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Oddsfish!

by Robert Hugh Benson · English · Gutenberg #16288 · 870,143 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Oddsfish!

Author: Robert Hugh Benson


        
Release date: July 13, 2005 [eBook #16288]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ODDSFISH! ***




Produced by Geoff Horton and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net






ODDSFISH!

BY

ROBERT HUGH BENSON

Author of "Come Rack! Come Rope!", "Lord of the World," "Initiation,"
etc.

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1914
AUTHOR'S NOTE.


I wish to express my gratitude for great help received in the writing of
this book to Miss MacDermot, Miss Stearne and others, as well as to
three friends who submitted to hearing it read aloud in manuscript, and
who assisted me by their criticisms and suggestions.

Further, I think it worth saying that in all historical episodes in this
book I have taken pains to be as accurate as possible. The various
plots, the political movements, and the closing scenes of Charles II's
life are here described with as much fidelity to truth as is compatible
with historical romance. In particular, I do not think that the King
himself is represented as doing or saying anything--except of course to
my fictitious personages--to which sound history does not testify. I
have also taken considerable pains in the topographical descriptions of
Whitehall.




PROLOGUE


The day from which I reckon the beginning of all those adventures which
occupied me in the Courts of England and France and elsewhere, was the
first day of May in the year sixteen hundred and seventy-eight--the day,
that is, on which my Lord Abbot carried me from St. Paul's-without-the-
Walls to the Vatican Palace, to see our Most Holy Lord Innocent the
Eleventh.

It had been a very hot day in Rome, as was to be expected at that
season; and I had stayed in the cloister in the cool, as my Lord Abbot
had bidden me, not knowing whether it would be on that day or another,
or, indeed, on any at all, that His Holiness would send for me. I knew
that my Lord Abbot had been to the Vatican again and again on the
business; and had spoken of me, as he said he would, not to the Holy
Father only, but to the Cardinal Secretary of State and to others; but I
did not know, and he did not tell me, as to whether that business had
been prosperous; though I think he must have known long before how it
would end. An hour before _Ave Maria_, then, he sent to me, as I walked
in the cloisters, and when I came to him, told me, all short, to dress
myself in my old secular clothes, as fine as I could, and to be ready to
ride with him in half an hour, because our Most Holy Lord had consented
to receive me one hour after _Ave Maria_. He said nothing more to me
than that; he did not tell me how I was to bear myself, nor what I was
to say, neither as I stood in his cell, nor as we rode as fast as we
could, with the servants before and behind, into Rome and through the
streets of it. I knew nothing more than this--that since neither I nor
my novice-master were in the least satisfied as to my vocation, and
since I had considerable estates of my own in France (though I was an
Englishman altogether on my father's side), and could speak both French
and English with equal ease, and Italian and Spanish tolerably--that
since, in short, I was a very well-educated young gentleman, and looked
more than my years, and bore myself--(so I was told)--with ease and
discretion in any company, and could act a part if it were required of
me--I might perhaps be of better service to the Church in some secular
employment than in sacred. This was all that I knew. The rest my Lord
Abbot left to my own wits to understand, and to our Holy Father, if he
would, to discover to me: and that, indeed, was presently what he did.

       *       *       *       *       *

I had been within the Vatican before three or four times, both when I
had first come to Rome four years ago, and once as attendant upon my
Lord Abbot; but never before had I felt of such importance within those
walls; for this time it was myself to whom the Holy Father was to give
audience, and not merely to one in whose company I was. I was in secular
clothes too--the peruke, buckles, sword, and all the rest, which I had
laid aside two years ago, though these were a little old and
tarnished--and I bore myself as young men will (for I was only
twenty-one years old at that time), with an air and a swing; though my
heart beat a little faster as we passed through the great rooms, after
leaving our cloaks in an antechamber and arranging our dress after the
ride; and at last were bidden to sit down while the young Monsignore who
had received us in the last saloon went in to know if the Holy Father
were ready to see us.

