BUCKINGHAM’S HEROICS
Miss Sylvia Farquharson occupied very pleasant lodgings in Salisbury
Court, procured for her upon her accession to fame and some measure of
fortune by Betterton, who himself lived in a house opposite. And it was
in the doorway of Betterton’s house that she first beheld the lean and
wolfish face of Bates.
This happened on that same morning of Colonel Holles’s disappointment
at the hands of Albemarle and subsequent tribulations at the hands of
Mrs. Quinn.
Miss Farquharson was in need of certain dress materials which, she had
been informed, were to be procured at a certain mercer’s in Cheapside.
On this errand she came forth in the early afternoon of that day, and
entered the sedan-chair that awaited her at her door. As the chairmen
took up their burden it was that, looking from the unglazed window on
her left across towards the house of her friend Betterton, she beheld
that sly, evil face protruded from the shadows of the doorway as if
to spy upon her. The sight of it instinctively chilled her a moment,
and, again instinctively, she drew back quickly into the depths of the
chair. A moment later she was laughing at her own foolish fancies,
and upon that dismissed from her mind the memory of that evil-looking
watcher.
It took her a full half-hour to reach her mercer’s at the sign of the
Silver Angel in Cheapside, for the chairmen moved slowly. It would have
been uncharitable to have urged them to go faster in the sweltering
heat, and uncharitableness was not in Miss Farquharson’s nature. Also
she was not pressed. And so she suffered herself to be borne in
leisurely fashion along Paul’s Yard, whilst the preacher of doom on
the steps was still haranguing that crowd which, as we know, ended by
rising in mockery against him.
When at last her chair was set down at the door of the Silver Angel,
she stepped out and passed in upon a business over which no woman
hurries.
It may be well that Master Bates--who had come slinking after that
chair with three tough bullies following some distance behind him, and
another three following at a still greater distance--was something of a
judge of feminine nature, and so came to the conclusion that it would
perhaps be best part of an hour before Miss Farquharson emerged again.
He had dark, wicked little eyes that observed a deal, and very wicked
wits that were keenly alert. He had noted the little crowd about the
steps of Paul’s, he had heard the burden of the preacher’s message,
and those wicked inventive wits of his had perceived here a stage very
opportunely set for the nasty little comedy which he was to contrive
on His Grace of Buckingham’s behalf. It remained to bring the chief
actor--the Duke, himself--at once within reasonable distance of the
scene. Provided this could be contrived, all should now flow merrily as
a peal of wedding-bells.
Master Bates slipped like a shadow into a porch, produced a pencil and
tablets, and set himself laboriously to scrawl three or four lines. He
folded his note, as one of the bullies, summoned by an unostentatious
signal, joined him there in that doorway.
With the note Bates slipped a crown into the man’s hand.
“This at speed to his grace,” he snapped. “Take a coach, man, and make
haste. Haste!”
The fellow was gone in a flash, and Bates, leaning back in the shadow,
leisurely filled a pipe and settled down to his vigil. A little
lantern-jawed fellow he was, with leathery, shaven cheeks, and long,
wispy black hair that hung like seaweed about his face and scraggy
neck. He was dressed in rusty black, in almost clerkly fashion,
which, together with his singular countenance and his round rather
high-crowned hat, gave him an air of fanatical piety.
Miss Farquharson made no haste. An hour passed, and the half of a
second, before she came forth at last, followed by the mercer, laden
with parcels, which, together with herself, were packed into the chair.
The chairmen took up, and, whilst the mercer bowed himself double in
obsequious gratitude to the famous actress, they swung along westward
by the way they had come.
Providence, it would almost seem, was on the Duke’s side that morning
to assist the subtle Bates in the stage-management of the affair. For
it was not more than half an hour since the removal of that citizen
who had been smitten with the pestilence at the very foot of Paul’s
steps when Miss Farquharson’s chair came past the spot, making its way
through a fear-ridden crowd fallen into voluble groups to discuss the
event.
She became conscious of the sense of dread about her. The grave,
stricken faces of the men and women standing there in talk, with
occasional loudly uttered lamentations, drew her attention and set her
uneasily wondering and speculating upon the reason.
Suddenly dominating all other sounds, a harsh, croaking voice arose
somewhere behind but very close to the chair:
“There goes one of those who have drawn the judgment of the Lord upon
this unfortunate city!”
She heard the cry repeated with little variation, again and yet again.
She saw the groups she was passing cease from their talk, and those
whose backs were towards her swing round and stand at gaze until it
seemed that every eye of all that motley crowd of citizens was directed
upon herself.
