French Court, which he made with his parents and saw many strange
though brilliant things, giving him cause for reflection. Tender as his
years were at the time, he was so big and finely built a fellow for his
age, and so beautiful to look upon, that there were ladies who even
tried their bright eyes upon him as if he had been a man instead of a
youth; and he encountered many youngsters of his years who had already
done much more than dally on the brink of life, some, indeed, having
plunged deep into waters not overclean.
Some of these last regarded him at least as one who neglected his
opportunities, but his great laugh at their callow jests and their
advice to him was so frank and indifferent a thing that they found it
singularly baffling. 'Twas indeed as if a man of ripe years and wisdom
had laughed at them with good-nature, because he knew they could not
understand the thing experience had taught him.
"Why should I be pleased because a beauty older than my mother laughs
and teases me," he said. "I am but a boy, and she knows it full well,
and would only play with me to see if I am a fool who can be made a
toy. I am too big," stretching his great arms, "to sit at ladies' feet
and have my curls stroked as if I were a lap-dog. A fellow such as I
should be exercising his body and putting somewhat in his brain. Why
should I overdrink and overfeed myself and give my strength to follies?
'Tis not my taste. On my life, I would rather get up at daybreak with a
clean tongue and a clear head and go out to leap and ride and fence and
toss the bar with well-strung muscles. Some day I shall meet a beauty
whom I would be ready for." And he laughed his big, musical, boyish
laugh again and his tawny eye sparkled.
At the University there were temptations enough to lead youth to folly,
even when it was not such youth as his, and therefore a shining mark.
The seed Charles Stuart had sown had flourished and grown rank and
strong, so that the great seat of learning was rich with dissolute
young fools and madcaps and their hangers-on. But even the most foolish
swaggerer of them could not call milksop a man who could outride,
outleap, outfence, outhunt him; who could drive the four horses of his
coach to London and back at such a pace and in such a manner as made
purple-faced old stage-coach drivers shake their heads with glee, and
who, in a wrestling-match, could break a man's back at a throw if he
chose to be unmerciful. Besides this, he was popular for a score of
reasons, being no sanctimonious preacher of his doctrines, but as
joyous a liver as any among them and as open-handed and high of spirit.
"'Tis not for me to say how other men should live," was his simple and
straightforward creed. "I live as I like best and find best pays me.
'Tis for others to seek out and follow what best pays themselves."
Many a story was told of him which his fellows liked, youth always
being elated by any deed of prowess and daring in youth. One of these
stories, which was indeed no great one, but picturesque and pretty,
took their fancy greatly, and was much related and laughed gaily over,
and indeed beloved.
He was a strong and wondrous swimmer, having learned the art in his
childhood on the seacoast, being taught by his Grace his father. When
at Oxford it was his custom to rise before the rest of the world, and
in any weather or season plunge into the river and swim and dive and
play in the water like a young river god. He had chosen a favourite
swimming-spot and would undress under cover of the trees and then dash
out to his pastime, and it so chanced that going there one hot
afternoon he fell upon an adventure.
A party of jolly personages of the middle class, who had come up from
town on pleasure and rollicking interest, were taking a jaunt upon the
river in a wherry. 'Twas a wedding-party, and both males and females,
having dined at a tavern, were well filled with ale and in the mood for
disporting themselves. The groom and his men friends, being in
frolicsome humour and knowing nothing whatever of oarsmanship, were
playing great pranks to make the women scream at their daring. The
bride, a pretty thing in cherry ribbands, clung to the boat's side in
amaze at the heroic swagger of her new lord, but her cheeks, which had
matched her ribbands, grew paler at each rock and dip of the boat, and
her fear forced little shrieks from her. Her companions shrieked too,
but laughingly and in such manner as but spurred the men to greater
follies. The sport was at its highest and noisiest when they neared the
spot all Oxford knew by this time by the name of "my Lord Marquess's
diving hole." At this point the river was broad and deep, and not far
below it the water washed over a weir near which was a post bearing a
board marked "Danger!" To those who knew the waters and had some skill
with their oars there was no peril, but to a crew of drink-filled
junketers it was an ill-omened place. The wedding-party was too wild
and young and rollicking to observe the sign-board. The men rocked the
boat, shouted and sang, the women squealed and laughed and shouted with
them; the little bride burst forth weeping, shrieking wildly the next
moment as the wherry was overset, and the whole party struggled in the
water, the hat, with its cherry-ribbands, floating on the top.