It was a smaller room--this in which we sat--than the others through
which we had passed, and in which the crimson liveried servants were;
and its walls were all covered with hangings from cornice to floor. That
which was opposite to me presented, I remember, Jacob receiving the
blessing which his brother Esau should have had; and I wondered, as I
sat there, whether I myself were come, as Jacob, to get a blessing to
which I had no right. Idly Lord Abbot said nothing at all; for he was a
stout man and a little out of breath; and almost before he had got it
again, and before I was sure as to whether I were more like to the liar
Jacob, who won a blessing when he should not, or to unspiritual Esau,
who lost a blessing which he should have had, the young Monsignore in
his purple came back again, and, bowing so low that we saw the little
tonsure on the top of his head, beckoned to us to enter.

       *       *       *       *       *

By the time that, behind my Lord Abbot, I had performed the three
genuflections and, at the third, was kissing the ring of our Most Holy
Lord, I had already taken into my mind something of the room I was in
and of him who sat there, wheeled round in his chair to greet us. The
room was far more plain than I had thought to find it, though pretty
rich too. The walls had sacred hangings upon them; but it was so dark
with the shuttered windows that I could not make out very well what
their subjects were. A dozen damask and gilt chairs stood round the
walls, and three or four tables; and, in the centre of all, where I was
now arrived, stood the greatest table of all, carved of some black wood,
and at the middle of one side the chair in which sat the Holy Father
himself.

He had very kind but very piercing eyes: this was the first thing that I
thought; his hair beneath his cap, as well as his beard, was all
iron-grey; his complexion was a little sallow, and seemed all the more
sallow because of his red velvet cap and white soutane; (for he wore no
cloak because of the heat). As soon as I had kissed his ring he bade me
stand up--(speaking in Italian, as he did all through the audience)--and
then beckoned me to a chair opposite to his, and my Lord Abbot to
another on one side. And then at once he went on to speak of the
business on which we were come--as if he knew all about it, and had no
time to spend on compliments.

Now our Holy Father Innocent the Eleventh was, I suppose, one of the
greatest men that ever sat in Peter's Seat. I would not speak evil, if I
could help it, of any of Christ's Vicars; but this at least I may
say--that Pope Innocent reformed a number of things that sorely needed
it. He would have no nepotism at the Papal Court; men stood or fell by
their own merits: so I knew very well that my estates in France, even
if they had been ten times as great, would serve me nothing at all. He
was very humble too--(he asked pardon, it was said, even of his own
servants if he troubled them)--so I knew that no swashbuckling air on my
part would do me anything but harm--(and, indeed, that was all laid
aside, willy nilly, so soon as I came in)--since, like all humble men he
esteemed the pride, even of kings, at exactly its proper worth, which is
nothing at all. He was, too, a man of great spirituality, so I knew that
my having come to St. Paul's as a novice and now wishing to leave it
again, would scarcely exalt me in his eyes. I felt then a very poor
creature indeed as I sat there and listened to him.

"This, then, is Master Roger Mallock," he said to my Lord Abbot, "of
whom your Lordship spoke to me."

"This is he, Holy Father," said my Lord.

"He has been a novice for two years then; and his superiors are not sure
of his vocation?"

"Yes, Holy Father."

The Pope looked again at me then, and I dropped my eyes.

"And you yourself, my son?" he asked.

"Holy Father," I said, "I am sure that at present I have no vocation.
What God may give me in the future I do not know. I only know what He
has not given me in the present."

Innocent tightened his lips at that; but I think it was to prevent
himself smiling.

"And he is an English gentleman," he went on presently, "and he has
estates in France that bring him in above twenty thousand francs yearly;
and he is twenty-one years of age; and he is accustomed to all kinds of
society, and he is a devoted son of Holy Church, and he speaks French
and English and Italian and Spanish and German--"

"No, Holy Father, not German--except a few words," I said.

"And he is discreet and courageous and virtuous--"

"Holy Father--" I began in distress, for I thought he was mocking me.

"And he desires nothing; better than to serve his spiritual superiors
in any employment to which they may put him--Eh, my son?"