Thus it was borne in upon her that it was herself this dreadful
pursuing voice behind her was denouncing, and, intimidated for all her
stout spirit under the dreadful stare of all those apparently hostile
eyes, she shrank back into the depths of the chair, and even dared to
draw one of its leather curtains the better to conceal herself.
Again the voice beat upwards, shrilly, fiercely.
“There sits a playhouse wanton in her silks and velvets, while the
God-fearing go in rags, and the wrath of Heaven smites us with a sword
of pestilence for the sin she brings among us!”
Her chair rocked a little, as if her bearers were being hustled, for
in truth some three or four of the scurvier sort, those scourings of
the streets who are ever on the watch for fruitful opportunities of
turbulence, had joined that raving fanatic who followed her with his
denunciations, and were pressing now upon the chair. Miss Farquharson’s
fear increased. It requires no great imagination--and she possessed
imagination in abundance--to conceive what may happen to one at the
hands of a crowd whose passions have been inflamed. With difficulty
she commanded herself, repressing the heave of her bosom and the wild
impulse to scream out her fear.
But her chairmen, stolid, massive fellows, who held her in the esteem
she commanded in all who knew her closely, plodded steadily onward
despite this jostling; and, what was more to their credit, they
continued to keep their tempers and to affect unconcern. They could not
believe that the people would turn upon a popular idol at the bidding
of this rusty black crow of a fanatic who came howling at their heels.
But those few rogues who had joined him were being reinforced by
others who supported with inarticulate growls of menace the rascal’s
denunciations; and these grew fiercer at every moment.
“It is Sylvia Farquharson of the Duke’s Playhouse,” he cried. “A
daughter of Belial, a shameless queen. It is for the sins of her kind
that the hand of the Lord is heavy upon us. It is for her and those
like her that we are suffering and shall suffer until this city is
cleansed of its iniquities.”
He was alongside of the chair now, brandishing a short cudgel, and Miss
Farquharson’s scared eyes had a glimpse of his malevolent face. To her
amazement she recognized it for the face that had peered at her two
hours ago from the shadows of Betterton’s house in Salisbury Square.
“You have seen one of yourselves smitten down with the plague under
your very eyes,” he was ranting. “And so shall others be smitten to pay
for the sin of harlotry with which this city is corrupt.”
Now, for all the fear that was besetting the naturally stout spirit in
her frail white body, Miss Farquharson’s wits were not at all impaired.
This fanatic--to judge him by the language he used--represented himself
as moved to wrath against her by something that had lately happened
in Paul’s Yard. His words implied that his denunciation was prompted
by that latest sign of Heaven’s indignation at the sins of the City.
But since he had been on the watch in Salisbury Court to observe her
going forth, and had followed her all the way thence, it was clear that
the facts were quite otherwise, and that he acted upon a premeditated
design.
And now the knaves who had joined him were hustling the chairmen with
greater determination. The chair was tossed alarmingly, and Miss
Farquharson flung this way and that within it. Others from amongst the
spectators--from amongst those upon whom she had almost been depending
for ultimate protection--began to press upon the heels of her more
immediate assailants and insults were being flung at her by some of the
women in the crowd.
Hemmed about by that hostile mob, the chair came at last perforce to a
standstill just opposite the Paul’s Head, on the steps of which Colonel
Holles was at that moment standing. He had been in the act of coming
forth upon the errand of finding a purchaser for his jewel, when his
attention was drawn by the hubbub, and he stood arrested, frowning and
observant.
The scene nauseated him. The woman they were persecuting with their
insults and menaces might be no better than that dirty fanatic was
pronouncing her. But she was a woman and helpless. And apart from this
there was in all the world no vice that Holles found more hideous than
virtue driven to excess.
Over the heads of the crowd he saw the wildly rocking chair set down at
last. Of its occupant he had but a confused glimpse, and in any case
the distance at which he stood would hardly have permitted him to make
out her face distinctly. But so much wasn’t necessary to conceive her
condition, her peril, and the torment of fear she was suffering at the
hands of those ignoble persecutors.
Colonel Holles thought he might find pleasant distraction, and at the
same time perform a meritorious deed, in slitting the ears of that
black fanatic who was whipping up the passions of the mob.