Some distance above there were people walking. Shrieks filled the air
and roused all within sight to running and shouting. Poor gasping,
choking, deadly faced heads bobbed up a moment on the river's surface
and went under struggling.
"Help! Help!" shouted the running people. "God save them all! Good
Lord! Good Lord!" And in the midst of it out sprang from among the
trees and bushes the great white body of a man, who dashed into the
stream and swam like a dolphin.
If he had been clothed the drowning creatures would have had somewhat
to drag upon--if he had not been as strong as a giant and cool enough
to control them, the poor strangling fools would have so hampered him
in their frenzy that they might have dragged him under water with them.
But there was a power in him and a freedom from all sense of peril
which dominated them all.
"Keep your senses and you are safe," he shouted, swimming and pushing
the overturned boat within reach of the men, who struggled together.
His voice rang like a clarion and held in it such encouragement that
the poor little bride, who came up gasping near him at that moment,
almost took him for a god as he shot to her rescue.
"Your hand on my shoulder; be brave, my girl--be brave," he cried out
with such good cheer as would have put heart in any woman and aided her
to gather her poor frightened wits and obey him like a child, while
even in the midst of her terror, as her little red hands clung to him,
she marked, half unconsciously the beauty and vigour of him--his strong
white neck like a column, the great corded muscles of his white arms as
he clove the water through.
He bore her to the shore and left her safe there, and plunged in again,
crying to her, over his shoulder: "I will bring back the others!" And
she stood dripping, gazing after him, sobbing and wringing her hands,
but filled with wild admiration and amaze.
He shouted orders to the sobered men to hold steady to the wherry and
dived to bring back one woman after another to firm land; a boat found
in the osiers was put forth above, and in time all were brought to
shore, though the bridegroom, who had not come near enough to the
wherry, was dragged in looking like a dead man.
The bride flung herself upon his body, shrieking and kissing him. The
people who had run up crowded about in senseless excitement and would
have kept all air away. But there was one among them who had his wits
clear and ordered them off, plainly remembering not for a moment that
his brocades and laces lay hid among the trees, and he stood among them
as Apollo stands in marble.
"Bring brandy," he commanded the nearest. "Stand back; strip his
clothes from him and empty the water from his stomach. Here," to a
matron who had come up panting, "take his wife away."
The good woman he addressed dropped a hurried curtsey and hustled off
the woman under her wing. She led them into the sun and wrung the water
from their garments, while they sobbed and choked and wept.
"Hush thee, wench!" she said to the stricken bride. "Hush thee, little
fool; my lord Marquess will put life into him and set him on his feet
before thy petticoats are dry, Lord! Lord! what a young man! When built
Heaven such another? And he a Duke's son!"
"A Marquess!" cried one of the bride's friends. "A Duke's son!" sobbed
the bride.
"Ay, a Duke's son!" the good woman cried, exulting further. "And were
he a King's, the nation might be proud of him. 'Tis his young lordship
the Marquess of Roxholm."
_CHAPTER VI_
"_No; She has not yet Come to Court_"
'Tis but a small adventure for a youth who is a strong swimmer to save
a party of cits from drowning in a river, but 'twas a story much
repeated, having a picturesqueness and colour because its chief figure
Nature had fitted out with all the appointments which might be expected
to adorn a hero.
"'Tis a pretty story, too," said a laughing great lady when 'twas
talked of in town. "My lord Marquess dashing in and out of the river,
bearing in his big white arms soused little citizen beauties and their
half-drowned sweethearts, and towering in their midst giving
orders--like a tall young god in marble come to life. The handsomest
Marquess in Great Britain, and in France likewise, they tell me."
"The handsomest man," quoth the old Dowager Lady Storms, who had a
country seat in Oxfordshire and knew more of the tale than any one
else. "The handsomest man, say I, for it chanced that I drove by the
river at that moment and saw him."