I looked into the Pope's face and down again; but I said nothing.

"Eh, my son?" he said again with a certain sharpness.

"Holy Father, I have been taught never to contradict my superiors; but
indeed in this--"

"Bravo!" said Innocent.

Then he turned to my Lord Abbot, as if I were no longer in the room.

"The question," he said, "is not only whether this young gentleman is
capable of hearing everything and saying nothing, of preserving his
virtue, of handling locked caskets without even desiring to look inside
unless it is his business, of living in the world yet not being of
it--but whether he is willing to do all this without being paid for
it--except perhaps his bare expenses."

My Lord Abbot said nothing.

"I can have a thousand paid servants," said Innocent, "who are worth
exactly their wages; but, since money cannot buy virtue or discretion or
courage, in such servants I cannot demand those things. And I can have a
thousand foolish servants who could earn no wages anywhere because of
their foolishness, and these never have discretion and not often either
virtue or courage. But what I wish is to have servants who are as wise
sons to me--who have all these things, and will use them for love's
sake--for the love of Holy Church and of Christ and His Mother, and who
will be content with the wages that These give."

He stopped suddenly and looked at me quickly again; and my heart burned
in my breast; for this that he was saying was all that I most desired;
and I saw by that that my talk must have been reported to him. I loved
Holy Church then, and the cause of Jesus and Mary, as young men do love,
and as I hope to love till I die. I asked nothing better than to serve
such causes as these even to death. It was not for lack of ardour that I
wished to leave the monastery; it was because, truthfully, I had a
fever on me of greater activity; because, truthfully, I was not sure of
my vocation; because, truthfully, I doubted whether such gifts and such
wealth and such education as were mine could not be used better in the
world than in the cloister. I knew that I could take a place to-morrow
in either the French or the English Court, without disgracing myself or
others; and it was precisely of this that I had spoken to my Lord Abbot;
and here was our Holy Father himself putting into words those very
ambitions that I had. I met his eyes, and knew that I was beginning to
flush.

"Well, my son?" he said.

"Holy Father," I said, "my virtues and capacities, such as they are, I
must leave to my superiors. But my desires are those of which your
Holiness has spoken. I ask no wages: I ask only to be allowed to serve
whatever cause my superiors may assign to me."

He continued to look at me, and for very shame I presently dropped my
eyes again.

"Well, my Lord Abbot?" he said again. "Let us hear what you have to
say."

Then my lord began to speak; and before he was half-done I wished myself
anywhere else in the world. For, as great men alone are capable, he
could be as lavish of praise as of blame. He said that I was all that of
which His Holiness had spoken; that I had been obedient and exact as a
novice; and he said other things too of which even under obedience I
could not speak. Then too he added what he had never said to me before,
that he was not sure that I had no vocation; but that since God spoke
through exterior circumstances as well as through interior drawings, His
Holy Will seemed to point, at least at present, to a life in the world
for me; that he was sure I would be as obedient there as here; that I
had learned not only to use my tongue but, what is much harder, to hold
it. And he ended by begging the Holy Father to take me into his service
and to use me in the ways in which perhaps I might be useful. All this,
of course, I now understand to have been rehearsed before; but just at
that time I had no more than a suspicion that this was so.

When he had finished, His Holiness once more turned and looked at me;
and I upon the ground: and then at last he spoke.