But no sooner had he made up his mind to this, and before he could
stir a foot to carry out his intention, assistance came suddenly and
vigorously from another quarter. Precisely whence or how it came was
not easily determinable. The tall, graceful man in the golden periwig
with the long white ostrich plumes in his broad hat, seemed, together
with those who followed him, to materialize suddenly upon the spot, so
abrupt was his appearance. At a glance his dress proclaimed him some
great gentleman. He wore the tiny coat and kilt-like petticoat above
his breeches that marked him for a native of Whitehall. The sapphire
velvet of their fabric was stiff with gold lace, and at waist and
breast and from the cuffs which ended at the elbow bulged forth a
marvel of dazzling linen, with a wealth of lace at the throat and a
hundred ribbons fluttering at his shoulders and his knees. The flash of
jewels rendered his figure still more dazzling: a great brooch of gems
secured the clump of ostrich plumes to his broad beaver, and of gems
were the buttons on his sleeves and in his priceless necktie.
He had drawn his sword, and with the menace of this and of his voice,
combined with his imperiously commanding mien, he clove himself a way
through the press to the chair itself. After him, in plain striped
liveries with broad fawn hats, came four stalwart lads, obviously
lackeys with whips which they appeared nowise timid of employing. Their
lashes fell vigorously upon the heads and shoulders of that black
fanatic and those rough-looking knaves who more immediately supported
his attack upon the chair.
Like an archangel Michael scattering a legion of demons did that gay
yet imposing rescuer scatter those unclean assailants of that helpless
lady. The bright blade of his sword whirled hither and thither, beating
ever a wider ring about the chair, and his voice accompanied it:
“You mangy tykes! You filthy vermin! Stand back there! Back, and give
the lady air! Back, or by Heaven I’ll send some of you where you
belong.”
They proved themselves as cowardly as they had lately been aggressive,
and they skipped nimbly beyond the reach of that darting point of his.
His followers fell upon them afterwards with their whips and drove them
still farther back, relentlessly, until they were absorbed and lost in
the ranks of the crowd of onlookers which in its turn fell back before
the continued menace of those impetuous grooms.
The gentleman in blue swung to the chairmen.
“Take up,” he bade them. And they, seeing themselves now delivered
from their assailants, and their main anxiety being to remove
themselves and their charge from so hostile a neighbourhood whilst they
might still enjoy the protection of this demigod, made haste to obey
him.
His Grace of Buckingham--for already the people had recognized him, and
his name had been uttered with awe in their ranks--stepped ahead, and
waved back those who stood before him.
“Away!” he bade them, with the air of a prince speaking to his grooms.
“Give room!” He disdained even to use the menace of his sword, which he
now carried tucked under his left arm. His voice and mien sufficed, and
a lane was opened in that living press through which he advanced with
calm assurance, the chairmen hurrying with their burden in his wake.
The lackeys closed in behind the chair and followed to form a
rear-guard; but there was scarcely the need, for all attempt to hinder
or molest the chair was at an end. Indeed, none troubled to accompany
it farther. The people broke up into groups again, or moved away about
their business, realizing that here the entertainment was at an end.
The fanatic who had led the attack and the knaves who had joined him
had vanished suddenly, mysteriously, and completely.
Of the very few spectators whom curiosity or interest still attracted
was Holles, and this perhaps chiefly because Miss Farquharson was being
carried in the direction in which his own business was taking him.
He came down the steps of the inn, and followed leisurely at some
little distance.
They swung steadily along as far as Paternoster Row, where the traffic
was slight. Here the Duke halted at last, and turned, and at a sign
from him the men set down the chair.
His grace advanced to the window, swept off his broad plumed hat, and
bowed until the golden curls of his periwig almost met across his face.
Within the chair, still very pale, but quite composed again by now, sat
Miss Farquharson, regarding his grace with a very odd expression, an
expression best described as speculative.
“Child,” he exclaimed, a hand upon his heart, a startled look on his
handsome face, “I vow that you have taught me the meaning of fear. For
I was never frightened in my life until to-day. What imprudence, my
dear Sylvia, to show yourself here in the City, when men’s minds are so
distempered by war and pestilence that they must be seeking scapegoats
wherever they can find them. None may call me devout, yet devout I
feel at this moment. From my soul I return thanks to Heaven that by a
miracle I chanced to be here to save you from this peril!”
She leaned forward, and her hooded cloak of light silk, having fallen
back from head and shoulders, revealed the white lustre of her beauty.
She was smiling slightly, a smile that curled her delicate lip and
lent something hard and disdainful to eyes that naturally were soft
and gentle--long-shaped, rather wistful eyes of a deep colour that was
something between blue and green.
“It was a most fortunate chance, your grace,” she said, almost
tonelessly.