And then--freedom of speech being the fashion in those days and she an
old woman--she painted such a picture of his fine looks, his broad
shoulders, and the markings of his muscles under his polished skin, as,
being repeated and spread abroad, as gossip will spread itself, fixed
him in the minds of admirers of manly beauty and built him a reputation
in the world of fashion before he had entered it or even left his
books.
When he did leave them and quitted the University, it was with honour
to himself and family, and also with joy to his Governour and Chaplain
Mr. Fox, who had attended him. At his coming of age there were
feastings and bonfires in five villages again, and Rowe rang the bells
at Camylott Church with an exultant ardour which came near to being his
final end, and though seventy years of age, he would give up his post
to no younger man, and actually blubbered aloud when 'twas delicately
suggested that his middle-aged son should take his place to save him
fatigue.
"Nay! nay!" he cried; "I rang their Graces' wedding peal--I rang my
lord Marquess into the world, and will give him up to none until I am a
dead man."
At the Tower there was high feasting, the apartments being filled with
guests from foreign Courts as well as from the English one, and as the
young hero of the day moved among them, and among the tenantry
rejoicing with waving flags and rural games in the park, as he danced
with lovely ladies in the ball-room, and as he made his maiden speech
to the people, who went wild with joy over him, all agreed that a noble
house having such an heir need not fear for its future renown,
howsoever glorious its history might have been in the past.
After he had been presented at Court there seemed nothing this young
man might not have asked for with the prospect of getting--a place near
the King, a regiment to lead to glory, the hand of the fairest beauty
of the greatest fortune and rank. But it seemed that he wanted nothing,
for he made no request for any favour which might have brought him
place or power or love. The great events at that time disturbing the
nation he observed with an interest grave and thoughtful beyond his
years. Men who were deep in the problems of statesmanship were amazed
to discover the seriousness of his views and the amount of reflection
he had given to public questions. Beauties who paraded themselves
before him to attract his heart and eye--even sweetly tender ones who
blushed when he approached them and sighed when he made his obeisance
and retired--all were treated with a like courtesy and grace of manner,
but he gave none more reason to sigh and blush, to ogle and languish,
than another, the honest truth being that he did not fall in love,
despite his youth and the warmth of his nature, not having yet beheld
the beauty who could blot out all others for him and reign alone.
"I will not play with love," he said to his mother once as they talked
intimately to each other. "I have thought of it--that which should come
to a man and be himself, not a part of his being but the very life of
him. If it comes not, a man must go unsatisfied to his grave. If it
comes--You know," he said, and turned and kissed her hand impulsively,
"It came to my father and to you."
"Pray Heaven it may come to you, dear one," she said; "you would know
bliss then."
"Yes," he answered, "I should know rapture that would make life Heaven.
I do not know what it is I wait for--but when I see it in some woman's
eyes I shall know, and so will she."
His mother kissed his ringed hair, smiling softly.
"Till then you wait and think of other things."
"There are so many things for a man to do," he said, "if he would not
sit idle. But when that comes it will be first and greatest of all."
At this period all the world talked of the wondrous and splendid
Churchill, who, having fought brilliantly for the Stuarts and been made
by them first Lord Churchill of Eyemouth, and next Baron Churchill of
Sandridge, having, after receiving these advancements, the cold
astuteness to see the royal fortunes waver perilously, deserted James
the Second with stately readiness and transferred his services to
William of Orange. He was rewarded with an earldom and such favour as
made him the most shining figure both at the Court of England and in
the foreign countries which had learned to regard his almost
supernatural powers with somewhat approaching awe.