"My son," he said, "you have heard what his Reverence has said of you;
and I too have heard it, and not to-day for the first time. It seems
that you are right in thinking that for the present at any rate you have
no vocation to Holy Religion. Well, then, the question is as to what is
your Vocation, for Our Lord never leaves any man without a Vocation of
some kind. You are very young for such service as that on which we think
to send you; for we shall send you to the Court of England first, and
then perhaps now and again to France; but you look five years at least
older than your age, and, I am told, have ten times its discretion. I
need not tell you that you will have no very heavy mission given to you
at first; you must mix freely with the world and use your wits and see
what is best to be done, sending back reports to the Cardinal Secretary.
You will live at your own charges, as you yourself have said that you
wished to do; but you may draw upon us here for any journeys that you
may undertake upon our business up to a certain amount. In a word you
will be in the diplomatic service of the Holy See, though without direct
office or commission beyond that which I now give you myself. You will
have full liberty to make a career for yourself in the English or French
Courts, so long as this comes always second to your service to
ourselves. If you acquit yourself well--in the way which will be
explained to you later--you may make a career with us too, and will have
rewards if you want them: but for the present there must be no talk of
that. As you must be in the world yet not of it; so you must be of the
Court of Rome yet not in it. It is a delicate position that you will
hold; and, to compensate for the informality of it, you will have the
more liberty on your side, to make a career, as I have said, or to
marry, if God calls you to that, or in any other way.... Does that
content you, my son?"

I do not know what I said; for all that the Holy Father had told me was
what I myself had said to my Lord Abbot. I knew that affairs in England
were in a very strange condition, that the Duke of York who was next
heir to the throne was a Catholic, and that Charles himself was
favourably disposed to us; and I knew a number of other things too which
will appear in the course of this tale; and I had said to my Lord that
sometimes even a hair's weight will make a balance tip; and had asked
again and again if I might not, with my advantages, such as they were,
be of more service to Holy Church in a more worldly place than the
cloister; and now here was our Most Holy Lord himself granting and
confirming all that I had wished.

"There! there!" he said to me presently, when I had tried to say what
was in my heart. "Go and serve God in this way as well as you can; and
remember that you can be as well sanctified in the Court of a King as in
a cloister--and better, if it is the Court that is your Vocation. Go and
do your best, my son; and we shall see what you can make of it."

       *       *       *       *       *

When we were outside again I saw that my Lord Abbot's face was all
suffused, as was my own, for there was something strangely fiery and
keen and holy about Innocent; but he said nothing, except that we must
now go and see His Eminence the Cardinal Secretary of State, for I was
to receive my more particular instructions from him.




PART ONE




CHAPTER I


I came to London on the fifteenth of June, having left it seven years
before in company with my father, to go to Paris, two years before he
died.

It was drawing on to sunset as we rode up through the Southwark fields
and, at the top of a little eminence in the ground saw for the first
time plainly all the City displayed before us.

We came along the Kent road, having caught sight again and again of such
spires as had risen after the Great Fire, and of the smoke that rose
from the chimneys; but I may say that I was astonished at the progress
the builders had made from what I could remember of seven years before.
Then there had still been left great open spaces where there should have
been none; now it was a city once more; and even the Cathedral shewed
its walls and a few roofs above the houses. The steeples too of Sir
Christopher Wren's new churches pricked everywhere; though I saw later
that there was yet much building to be done, both in these and in many
of the greater houses. My man James rode with me; (for I had been
careful not to form too great intimacies with the party with whom I had
ridden from Dover); and I remarked to him upon the matter.

"And there, sir," he said to me, pointing to it, "is the monument no
doubt that they have raised to it."

And so we found it to be a day or two later--a tall pillar, with an
inscription upon it saying that the Fire had been caused by the
Papists--a black lie, as every honest man knows.

By the time that we came to London Bridge the sun was yet lower, setting
in a glory of crimson, so that it was hard to see against it much of
Westminster, across the Southwark marshes and the river; but yet I could
make out the roofs of the Abbey and of some of the great buildings of
Whitehall, where my adventures, I thought, were to lie. But between
that and the other end of London Bridge, just before we set foot on it,
the rest of the City was plain enough; and, indeed, it was a splendid
sight to see the river, all, as it seemed, of molten gold with the
barges and the wherries plying upon it, and the great houses on the
banks and their gardens coming down to the water-gates, and the forest
of chimneys and roofs and steeples behind, and all of a translucent blue
colour. The sounds of the City, too, came to us plainly across the
water--the chiming of bells and the firing of some sunset gun, and even
the noise of wheels and the barking of dogs and the crowing of
cocks--all in a soft medley of human music that made my heart rejoice;
for in spite of my long exile abroad and my French and Italianate
manners, I counted myself always an Englishman.

