The servants wore purple ("like
bishops," Mr Kyd whispered), and, since the room looked west, the
declining October sun brought out the colours of wall and fabric and
set the glasses and decanters shimmering on the polished table. Through
the open windows the green slopes of the park lay bathed in light, and
a pool of water sparkled in the hollow.
To Alastair, absorbed in his errand, the scene was purely phantasmal.
He looked on as at a pretty pageant, heard the ladies' tinkling
laughter, discussed the _manège_ in France at long range with Lord
Cornbury, who was a noted horsemaster, answered Lady Mary's inquiries
about French modes as best he could, took wine with the men, had the
honour to toast the Duchess Kitty--but did it all in a kind of waking
dream. This daintiness and ease were not of that grim world from which
he had come, or of that grimmer world which was soon to be. . . . He
noticed that no word of politics was breathed; even the Duchess's
chatter was discreet on that point. The ice was clearly too thin, and
the most heedless felt the need of wary walking. Here sat the King's
Solicitor, and the wife of a Whig Duke cheek by jowl with two secret
messengers bearing names out of Homer, and at the head of the table was
one for whom both parties angled. The last seemed to feel the irony,
for behind his hospitable gaiety was a sharp edge of care. He would
sigh now and then, and pass a thin hand over his forehead. But the
others--Mr Solicitor was discussing Mr Pope's "Characters of Women" and
quoting unpublished variants. No hint of embarrassment was to be
detected in that mellow voice. Was he perhaps, thought Alastair,
cognisant of the strange mixture at table, and not disapproving? He was
an officer of the Government, but he came of Jacobite stock. Was he not
Stormont's brother? . . . And Mr Kyd was deep in a discussion about
horses with the gentleman in the Beaufort uniform. With every glass of
claret the even rosiness of his face deepened, till he bloomed like the
God of Wine himself--a Bacchus strictly sober, with very wide-awake
eyes.
Then to complete the comedy the catch he had heard on Otmoor began to
run in Alastair's head. _Three naked men we be_--a far cry from this
bedecked and cosseted assemblage. He had a moment of suffocation, until
he regained his humour. They were all naked under their fine clothes,
and for one of them it was his business to do the stripping. He caught
Lord Cornbury's eye and marked its gentle sadness. Was such a man
content? Had he the assurance in his soul to listen to one who brought
to him not peace but swords?
The late autumn afternoon was bright and mild, with a thin mist rising
from the distant stream. The company moved out-of-doors, where on a
gravelled walk stood a low carriage drawn by a pair of cream-coloured
ponies. A maid brought the Duchess a wide straw hat and driving gloves,
and, while the others loitered at the garden door, the lady chose her
companion. "_Sa singularité_," Mr Murray whispered. "It is young Mr
Walpole's name for her. But how prettily she plays the rustic!"
"Who takes the air with me?" she cried. "I choose Captain Maclean. He
is the newest of you, and can tell me the latest scandal of Versailles."
It was like an equipage fashioned out of Chelsea porcelain, and as
Alastair took his place beside her, with his knees under a driving
cloth of embroidered silk, he felt more than ever the sense of taking
part in a play. She whipped up the ponies and they trotted out of the
wrought-iron gates, which bounded the pleasance, into the wide spaces
of the park. Her talk, which at first had been the agreeable prattle of
dinner, to which he responded with sufficient ease, changed gradually
to interrogatories. With some disquiet he realised that she was
drifting towards politics.
"What do they think in France of the young man's taste in womankind?"
she asked.
He raised his eyebrows.
"The Prince--Charles Stuart--the Chevalier. What of Jenny Cameron?"
"We heard nothing of her in Paris, madam. You should be the better
informed, for he has been some months on British soil."
"Tush, we hear no truth from the North. But they say that she never
leaves him, that she shares his travelling carriage. Is she pretty, I
wonder? Dark or fair?"
"That I cannot tell, but, whatever they be, her charms must be mature.
I have heard on good authority that she is over forty years old."