This man inspired Roxholm with a singular feeling; he in fact exercised
over him the fascination he exercised over so many others, but in the
case of the young Marquess, wonder and admiration were mixed with other
emotions. There were stories so brilliant to be heard of him on all
sides, stories of other actions so marvellously ruthless and of things
so wondrously mean. Upon a bargain so shameless he had built so
wondrous a career--a faithfulness of service so magnificent he had
closed with a treachery so base. All greatness and all littleness, all
heroism and all crimes, seemed to combine themselves in this one
strange being. Having shamelessly sold his youth to a King's mistress,
he devoted his splendid maturity to a tender, faithful passion for a
beauteous virago, whose displeasure was the sole thing on earth which
moved him to pain or fear. In truth 'twas not his genius, his bravery,
his victories, which held Roxholm's thought upon him most constantly;
'twas two other things, the first being the marvel of his control over
himself, the power with which he held in subjection his passions, his
emotions, almost, it seemed, his very thoughts themselves--the power
with which he had trained John Churchill to be John Churchill's
servant--in peril, in temptation from any weakness to which he did not
choose to succumb, in circumstances which, arising without warning,
might have caused another man to start, to falter, to change colour,
but which he encountered with indomitable calm.
"Tis that I wish to learn," said the young nobleman in his secret
thoughts as he watched him at Court, in the world outside it, among
soldiers, statesmen, women, in the society of those greater than
himself, of those smaller, of those he would win and of those he would
repel. "'Tis that I would learn: to be stronger than my very self, so
that naught can betray me--no passion I am tormented by, no anger I
would conceal, no lure I would resist. 'Tis a man's self who oftenest
entraps him. The traitor once subject, life lies at one's feet."
The second thing which stirred the young observer's interest was the
great man's great love. The most parsimonious and mercantile of
beings, he had married a poor beauty when fair creatures with fortunes
smiled upon him on every side; the most indomitable of spirits, the
warrior of whom armies stood in awe, he was the willing subject of a
woman whose fiery temper and tempestuous spirit the world knew as well
as it knew her beauty and her dominating charm. For some reason he
could scarcely have analyzed, it gave Roxholm a strange pleasure to
hear anecdotes of the passionate love-letters scrawled on the field--on
the eve of battle, the hour after a great encounter and triumph; to
know that better than victory to the great conquerer, who could command
the slaughter of thousands without the quiver of a muscle or a moment's
qualm, were the few lines in a woman's hand which told him he was
forgiven for some fancied wrong or missed in some tender hour.
"My Lady Sarah is a handsome creature, and ever was one," 'twas said,
"but there are those who are greater beauties, and who have less
brimstone in the air about them and less lightning in their eyes."
"But 'twas she who was his own," Roxholm said to himself in pondering
it over, "and when their eyes met each knew--and when she is fierce and
torments him 'tis as if the fire in his own blood spoke, as if his own
voice reproached him--and he remembers their dear hours together, and
forgives, and woos her back to him. If she were not his own--if he were
not hers, neither could endure it. They would strike each other dead.
'Tis sure nature makes one man for one woman, one woman for one man--as
it was in the garden where our first parents loved. Few creatures find
their mates, alas; but when they do 'tis Eden over again, in spite of
all things--and all else is mean and incomplete.
He did not know that, as he had observed and been attracted by the
hero, so the hero had been attracted by himself, though 'twas in a
lesser degree, since one man was cold and mature and the other young
and warm.
My Lord Churchill had been the most beautiful youth of his time,
distinguished for the elegance of his bearing and the perfection of his
countenance and form. When, at fifteen, the services of his father in
the royal cause had procured for him the place of page in the household
of the Duke of York, he had borne away the palm from all others of his
age. When, at sixteen, his martial instincts had led to the Prince's
obtaining for him a commission in a regiment of the guards, his first
appearance in his scarlet and gold lace had produced such commotion
among the court beauties as promised to lead to results almost
disastrous, since he attracted attention in places too high to reach
with safety. But even then his ambitions were stronger than his
temptations, and he fled the latter to go to fight the Moors. On his
return, more beautiful than ever, the lustre of success in arms added
to his ripened charms, the handsomest and wickedest woman in England
cast her eyes upon him, and he became the rival of royalty itself. All
England knew the story of the founding of his later fortunes, but if he
himself blushed for it, none but John Churchill knew--outwardly he was
the being whose name was the synonym for success, the lover of the
brilliant Castlemaine, the hero of the auxiliary force sent to Louis,
the "handsome Englishman" of the siege of Nimeguen for whom Turenne
predicted the greatest future a man could dream of.