“Fortunate, indeed!” he fervently agreed with her, and, hat in hand,
dabbed his brow with a fine handkerchief.
“Your grace was very opportunely at hand!”
And now there was a world of mocking meaning in her tone. She
understood at last, she thought, upon whose behalf that fanatic had
spied upon her going forth, afterwards to follow and assail her, thus
providing occasion for this very romantic rescue. Having thus shrewdly
appraised the situation, the actress in her awoke to play her part in
it.
And so she had mocked him with that phrase: “Your grace was very
opportunely at hand!”
“I thank God for’t, and so may you, child,” was the quick answer,
ignoring the mockery, which had not escaped him.
But Miss Farquharson was none so disposed, it seemed, to the devout
thanksgiving he advised.
“Is your grace often east of Temple Bar?” was her next rallying
question.
“Are you?” quoth he, possibly for lack of better answer.
“So seldom that the coincidence transcends all that yourself or Mr.
Dryden could have invented for one of your plays.”
“Life is marvellously coincident,” the Duke reflected, conceiving
obtuseness to be the proper wear for the innocence he pretended.
“Coincidence is the salt that rescues existence from insipidity.”
“So? And it was to rescue this that you rescued me; and so that you
might have opportunity for rescuing me, no doubt yourself you contrived
the danger.”
“I contrived the danger?” He was aghast. He did not at first
understand. “I contrived the danger! Child!” It was a cry of mingled
pain and indignation, and the indignation at least was not pretended.
The contempt of her tone had cut him like a whip. It made him see that
he was ridiculous in her eyes, and His Grace of Buckingham liked to be
ridiculous as little as another, perhaps less than most. “How can you
think it of me?”
“Think it of you?” She was laughing. “Lord! I knew it, sir, the moment
I saw you take the stage at the proper cue--at what you would call the
dramatic moment. Enter hero, very gallant. Oh, sir, I am none so easily
cozened. I was a fool to allow myself to be deceived into fear by those
other silly mummers, the first murderer and his myrmidons. It was
poorly contrived. Yet it carried the groundlings in Paul’s Yard quite
off their feet, and they’ll talk of your brave carriage and mighty mien
for a whole day, at least. But you could scarce expect that it should
move me as well; since I am in the play, as it were.”
It was said of him, and with truth, that he was the most impudent
fellow in England, this lovely, accomplished, foolish son of a man
whose face had made his fortune. Yet her raillery now put him out of
countenance, and it was only with difficulty that he could master the
fury it awoke in him. Yet master it he did, lest he should cut a still
sorrier figure.
“I vow ... I vow you’re monstrously unjust,” he contrived at last to
stammer. “You ever have thought the worst of me. It all comes of that
cursed supper party and the behaviour of those drunken fools. Yet I
have sworn to you that it was through no fault of mine, that my only
satisfaction lay in your prompt departure from a scene with which I
would not for all the world have offended you. Yet, though I have sworn
it, I doubt if you believe me.”
“Does your grace wonder?” she asked him coolly.
He looked at her a moment with brooding, wicked eyes. Then he loosed
some little of his anger, but loosed it on a pretence.
“I would to Heaven I had left you to those knaves that persecuted you.”
She laughed outright. “I wonder what turn the comedy would have taken
then, had you failed to answer to your cue. Perhaps my persecutors
would have been put to the necessity of rescuing me, themselves, lest
they should incur your anger. That would have been diverting. Oh,
but enough!” She put aside her laughter. “I thank your grace for the
entertainment provided; and since it has proved unprofitable I trust
your grace will not go to the pains of providing yet another of the
same kind. Oh, sir, if you can take shame for anything, take shame for
the dullness of your invention.”
She turned from him with almost contemptuous abruptness to command the
chairman standing at her side.
“Take up, Nathaniel. Let us on, and quickly, or I shall be late.”
She was obeyed, and thus departed without so much as another glance for
the gay Duke of Bucks, who, too crestfallen to attempt to detain her,
or to renew his protestations, stood hat in hand, white with anger,
gnawing his lip, conscious, above all, that she had plucked from him a
mask that left him an object of derision and showed his face to appear
the face of a fool.
In the background his lackeys sought with pains to preserve a proper
stolidity of countenance, whilst a few passersby paused to stare at
that splendid bareheaded figure of a courtliness rarely seen on foot in
the streets of the City. Conscious of their regard, investing it with a
greater penetration than it could possibly possess, his grace conceived
them all to be the mocking witnesses of his discomfiture.