It did not need the Duchess's merry laughter to tell him that he had
been guilty of a _bêtise_. He blushed furiously.
"La, sir," she cried, "you are ungallant. That is very much my own age,
and the world does not call me matronly. I had thought you a courtier,
but I fear--I gravely fear--you are an honest man."
They were now on the west side of the park, where a road led downhill
past what had once been a quarry, but was now carved into a modish
wilderness. The scarps of stone had been fashioned into grottos and
towers and fantastic pinnacles; shrubs had been planted to make shapely
thickets; springs had been turned to cascades or caught in miniature
lakes. The path wound through midget Alps, which were of the same scale
and quality as the chaise and the cream ponies and the shepherdess
Duchess.
"We call this spot Eden," she said. "There are many things I would fain
ask you, sir, but I remember the consequence of Eve's inquisitiveness
and forbear. The old Eden had a door and beyond that door lay the
desert. It is so here."
They turned a corner by the edge of a small lake and came on a stout
palisade which separated the park from Wychwood Forest. Through the
high deer-gate Alastair looked on a country the extreme opposite of the
enclosed paradise. The stream, which in the park was regulated like a
canal, now flowed in rough shallows or spread into morasses. Scrub
clothed the slopes, scrub of thorn and hazel and holly, with now and
then an ancient oak flinging gnarled arms against the sky. In the
bottom were bracken and the withered blooms of heather, where bees
still hummed. The eye looked up little glens towards distant ridges to
which the blue October haze gave the air of high hills.
As Alastair gazed at the scene he saw again his own country-side. These
were like the wild woods that cloaked Loch Sunart side, the wind
brought him the same fragrance of heath and fern, he heard the croak of
a raven, a knot of hinds pushed from the coppice and plashed through a
marshy shallow. For a second his eyes filled with tears.
He found the Duchess's hand on his. It was a new Duchess, with grave
kind face and no hint of petulance at her lips or artifice in her voice.
"I brought you here for a purpose, sir," she said. "You have before you
two worlds--the enclosed garden and the wild beyond. The wild is yours,
by birthright and training and choice. Beyond the pale is Robin Hood's
land, where men adventure. Inside is a quiet domain where they make
verses and read books and cherish possessions--my brother's land. Does
my parable touch you?"
"The two worlds are one, madam--one in God's sight."
"In God's sight, maybe, but not in man's. I will be plainer still with
you. I do not know your business, nor do I ask it, for you are my
brother's friend. But he is my darling and I fear a threat to his peace
as a mother-partridge fears the coming of a hawk. Somehow--I ask no
questions--you would persuade him to break bounds and leave his
sanctuary for the wilds. It may be the manlier choice, but oh, sir, it
is not for him. He is meant for the garden. His health is weak, his
spirit is most noble but too fine for the clash of the rough world. In
a year he would be in his grave."
Alastair, deeply perplexed, made no answer. He could not lie to this
woman, nor could he make a confidante of the wife of Queensberry.
"Pardon me if I embarrass you," she went on. "I do not ask a reply.
Your secrets would be safe with me, but if you told me them I should
stop my ears. For politics I care nothing, I know nothing. I speak on a
brother's behalf, and my love for him makes me importunate. I tell you
that he is made for the pleasance, not for the wilderness. Will you
weigh my words?"
"I will weigh them most scrupulously. Lord Cornbury is blessed in his
sister."
"I am all he has, for he never could find a wife to his taste." She
whipped up the ponies and her voice changed to its old lightness. "La,
sir, we must hasten. The gentlemen will be clamouring for tea."
In the great gallery, among more Vandykes and Knellers and Lelys and
panels of Mortlake tapestry, the company sipped tea and chocolate. The
Duchess made tea with her own hands, and the bright clothes and jewels
gleaming in the dusk against dim pictures had once more the airy
unreality of a dream. But Alastair's mood had changed. He no longer
felt imprisoned among potent shadows, for the glimpse he had had of his
own familiar country had steadied his balance. He saw the life he had
chosen in fairer colours, the life of toil and hazard and enterprise,
in contrast with this airless ease. The blood ran quicker in his veins
for the sight of a drugged and sleeping world. Ancient possessions, the
beauty of women, the joy of the senses were things to be forsworn
before they could be truly admired. Now he looked graciously upon what
an hour ago had irked him.
