“And now, schentelmen, about that little inzident at the
goronation?”
It was his Majesty King William III. who spoke, crumpled back into his
big chair. His eyes, bright as a sparrow’s, peered from the nest of an
enormous wig. His small, shrewd features, diminutive frame, and legs
like cribbage-pegs, were the least adapted, one might have thought, to
carry the extravagant vesture of his day. He appeared, indeed, to be
always lost in it, and as if just on the point of finding his way out.
Yet the clothes of a Daniel Lambert would hardly have sufficed for his
spirit.
The Marquis of Halifax, his Lord Privy Seal, smiled, and shrugged his
stout shoulders deprecatingly. There were four others present in this
his Majesty’s somewhat melancholy little Cabinet at Whitehall: Lord
Denby, his President of the Council, and three solemn Dutch
mynheers--D’Auverquerque, Schomberg, and Zuylestein, who had been
appointed respectively the King’s Masters of Horse, Ordnance, and the
Robes. These last were all as grave as mustard-pots, and the subject,
long-expected and broached at last, made them graver.
It turned upon an incident, slight in itself, significant only in its
context, which had struck a discordant note in the tremendous
ceremonial of the day before. When the King’s Champion, riding in by
the great door of Westminster, had cast his gage upon the floor,
offering to prove in person upon the body of whomsoever should
challenge the right of King William and Mary his Queen to reign as
sovereign inheritors of the realm that that same dissentient lied in
his throat and was a false traitor, a most unexpected response had
followed. A little old lady, dressed in a watered tabby and mittens,
and having large spectacles on her nose and a stiff three-storied
_commode_ of lace perched on her white hair, had darted from among the
spectators, and, whipping up the steel glove, had returned it to the
Champion with a whispered word or two, and then fairly run away,
melting into the crowd which thronged about the entrance before any
one could think of interposing.
The affair had caused a momentary stir, and even a titter, instantly
subdued to the august occasion, as Sir Charles Dymoke, the Champion,
had ridden up the Hall, his face as red as fire, to deliver and
re-deliver his cartel.
But it had not passed unobserved by the King himself or by those
around him. Extinguished as he had appeared to be in his panoply of
purple and ermine and embroidered scarlet, looking, as he had risen at
the great table to drink his Champion’s health, for all the world like
a little over-swaddled Greek Icon elevated against a background of
glittering stained glass, his diminutive Majesty had had an ear and an
eye for everything within the longest range of either. His birdlike
optics, bright as twin buttons sunk amid that pomp of raiment, had
been fully cognisant of the little episode, and had watched the
after-approach of his Champion with an unwinking interest, which had
seemed to concentrate itself to such a challenging focus on the
flushed face of the knight as he came near, that that doughty Paladin
had fallen into confusion and had something botched the business of
the toast that followed. However, he had managed, though crestfallen,
to retire presently with sufficient aplomb and his perquisite of a
golden beaker; and there for the moment the matter had ended.
“Sir Charles Dymoke,” began Lord Halifax----
“Who is dat man?” interrupted the King. “Vat is his title to the
bost?”
“It is claimed by him, sire,” answered the peer, “in his right of the
Manor of Scrivelsby. The office was originally deputed, I understand,
to Sir Richard de Marmyon by the Conqueror, and hath descended by
virtue of that tenure to this day. Sir Charles is its legitimate
representative.”
“Well,” said the King, “broduce him before us.”
“Why,” said the Marquis feebly, “that is the odd thing. Sir Charles is
nowhere to be found.”
The three Dutch mynheers uttered guttural sounds in their throats, and
looked at one another and at the King significantly.
His Majesty’s brows knotted.
“Dat is very vonny,” he said. “Not to be vound, mein vrent?”
“It has been ascertained, your Majesty,” said Lord Denby wearily--he
was a picked white bone of a man, with no stomach and yet a perpetual
stomach-ache, which naturally aggrieved him--“that Sir Charles rode,
immediately after the ceremony, to the ‘Cock’ hostelry in Tothill
Street, whence, having disencumbered himself of his panoply, he
continued his way to the riding-school of one Dobney, near Islington,
where he delivered up his horse and disappeared. Since when he has
neither returned to his inn nor vouchsafed the least token of his
existence.”
The King considered the matter very glumpily within himself. It
appeared a trifle; yet trifles might easily be under-estimated in the
existing state of things. The incident was something or nothing--a
mere meaningless frolic, or a challenge to his title bearing a certain
significance. The land swarmed with Jacobites of more or less power
and prominence. What if one of them were to meet and defeat his
Champion? How, in that event, would his claim stand? What was the
procedure? It was an odd contingency, and he put it rather acridly to
my Lord Privy Seal.
“He drow de gage; anodder agcept it; dey vight; my man vall. Vat is to
vollow?” he demanded.
“Ja! Dat is vat strike idself into me bom-bom,” said Schomberg the
warrior.
