Kitabı oku: «Shrewsbury: A Romance», sayfa 26

Then, "In whose hand is the body of the paper?" the King asked.

"Your Majesty's," Lord Portland answered, with a grim chuckle, and after a pause long enough to accentuate the answer.

"I thought so," said the King. "It was the Friday the plot was discovered. I remember it. I am afraid that if you impeach the Duke, you must impeach me with him."

At that there was a great roar of laughter, which had not worn itself out before one and another began to press their congratulations on the Duke. He for his part sat as if stunned; answering with a forced smile where it was necessary, more often keeping silence. He had escaped the pit digged for him, and the net so skilfully laid. But his face betrayed no triumph.

Matthew Smith, on the other hand, brought up short by that answer, could not believe it. He stood awhile, like a man in a fit; then, the sweat standing on his brow, he cried that they were all leagued against him; that it was a plot; that it was not His Majesty's hand! and so on, and so on; with oaths and curses, and other things very unfit for His Majesty's ears, or the place in which he stood.

Under these circumstances, for a minute no one knew what to do, each looking at his neighbour, until the Lord Steward, rising from his chair, cried in a voice of thunder, "Take that man away, Mr. Secretary, this is your business! Out with him, sir!" On which Sir William called in the messengers, and they laid hands on him. By that time, however, he had recovered the will and grim composure which were the man's best characteristics; and with a last malign and despairing look at my lord, he suffered them to lead him out.

CHAPTER XLVI

That was a great day for my lord, but it was also, I truly believe, one of the saddest of a not unhappy life. He had gained the battle, but at a cost known only to himself, though guessed by some. The story of the old weakness had been told, as he had foreseen it must be told; and even while his friends pressed round him and crying, Salve Imperator! rejoiced in the fall he had given his foes, he was aware of the wound bleeding inwardly, and in his mind was already borne out of the battle.

Yet in that room was one sadder. Sir John, remaining at the foot of the table, frowned along it, gloomy and downcast; too proud to ask or earn the King's favour, yet shaken by the knowledge that now-now was the time; that in a little while the door would close on him, and with it the chance of life-life with its sunshine and air, and freedom, its whirligigs and revenges. Some thought that in consideration of the trick which had been played upon him, the King might properly view him with indulgence; and were encouraged in this by the character for clemency which even his enemies allowed that Sovereign. But William had other views on this occasion; and when the hubbub which Smith's removal had caused had completely died away, he addressed Sir John, advising him to depend rather on deserving his favour by a frank and full discovery, than on such ingenious contrivances as that which had just been exposed.

"I was no party to it," the unhappy gentleman answered.

"Therefore it shall tell neither for nor against you," the King retorted. "Have you anything more to say."

"I throw myself on your Majesty's clemency."

"That will not do. Sir John," the King answered. "You must speak, or-the alternative does not lie with me. But you know it."

"And I choose it," Sir John cried, recovering his spirit and courage.

"So be it," said His Majesty slowly and solemnly. "I will not say that I expected anything less from you. My lords, let him be removed."

And with that the messengers came in and Sir John bowed and went with them. It may have been fancy, but I thought that as he turned from the table a haggard shade fell on his face, and a soul in mortal anguish looked an instant from his eyes. But the next moment he was gone.

I never saw him again. That night the news was everywhere that Goodman, one of the two witnesses against him, had fled the country; and for a time it was believed that Sir John would escape. How, in face of that difficulty those who were determined on his death, effected it; how he was attainted, and how he suffered on Tower Hill with all the forms and privileges of a peer-on the 28th of January of the succeeding year-is a story too trite and familiar to call for repetition.

On his departure the Council broke up. His Majesty retiring. Before he went, a word was said about me, and some who had greater regard for the post factum than the pœnitentia were for sending me to the Compter, and leaving the Law Officers to deal with me. But my lord, rousing himself, interposed roundly, spoke for me and would have given bail had they persisted. Seeing, however, how gravely he took it, and being inclined to please him, they desisted, and I was allowed to go, on the simple condition that the Duke kept me under his own eye. This he very gladly consented to do.

Nor was it the only kindness he did me, or the greatest; for having heard from me at length and in detail all the circumstances leading up to my timely intervention, he sent for me a few days later, and placing a paper in my hands bade me read the gist of it. I did so, and found it to be a free pardon passed under the Great Seal, and granted to Richard Price and Mary Price his wife for acts and things done by them jointly or separately against the King's Most Excellent Majesty, within or without the realm.

It was at Eyford he handed me this; in the oak parlour looking upon the bowling-green; where I had already begun to wait upon him on one morning in the week, to check the steward's accounts and tallies. The year was nearly spent, but that autumn was fine, and the sunlight which lay on the smooth turf blended with the russet splendour of the beech trees that rise beyond. I had been thinking of Mary and the quiet courtyard at the Hospital, which the bowling-green somewhat resembled, being open to the park on one side only; and when perusing the paper, my lord smiling at me, I came to her name-or rather to the name that was hers and yet mine-I felt such a flow of love and gratitude and remembrance overcome me as left me speechless; and this directed, not only to him but to her-seeing that it was her advice and her management that had brought me against my will to this haven and safety.

The Duke saw my emotion and read my silence aright. "Well," he said. "Are you satisfied?"