When Roxholm first had the honour of being presented to this gentleman
'twas at a time when, after a brief period during which the hero's
fortunes had been under a cloud, the tide had turned for him and the
sun of royal favour shone forth again. Perhaps during certain perilous
dark days in the Tower, my Lord Marlborough had passed through hours
which had caused him to look back upon the past with some regret and
doubting, and when among those who crowded about him when fortune
smiled once more--friends, sycophants, place-hunters, and new
admirers--he beheld a figure whose youth and physical gifts brought
back old memories to him, 'tis possible they awakened in him curious
reflections.
"You," he said to Roxholm one day at St. James, "begin the game with
all the cards in your hand."
"The game, my lord?" said the youthful Marquess, bowing.
"The game of life," returned the Earl of Marlborough (for so William of
Orange had made him nine years before), and his eagle eye rested on the
young man with a keen, strange look. "You need not plan and strive for
rank and fortune. You were born to them--to those things which will aid
a man to gain what he desires, if he is not a flippant idler and has
brain enough to create ambitions for him. Most men must spend their
youth in building the bridge which is to carry their dreams across to
the shore which is their goal. Your bridge was built before you were
born. You left Oxford with high honours, they tell me; you are not long
of age, you come of a heroic race--what do you think to do, my lord?"
Roxholm met his scrutinizing gaze with that steadiness which ever
marked his own. He knew that he reddened a little, but he did not look
away.
"I am young to know, my Lord Marlborough," he returned, "but I think to
live--to live."
His Lordship slightly narrowed his eyes, and nodded his head.
"Ay," he said, "you will live!"
"There have been soldiers of our house," said Roxholm. "I may fight if
need be, perhaps," bowing, "following your lordship to some greater
triumph, if I have that fortune. There may be services to the country
at home I may be deemed worthy to devote my powers to when I have lived
longer. But," reddening and bowing again, "before men of achievement
and renown, I am yet a boy."
"England wants such boys," complimented his lordship, gracefully. "The
Partition Treaty and the needs of the Great Alliance call for the
breeding of them. You will marry?"
"My house is an old one," replied Roxholm, "and if I live I shall be
its chief."
My lord cast a glance about the apartment. It was a gala day and there
were many lovely creatures near, laughing, conversing, coquetting,
bearing themselves with dignity, airiness, or sweet grace. There were
beauties who were brown, and beauties who were fair; there were gay
charmers and grave ones, those who were tall and commanding, and those
who were small and nymph-like.
"There is none here to match you," he said with an imperturbable
gravity ('twas plain he was not trifling, but thinking some serious
and unusual thoughts). "A man of your build has needs out of the
common. No pretty, idle young thing will do. She should have beauty,
and that which is more. 'Tis a strange kinship--marriage. No; she has
not yet come to court."
"I will wait until she does," Roxholm answered, and his youthful face
was as grave as the hero's own, though if triflers had heard their
words, they would have taken their talk for idle persiflage and jest.
_CHAPTER VII_
"_'Tis Clo Wildairs, Man--All the County Knows the Vixen_."
A month later he went to Warwickshire at my Lord Dunstanwolde's
invitation. In that part of the county which borders upon
Gloucestershire was his Lordship's seat, which was known as Dunstan's
Wolde. 'Twas an ancient and beautiful estate, and his Lordship spent
his quiet and secluded life upon it, much beloved by his tenantry, and
respected by his neighbours. Since his young wife's death his manner of
living had become more secluded year after year; his library, his
memories, and the administration of his estates filled his days with
quiet occupation.
"Perhaps I am a selfish fellow to ask a young gentleman who is a
favourite at Court to come and bury himself with me," he said to
Roxholm the night of his arrival, "but you and I have spent many a good
quiet hour together, Gerald," laying an affectionate hand upon his
broad shoulder. "And if you were my son you would come, I know."
"Think of me as your son," said Roxholm with his fine smile. "A man is
the richer for the love of two fathers."
"Oxford has not changed you, Roxholm," said the Earl. "Nor have the
Court ladies' flatteries spoiled your kindly manners. We shall be happy
together, for awhile at least."