Lord Halifax smiled rather sheepishly. He was a large, tolerant soul
of sixty, repudiating all sentiment and subject to much. He had been
called the “Trimmer”; but, then, no man of humour can ever be a man of
convictions. Kind, witty, and cynical, he was yet so fond of Reason
that he could make a fool of himself with her. He was even worked upon
to do so in the present case.
“There is positively no precedent, sire,” he said. “To my certain
knowledge the thing has never happened before.”
“Bot zhould it jost zo happen?” insisted his master.
“Ach!” said D’Auverquerque penetratingly.
“With deference, sire,” said his lordship, “is it not something
premature to assume any hostile intent in the matter? The good
lady----”
“Posh!” put in the King irritably. “Neither goot nor lady.”
“Zo it strike itself into mein head bom-bom,” said Schomberg.
“Dat dress vas a masgerade,” said William--“a vact, we zhould haf
gonsidered, blain to the stupidest indelligence.”
“Certainly, certainly,” agreed Lord Halifax nervously.
“Vell, sir--vat den?”
“Ach! vat den?” demanded D’Auverquerque cunningly.
“I vill dell your lordship,” said Schomberg. “Dere was a vine
swordsman gonzealed under dose bettigoats.”
The Lord Privy Seal, considering the subject, woke to a certain
trepidation.
“It is impossible,” he admitted, “to avoid attaching a measure of
importance to the affair, or to gauge its consequences should it be
carried through. Surely Sir Charles could not be so foolish as to risk
a serious encounter? But he must be found and warned at all costs.”
His mood communicated itself to the others. The matter began to assume
with them all an increasingly sinister aspect. Majesty was not yet so
safe on its throne that omens could be disregarded. The King, prompt
and tireless, for all his sickly constitution, in business--the little
man who was to regain for England her reputation for workaday
sanity--had yet, at this beginning, a vast estate to recover from
chaos, and his path was beset with perils. The country was still in
two minds, and each distracted; a trifle might upset the balance.
Deliberating in this sort, a species of hysteria communicated itself
after a time from one to another of the little Council, until it
definitely came to perceive in the episode a daring ruse for bringing
about a reaction in popular sentiment. What if the meeting were
actually to occur, and the Champion to be overthrown? It was not to be
doubted that the event would have been provided for, and those engaged
in bringing it about forearmed. Defeat might result in riot, and riot
in revolution. Arrived at that pitch of the debate, the six gentlemen,
including his Majesty, were all speaking together in considerable
agitation.
It was the personality of the mysterious Mohock, once convicted of
masculinity, which most exercised their minds. He was certainly an
individual of importance, as so momentous a mission would hardly have
been entrusted to a nonentity. But who? A dozen names suggested
themselves. Berwick, Tyrconnel, Lord Henry Fitzjames, the ex-monarch’s
natural son, Marlborough himself, and others. It was Zuylestein,
speaking for the first and last time, who finally put the spark to all
this accumulating tow. “Vat,” he said, “if it is James himselv,
zegretly gom over from St. Germains and resolved upon venturing dis
bigduresque abbeal to de poblic?”
“Bom-bom!” said Schomberg.
He rose, Halifax rose, they all rose, and faced the King.
“Ik dank U, mijnheer,” said his Majesty; “it is a very blausible
suggestion.”
The words were equivalent to a bid to action. The Council broke up
hurriedly, and within an hour the Dutch troops had been beaten to
arms, the militia called out, the magistrates warned, and the whole
city placed under a surveillance of the most searching description. It
was at this momentous pass, when panic was in the air, that Sir
Charles Dymoke walked unconcerned into the “Cock” tavern, in Tothill
Street, and was immediately arrested by the guard set to watch that
hostelry, and conveyed in a state of complete stupefaction to
Whitehall. He was taken at once before the King sitting in Council.
“Vere haf you been?” demanded William sternly.
“Your Majesty!” gasped the Champion, a sturdy gallant of middle age.
“Answer, sir,” said the monarch--“and vidout eguivocation.”
“I have been with a friend,” stammered Sir Charles, all amazement.
“Ach!” exclaimed his Majesty sarcastically. “The vrow, vas it, vat
returnt you your gage in the Hall yesterday?”
“Certainly not, sire,” said the Champion, the flush of outrage on his
cheek.
“Not?” said the King. “Who vas she, den, dat voman?”
“The wife of Dobney, the horse-tamer, sire.”
“The vife--vat! Vat had she said to you?”
“She said, your Majesty, ‘Didn’t I warn you not to throw it down in
front of her nose, unless you want her to kneel and pick it up?’”
“She? Who?”
“The mare, sire. She performs at Islington.”
“Your Majesty,” said the Lord Privy Seal very softly, “shall we thank
Sir Charles and proceed to the order of the day?”
“Bom-bom!” said Schomberg under his breath.