When the candles were lit and the curtains drawn the scene grew
livelier. The pretty Lady Mary, sitting under the Kneller portrait of
her mother, was a proof of the changelessness of beauty. A pool was
made at commerce, in which all joined, and the Duchess's childlike
laughter rippled through the talk like a trout-stream. She was in her
wildest mood, the incomparable Kitty whom for thirty years every poet
had sung. The thing became a nursery party, where discretion was
meaningless, and her irreverent tongue did not refrain from politics.
She talked of the Stuarts.
"They intermarried with us," she cried, "so I can speak as a kinswoman.
A grave dutiful race--they were, tragically misunderstood. If their
passions were fierce, they never permitted them to bias their
statecraft."
A portrait of Mary of Scots hung above her as she spoke. Mr Murray cast
a quizzical eye upon it.
"Does your summary embrace that ill-fated lady?" he asked.
"She above all. Her frailties were not Stuart but Tudor. Consider Harry
the Eighth. He had passions like other monarchs, but instead of keeping
mistresses he must marry each successive love, and as a consequence cut
off the head of the last one. His craze was not for amours but for
matrimony. So, too, with his sister Margaret. So, too, with his
great-niece Mary. She might have had a hundred lovers and none would
have gainsaid her, but the mischief came when she insisted on wedding
them. No! No! What ruined the fortunes of my kinsfolk was not the
Stuart blood but the Tudor--the itch for lawful wedlock which came in
with the Welsh bourgeoisie."
"Your Grace must rewrite the histories," said Mr Murray, laughing.
"I have a mind to. But my Harry will bear me witness. The Stuart stock
is sad and dutiful. Is not that the character of him who now calls
himself the rightful King of England?"
"So I have heard it said," Lord Cornbury answered, but the eyes which
looked at his sister were disapproving.
The ladies went early to bed, after nibbling a sweet biscuit and
sipping a glass of negus. Supper was laid for the gentlemen in the
dining-room, and presently Mr Murray, Mr Kyd and Sir Christopher Lacy
were seated at a board which they seemed to have no intention of
leaving. Alastair excused himself on the plea of fatigue, and lit a
bedroom candle. "I will come to your room," his host whispered as they
crossed the hall. "Do not undress. We will talk in my little cabinet."
The young man flung himself into a chair, and collected his thoughts.
He had been chosen for this mission, partly because of his address and
education, but mainly because of the fierce ardour which he had
hitherto shown in the Prince's cause. He knew that much hung on his
success, for Cornbury, though nothing of a soldier and in politics no
more than Member of Parliament for the University of Oxford, was so
beloved that his adherence would be worth a regiment. He knew his
repute. Such a man could not quibble in matters of principle; the task
was rather to transform apathy into action. He remembered the Duchess's
words--honest words, doubtless, but not weighty. Surely in so great a
test of honour a man could not hesitate because his health was weak or
his home dear to him.
There was a knock at the door and Lord Cornbury entered with a silk
dressing-gown worn over his clothes. He looked round the room with his
sad restless eyes.
"Here Lord Leicester died--Elizabeth's favourite. They say that when
the day of his death comes round his spirit may be heard tapping at the
walls. It is a commentary on mortal ambition, Captain Maclean. Come
with me to my cabinet. Mr Solicitor is gone to bed, for he is ready
enough for an all-night sitting at St. James's among the wits, but has
no notion of spoiling his sleep by potations among bumpkins. Kit Lacy
and Mr Kyd will keep it up till morning, but happily they are at the
other end of the house."
He led the way down a narrow staircase to a little room on the ground
floor, which had for its other entrance a door giving on a tiny paved
garden. It was lined with books and a small fire had been lit on the
hearth.