BUCKINGHAM’S GRATITUDE
In a room above-stairs which his grace had commanded in an inn at the
corner of Paternoster Row, they sat alone, the Duke of Buckingham and
the man to whom he owed his life. There was no doubt of the extent of
the debt, as both well knew. For on that night, long years ago, when
his grace lay faint and wounded on that stricken field of battle,
he had fallen a prey to a pair of those human jackals who scour the
battle-ground to strip the living and the dead. The young Duke had
sought gallantly enough, considering his condition, to defend himself
from their depredations, whereupon, whilst one of them held him down,
the other had bared a knife to make an end of his rash resistance. And
then out of the surrounding gloom had sprung young Holles, brought to
that spot by merest chance. His heavy cut-and-thrust blade had opened
the skull of the villain who wielded the knife, whereupon his fellow
had incontinently fled. Thereafter, half supporting, half carrying the
lovely wounded boy whom he had rescued, the young Cromwellian officer
had assisted him to the safety and shelter of a royalist yeoman’s
cottage. All this they both remembered, and upon this they dwelt a
moment now.
A table stood between them, and on that table a quart of Burgundy which
the Duke had called for, that he might entertain his guest.
“In my heart,” said Holles, “I always believed that we should meet
again one day; which is why I have clung to this jewel. Had I known
your name, I should have sought you out. As it was, I harboured the
conviction that Chance would bring me across your path.”
“Not Chance. Destiny,” said his grace, with quiet conviction.
“Why, Destiny, if you prefer to call it so. This jewel now--it is very
odd! I have clung to it through all these years, as I have said; I have
clung to it through some odd shifts which the sale of it might have
relieved: clung to it against the day when we should meet again, that
it might serve as my credential.” He did not add that to him the oddest
thing of all was that to-day, at the very moment of this meeting, he
was on his way to sell the jewel, compelled to it at last by direst
need.
The Duke was nodding, his face thoughtful. “Destiny, you see. It was
preordained. The meeting was foretold. Did I not say so?”
And again Holles asked him, as he had asked before: “Foretold by whom?”
This time the Duke answered him.
“By whom? By the stars. They are the only true prophets, and their
messages are plain to him who can read them. I suppose you never sought
that lore?”
Holles stared at him a moment. Then he shook his head, and smiled in a
manner to imply his contempt of charlatanry.
“I am a soldier, sir,” he said.
“Why, so am I--when the occasion serves. But that does not prevent me
from being a reader of the heavens, a writer of verse, a law-giver in
the north, a courtier here, and several other things besides. Man in
his time plays many parts. Who plays one only may as well play none. To
live, my friend, you must sip at many wells of life.”
He developed that thesis, discoursing easily, wittily, and with the
indefinable charm he could command, a charm which was fastening upon
our adventurer now even as it had fastened upon him years ago in that
hour of their brief but fateful meeting.
“When just now you chanced upon me,” he concluded, “I was playing
hero and lover, author and mummer all in one, and playing them all so
unsuccessfully that I never found myself in a more vexatious part.
On my soul, if there lay no debt between us already, you must have
rendered me your debtor now that you can rescue my mind for an hour or
so from the tormenting thought of that sweet baggage who keeps me on
the rack. You saw, perhaps, how the little wanton used me.” He laughed,
and yet through his laughter ran a note of bitterness. “But I contrived
the mummery clumsily, as she reproached me. And no doubt I deserved to
be laughed off the stage, which is what happened. But she shall pay
me, and with interest, one of these fine days, for all the trouble she
has given me. She shall.... Oh, but a plague on the creature! It is of
yourself, sir, that I would hear. What are you now, that were once a
Commonwealth man?”
“Nobody’s man at present. I have seen a deal of service since those
days, both at home and abroad, yet it has brought me small gear, as you
can see for yourself.”
“Faith, yes.” Buckingham regarded him more critically. “I should not
judge your condition to be prosperous.”
“You may judge it to be desperate and never fear to exaggerate.”
“So?” The Duke raised his eyebrows. “Is it so bad? I vow I am grieved.”
His face settled into lines of courteous regret. “But it is possible I
may be of service to you. There is a debt between us. I should welcome
the opportunity to discharge it. What is your name, sir? You have not
told me.”
“Holles--Randal Holles, lately a colonel of horse in the Stadtholder’s
service.”
The Duke frowned reflectively. The name had touched a chord of memory
and set it faintly vibrating in his brain. Awhile the note eluded him.
Then he had it.