Now the first design that I had in mind, and for which I had made my
dispositions, was to go straight to my lodging that had been secured for
me by my cousin Tom Jermyn, where he was to meet me, and where he too
would lie that night. It was with him that I was to present my letters
at Whitehall in a day or two, after I had bought my clothes and other
necessaries; in short he was to be my _cicerone_ for a while--for he was
a Catholic too, like myself--but he was not to be told that I had come
on any mission at all, until at anyrate I had well tested his
discretion.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now the mission on which I had been instructed by the Cardinal Secretary
was in one sense a very light one, and in another a very difficult one;
for its express duties were of the smallest.

Affairs in England at this time were in a very strange condition. First,
the Duke of York, who was heir to the throne, was a declared Catholic;
and then the King himself was next door to one, in heart at anyrate.
Certainly he had never been reconciled to the Church, though the report
among some was that he had been, during his life in Paris: but in heart,
as I have said, he was one, and waited only for a favourable occasion to
declare himself. For he had been so bold seventeen years before, as to
send to Rome a scheme by which the Church of England was to be reunited
to Rome under certain conditions, as that the mass, or parts of it,
should be read in English, that the Protestant clergy who would submit
to ordination should be allowed to keep their wives, and other matters
of that kind. His answer from Rome, sent by word of mouth only, was that
no scheme could be nearer to the heart of His Holiness; but that he must
not be too precipitate. Let him first show that his subjects were with
him in his laudable desires; and then perhaps the terms of the matter
might be spoken of again. For the King himself, and indeed even the Duke
too at this time (though later he amended his life), Catholic in spirit,
were scarce Christian in life. The ladies of the Court then must not be
overlooked, for they as much as any statesman, and some think, more,
controlled the king and his brother very greatly at this time.

But this was not all. Next, the King was embroiled in a great number of
ways. The more extreme of his Protestant subjects feared and hated the
Catholic Church as much as good Catholics hate and fear the Devil; and
although for the present our people had great liberty both at Court and
elsewhere, no man could tell when that liberty might be curtailed. And,
indeed, it had been to a great part already curtailed five years before
by the Test Act, forbidding the Catholics to hold any high place at the
Court or elsewhere, though this was largely evaded. There was even a
movement among some of them, and among the most important of them too,
in the House of Lords and elsewhere, to exclude the Duke of York from
the succession; and they advanced amongst themselves in support of this
the fear that a French army might be brought in to subdue England to the
Church. And, worst of all, as I had learned privately in Rome, there was
some substance in their fear, though few else knew it; since the King
was in private treaty with Louis for this very purpose. Again, a further
embroilment lay in the propositions that had been made privately to the
King that he should rid himself of his Queen--Catherine--on the pretext
that she had borne no child to him, and could not, and marry instead
some Protestant princess. Lastly, and most important of all, so greatly
was Charles turned towards the Church, that he had begged more than
once, and again lately, that a priest might be sent to him to be always
at hand, in the event of his sudden sickness, whom none else knew to be
a priest; and it was this last matter, I think, that had determined the
Holy Father to let me go, as I had wished, though I was no priest, to
see how the King would bear himself to me; and then, perhaps afterwards,
a priest might be sent as he desired.

This then was the mission on which I was come to London.

I was to present myself at Court and place myself at His Majesty's
disposal. The letters that I carried were no more than such as any
gentleman might bring with him; but the King had been told beforehand
who I was, and that I was come to be a messenger or a go-between if he
so wished, with him and Rome. So much the King was told, and the Duke.
But on my side I was told a little more--that I was to do my utmost, if
the King were pleased with me, to further his conversion and his
declaration of himself as a Catholic; that I was to mix with all kinds
of folks, and observe what men really thought of all such matters as
these, and send my reports regularly to Rome; that I was to place myself
at the King's service in any way that I could--in short that I was to
follow my discretion and do, as a layman may sometimes even more than a
priest, all that was in my power for the furtherance of the Catholic
cause.