He ground his heel in a sudden spasm of rage, clapped on his hat, and
turned to depart, to regain his waiting coach. But suddenly his right
arm was seized in a firm grip, and a voice, in which quivered wonder,
and something besides, assailed his ears.
“Sir! Sir!”
He swung round, and glared into the shaven, aquiline face and
wonder-laden eyes of Colonel Holles, who had come up behind the
chair whilst the Duke was in conversation with its occupant, and had
gradually crept nearer as if drawn by some irresistible attraction.
Amazed, the Duke looked him over from head to toe. Conceiving in this
shabby stranger another witness of his humiliation, his anger, seeking
a vent, flamed out.
“What’s this?” he rasped. “Do you presume to touch me, sirrah?”
The Colonel, never flinching as another might have done under a tone
that was harsh and arrogant as a blow, before eyes that blazed upon him
out of that white face, made answer simply:
“I touched you once before, I think, and you suffered it with a better
grace. For then it was to serve you that I touched you.”
“Ha! And it will be to remind me of it that you touch me now,” came our
fine gentleman’s quick, contemptuous answer.
Stricken by the brutality of the words, Holles crimsoned slowly under
his tan, what time his steady glance returned the Duke’s contempt with
interest. Then, without answering, he swung on his heel to depart.
But there was in this something so odd and so deliberately offensive
to one accustomed to be treated ever with the deepest courtesy that it
was now the Duke who caught him by the arm in a grip of sudden anger,
arresting his departure.
“Sir! A moment!”
They were face to face again, and now the arrogance was entirely on the
side of Holles. The Duke’s countenance reflected astonishment and some
resentment.
“I think,” he said at last, “that you are something wanting in respect.”
“There, at least your discernment is not at fault,” the Colonel
answered him.
Deeper grew the Duke’s wonder. “Do you know who I am?” he asked, after
another pause.
“I learnt it five minutes since.”
“But I thought you said that you did me a service once.”
“That was many years ago. And I did not know then your name. Your grace
has probably forgotten.”
Because of the disdainful tone he took, he commanded the respect and
attention of one who was a very master of disdain. Also the Duke’s
curiosity was deeply stirred.
“Will you not assist my memory?” he invited, almost gently.
The Colonel laughed a little grimly. Then shaking the Duke’s still
detaining grip without ceremony from his arm, he raised his hand, and
holding back the light brown curls, revealed his left ear and the long
ruby that adorned it.
Buckingham stared an instant, then leaned nearer to obtain a closer
view, and he caught his breath in sudden surprise.
“How came you by that jewel?” he asked, his eyes scanning the soldier’s
face as he spoke.
And out of his abiding sense of injury the Colonel answered him:
“It was given me after Worcester as a keepsake by an empty fribble
whose life I thought worth saving.”
Oddly enough there was no answering resentment from his grace. Perhaps
his wonder overwhelmed and stilled at the moment every other emotion.
“So! It was you!” His eyes continued to search that lean countenance.
“Aye!” he added after a moment, and it sounded like a sigh. “The man
had just such a nose and was of your inches. But in no other respect
do you look like the Cromwellian who befriended me that night. You had
no ringlets then. Your hair was cropped to a godly length, and....
But you’re the man. How odd to meet you again thus! How passing odd!”
His grace seemed suddenly bemused. “They cannot err!” he muttered,
continuing to regard the Colonel from under knitted brows, and his eyes
were almost the eyes of a visionary. “I have been expecting you,” he
said, and again he used that cryptic phrase: “They cannot err.”
It was Holles’s turn to be surprised, and out of his surprise he spoke:
“Your grace has been expecting me?”
“These many years. It was foretold me that we should meet again--aye,
and that for a time our lives should run intertwined in their courses.”
“Foretold?” ejaculated Holles. Instantly he bethought him of the
superstitions which had made him cling to that jewel through every
stress of fortune. “How foretold? By whom?” he asked.
The question seemed to arouse the Duke from the brooding into which he
had fallen.
“Sir,” he said, “we cannot stand talking here. And we have not met
thus, after all these years, to part again without more.” His manner
resumed its normal arrogance. “If you have business, sir, it must wait
upon my pleasure. Come!”
He took the Colonel by the arm, whilst over his shoulder he addressed
his waiting lackeys in French, commanding two of them to follow.
Holles, unresisting, curious, bewildered, a man walking in a dream,
suffered himself to be led whither the other pleased, as a man lets
himself drift upon the bosom of the stream of Destiny.