“Randal Holles?” he echoed slowly, questioningly. “That was the name of
a regicide who.... But you cannot be he. You are too young by thirty
years....”
“He was my father,” said the Colonel.
“Oh!” The Duke considered him blankly. “I do not wonder that you
lack employment here in England. My friend, with the best intentions
to repay you the great service that you did me, this makes it very
difficult.”
The new-risen hope perished again in the Colonel’s face.
“It is as I feared....” he was beginning gloomily, when the Duke leaned
forward, and set a hand upon his arm.
“I said difficult, my friend. I did not say impossible. I admit the
impossibility of nothing that I desire, and I swear that I desire
nothing at present more ardently than your better fortune. Meanwhile,
Colonel Holles, that I may serve you, I must know more of you. You
have not told me yet how Colonel Holles, sometime of the Army of the
Commonwealth, and more lately in the service of the Stadtholder,
happens to be endangering his neck in the London of Old Rowley--this
King whose memory for injuries is as endless as a lawsuit.”
Colonel Holles told him. Saving the matter of how he had been tempted
to join the ill-starred Danvers conspiracy under persuasion of Tucker
and Rathbone, he used the utmost candour, frankly avowing the mistakes
he had made by following impulses that were never right. He spoke of
the ill-luck that had dogged him, to snatch away each prize in the
moment that he put forth his hand to seize it, down to the command in
Bombay which Albemarle had already practically conferred upon him.
The debonair Duke was airily sympathetic. He condoled and jested in a
breath, his jests being in themselves a promise that all this should
now be mended. But when Holles came to the matter of the Bombay
command, his grace’s laughter sounded a melancholy note.
“And it was I who robbed you of this,” he cried. “Why, see how
mysteriously Destiny has been at work! But this multiplies my debt. It
adds something for which I must make amends. Rest assured that I shall
do so. I shall find a way to set you on the road to fortune. But we
must move cautiously, as you realize. Depend upon me to move surely,
none the less.”
Holles flushed this time in sheer delight. Often though Fortune had
fooled him, yet she had not utterly quenched his faith in men. Thus,
miraculously, in the eleventh hour had salvation come to him, and it
had come through that precious ruby which a wise intuition had made him
treasure so tenaciously.
The Duke produced a purse of green silk netting, through the meshes of
which glowed the mellow warmth of gold.
“Meanwhile, my friend--as an earnest of my good intent....”
“Not that, your grace.” For the second time that day Holles waved back
a proffered purse, his foolish pride in arms. Throughout his career he
had come by money in many questionable ways, but never by accepting it
as a gift from one whose respect he desired to preserve. “I am in no
such immediate want. I ... I can contrive awhile.”
But His Grace of Buckingham was of a different temper from His Grace of
Albemarle. He was as prodigal and lavish as the other was parsimonious,
and he was not of those who will take a refusal.
He smiled a little at the Colonel’s protestations, and passed to a
tactful, ingratiating insistence with all the charm of which he could
be master.
“I honour you for your refusal, but....” He continued to hold out the
purse. “See. It is not a gift I offer you, but an advance, a trifling
loan, which you shall repay me presently when I shall have made it easy
for you to so do. Come, sir, there is that between us which is not to
be repaid in gold. Your refusal would offend me.”
And Holles, be it confessed, was glad enough to have the path thus
smoothed for his self-respect.
“As a loan, then, since you are so graciously insistent....”
“Why, what else do you conceive I had in mind?” His grace dropped the
heavy purse into the hand that was at last held out to receive it, and
rose. “You shall hear from me again, Colonel, and as soon as may be.
Let me but know where you are lodged.”
Holles considered a second. He was leaving the Paul’s Head, and it had
been his announced intention to remove himself to the Bird in Hand, a
humble hostelry where lodgings were cheap. But he loved good food and
wine as he loved good raiment, and he would never lodge in so vile a
house save under the harsh compulsion of necessity. Now, with this
sudden accession of fortune, master of this heavy purse and assured of
more to follow soon, that obnoxious necessity was removed. He bethought
him of, and decided upon, another house famous for its good cheer.
“Your grace will find me at The Harp in Wood Street,” he announced.
“There look to hear from me, and very soon.”
They left the tavern together, and the Duke went off to his coach,
which had been brought thither for him, his French lackeys trotting
beside it, whilst Colonel Holles, with his head in the clouds and a
greater swagger than ever in his port to emphasize the shabby condition
of his person, rolled along towards Paul’s Yard, fingering the jewel in
his ear, which there no longer was the need to sell, although there was
no longer the need to retain it, since it had fulfilled, at last, after
long years, Destiny’s purpose with himself.