I told him that if I were not I must be the veriest ingrate living.

"And you have nothing more to ask?" he continued, still smiling.

"Nothing," I said. "Except-except that which it is not in your lordship's power to grant."

"How?" said he, with a show of surprise and resentment. "Not satisfied yet? What is it?"

"If she were here!" I said. "If she were here, my lord! But Dunquerque-"

"Is a far cry, eh! And the roads are bad. And the seas-"

"Are worse," I said gloomily, looking at the paper as Tantalus looked at the water. "And to get word to her is not of the easiest."

"No," the Duke said. "Say you so? Then what do you make of this, faint-heart?" And he pointed through the open window.

I looked, and on the seat-which a moment before had been vacant-the seat under the right-hand yew-hedge where my lord sometimes smoked his pipe-I saw a girl seated with her shoulder and the nape of her neck turned to us. She was making marks on the turf with a stick she held, and poring over them when made, as if the world held nothing else, so that I had not so much as a glimpse of her face. But I knew that it was Mary.

"Come," said my lord, pleasantly. "We will go to her. It may be, she will not have the pardon-after all. Seeing that there is a condition to it."

"A condition?" I cried, a little troubled.

"To be sure, blockhead," he answered, in high good humour. "In whose name is it?"

Then I saw what he meant and laughed, foolishly. But the event came nearer to proving him true than he then expected. For when she saw the paper she stepped back and put her hands behind her, and would not touch or take it; while her small face cried pale mutiny. "But I'll not tell!" she cried. "I'll not tell! I'll not have it. Blood-money does not thrive. If that is the price-"

"My good girl," said my lord, cutting her short, yet without impatience. "That is not the price. This is the Price. And the pardon goes with him."

* * * * *

I believe that I have now told enough to discharge myself of that which I set out to do: I mean the clearing my lord in the eyes of all judicious persons of those imputations which a certain faction have never ceased to heap on him; and this with the greater assiduity and spite, since he by his single conduct at the time of the late Queen's death was the means under Providence of preserving the Protestant Succession and liberties in these islands.

That during the long interval of seventeen years that separated the memorable meeting at Kensington, which I have ventured to describe, from the still more famous scene in the Queen's death-chamber, he took no part in public life has seemed to some a crime or the tacit avowal of one. How far these err, and how ill-qualified they are to follow the workings of that noble mind, will appear in the pages I have written; which show with clearness that the retirement on which so much stress has been laid, was due not to guilt, but to an appreciation of honour so delicate that a spot invisible to the common eye seemed to him a stain non subito delanda. After the avowal made before his colleagues-of the communications, I mean, with Lord Middleton-nothing would do but he must leave London at once and seek in the shades and retirement of Eyford that peace of mind and ease of body which had for the moment abandoned him.

He went: and for a time still retained office. Later, notwithstanding the most urgent and flattering instances on the King's part-which yet exist, honourable alike to the writer and the recipient-he persisted in his resolution to retire; and on the 12th of December, 1698, being at that time in very poor health, the consequence of a fall while hunting, he returned the Seals to the King, In the autumn of the following year he went abroad; but though he found in a private life-so far as the life of a man of his princely station could be called private-a happiness often denied to place men and favourites, he was not to be diverted when the time came from the post of danger. Were I writing an eulogium merely, I should here enumerate those great posts and offices which he so worthily filled at the time of Queen Anne's death, when as Lord Treasurer of England, Lord Chamberlain, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland-an aggregation of honours I believe without precedent-he performed services and controlled events on the importance of which his enemies no less than his friends are agreed. But I forbear: and I leave the task to a worthier hand.

This being so, it remains only to speak of Matthew Smith and his accomplice. Had my lord chosen to move in the matter, there can be no doubt that Smith would have been whipped and pilloried, and in this way would have come by a short road to his deserts. But the Duke held himself too high, and the men who had injured him too low, for revenge; and Smith, after lying some months in prison, gave useful information, and was released without prosecution. He then tried to raise a fresh charge against the Duke, but gained no credence; and rapidly sinking lower and lower, was to be seen two years later skulking in rags in the darkest part of the old Savoy. In London I must have walked in hourly dread of him; at Eyford I was safe; and after the winter of '99, in which year he came to my lord's house to beg, looking broken and diseased, I never saw him.

I was told that he expected to receive a rich reward in the event of the Duke's disgrace, and on this account was indifferent to the loss of his situation in my lady's family. It seems probable, however, that he still hoped to retain his influence in that quarter by means of his wife, and thwarted in this by that evil woman's dismissal, was no better disposed to her than she was to him. They separated; but before he went the ruffian revenged himself by beating her so severely that she long lay ill in her apartments, was robbed by her landlady, and finally was put to the door penniless, and with no trace of the beauty which had once chained my heart. In this plight, reduced to be the drudge of a tradesman's wife, and sunk to the very position in which I had found her at Mr. D-'s, she made a last desperate appeal to the Duke for assistance.

He answered by the grant of a pension, small but sufficient, on which she might have ended her days in a degree of comfort. But, having acquired in her former circumstances an unfortunate craving for drink, which she had now the power to gratify, she lived but a little while, and that in great squalor and misery, dying, if I remember rightly, in a public-house in Spitalfields in the year 1703.