Thus in high good-humour he strutted into the Paul’s Head, to plunge
into a deplorable scene with Mrs. Quinn. It was the jewel--this fateful
jewel--that precipitated the catastrophe. The sight of it inflamed her
anger, driving her incontinently to unwarranted conclusions.
“You haven’t sold it!” she shrilled as he stepped into the back parlour
where she was at the moment stirring, and she pointed to the ear-ring,
which glowed like an ember under a veil of his brown hair. “You’ve
changed your mind. You think to come whimpering here again, that you
may save the trinket at my cost.” And then the devil whispered an
unfortunate thought, and so begat in her a sudden furious jealousy.
Before he could answer her, before he could recover from the gaping
amazement in which he stood to receive the onslaught of her wrath, she
was sweeping on: “I understand!” She leered an instant evilly. “It’s
a love-token, eh? The gift of some fat Flemish burgomaster’s dame,
belike, whom ye no doubt cozened as ye would have cozened me. That’s
why ye can’t part with it--not even to pay me the money you owe for
bed and board, for the food ye’ve guzzled and the wine ye swilled, ye
good-for-nothing out-at-elbow jackanapes. But ye’ve had your warning,
and since ye don’t heed it ye’ll take the....”
“Hold your peace, woman,” he interrupted, thundering, and silenced
her by his sudden show of passion. He advanced upon her, so that she
recoiled in some alarm, yet bridling even then. Then as suddenly he
checked, curbed himself, and laughed. Forth from his pocket he lugged
the heavy ducal purse, slid back the gold rings that bound it and
brought the broad yellow pieces into view at its gaping mouth.
“What is the total of this score of yours?” he asked contemptuously,
in the remnants of his anger. “Name it, take your money, and give me
peace.”
But she was no longer thinking of her score. She was stricken with
amazement at the sight of the purse he held, and the gold with which
it bulged. Round-eyed she stared at it, and then at him. And then,
because she could not conjecture the source of this sudden wealth,
she must assume the worst, with the readiness to which such minds as
hers are prone. The suspicion narrowed her blue eyes; it settled into
conviction, and fetched an unpleasant curl to the lips of her broad
mouth.
“And how come you by this gold?” she asked him, sinisterly quiet.
“Is that your affair, ma’am?”
“I thought you was above purse-cutting,” she said, mightily disdainful.
“But it seems I was as deceived in you there as in other ways.”
“Why, you impudent bawd!” he roared in his rage, and turned her livid
by the epithet.
“You vagrant muck-rake, is that a word for an honest woman?”
“Honest, you thieving drab! Do you boast yourself honest? Your cheating
score gives the lie to that. Give me the total of it, that I may pay
the swindling sum, and shake the dust of your tavern from my heels.”
That, as you realize, was but the beginning of a scene of which I
have no mind to give you all the details. Some of them are utterly
unprintable. Her voice shrilled up like an oyster-woman’s, drawing the
attention of the few who occupied the common room, and fetching Tim the
drawer in alarm to the door of the little parlour.
And for all his anger, Colonel Holles began to be vaguely alarmed, for
his conscience, as you know, was not altogether easy, and appearances
might easily be construed against him.
“You thieving, brazen traitor,” she was bawling. “Do you think to come
roaring it in here at me, you that have turned my reputable house into
a den of treason! I’ll learn you manners, you impudent gallow’s-bird.”
And she then caught sight of Tim’s scared face looking round the
opening door. “Tim, fetch the constable,” she bawled. “The gentleman
shall shift his lodgings to Newgate, which is better suited to his
kind. Fetch the constable, I tell you. Run, lad.”
Tim departed. So did the Colonel, realizing suddenly that there would
be no profit in remaining. He emptied the half of the contents of the
ducal purse into his palm, and, as Jupiter wooed Danaë, but without any
of Jupiter’s amorous intention, he scattered it upon and about her in a
golden shower.
“There’s to stop your noisy, scolding mouth!” he cried. “Pay yourself
with that, you hag. And the devil take you!”
He flung out in a towering rage, almost on the very heels of Tim; and
of the half-dozen men in the common room not one dared to dispute his
passage. He gained the street, and was gone, leaving behind him some
odds and ends of gear as a memento of his eventful passage, and a
hostess reduced to tears of angry exhaustion.