Now it may be wondered perhaps how it was that I, who was so young,
should be entrusted with such matters as these. Here then, I am bound to
say, however immodest it may appear, that I have had always the art of
making friends easily and of commending myself quickly. I had lived too
in the societies of both Paris and Rome; and I had the accomplishments
of a gentleman as well as his blood. I was thought a pleasant fellow,
that is to say, who could make himself agreeable; and I certainly had
too--and I am not ashamed to say this--but one single ambition in the
world, and that was to serve God's cause: and these things do not always
go together in this world. Last of all, it must be observed, that no
very weighty secrets were entrusted to me: I bore no letters; and I had
been told no more of affairs in general than such as any quick and
intelligent man might pick up for himself. Even should I prove
untrustworthy or indiscreet, or even turn traitor, no very great harm
would be done. If, upon the other hand, I proved ready and capable, all
that I could learn in England and, later perhaps, in France, would serve
me well in the carrying out of weightier designs that might then be
given into my charge.

Such then I was; and such was my mission, on this fifteenth day of June,
as I rode up with James my man--a servant found for me in Rome, who had
once been in the service of my Lord Stafford--to the door of the
lodgings engaged for me in Covent Garden Piazza above a jeweller's shop.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was after sunset that we came there; and all the way along the
Strand, until we nearly reached the York Stairs, I had said nothing to
my man, but had used my eyes instead, striving to remember what I could
of seven years before. The houses of great folk were for the most part
on my left--Italianate in design, with the river seen between them, and
lesser houses, of the architecture that is called "magpie," on the
right. The way was very foul, for there had been rain that morning, and
there seemed nothing to carry the filth away: in places faggots had been
thrown down to enable carts to pass over. The Strand was very full of
folk of all kinds going back to their houses for supper.

Covent Garden Piazza was a fairer place altogether. It was enclosed in
railings, and a sun-dial stood in the centre; and on the south was the
space for the market, with a cobbled pavement. To the east of St. Paul's
Church stood the greater houses, built on arcades, where many
fashionable people of the Court lived or had their lodgings, and it was
in one of these that I too was to lodge: for I had bidden my Cousin
Jermyn to do the best he could for me, and his letter had reached me at
Dover, telling me to what place I was to come.

As I sat on my horse, waiting while my man went in to one of the
doorways to inquire, a gentleman ran suddenly out of another, with no
hat on his head.

"Why, you are my Cousin Roger, are you not?" he cried from the steps.

"Then you are my Cousin Tom Jermyn," I said.

"The very man!" he cried back; and ran down to hold my stirrup.

All the way up the stairs he was talking and I was observing him. He
seemed a hearty kind of fellow enough, with a sunburnt face from living
in the country; and he wore his own hair. He was still in riding-dress;
and he told me, before we had reached the first landing, that he was
come but an hour ago from his house at Hare Street, in Hertfordshire.

"And I have brought little Dorothy with me," he cried. "You remember
little Dorothy? She is a lady of quality now, aged no less than sixteen;
and is come up to renew her fal-lals for her cousin's arrival; for you
must come down with us to Hare Street when your business is done."

I cannot say that even after all this heartiness, I thought very much of
my Cousin Tom. He spoke too loud, I thought, on the common stair: but I
forgot all that when I came into the room that was already lighted with
a pair of wax candles and set eyes on my Cousin Dorothy, who stood up as
we came in, still in her riding-dress, with her whip and gloves on the
table. Now let me once and for all describe my Cousin Dorothy; and then
I need say no more. She was sixteen years old at this time--as her
father had just told me. She was of a pale skin, with blue eyes and
black lashes and black hair; but she too was greatly sunburnt, with the
haymaking (as her father presently told me again; for she spoke very
little after we had saluted one another). She was in a green skirt and a
skirted doublet of the same colour, and wore a green hat with a white
feather; but those things I did not remember till I was gone to bed and
was thinking of her. It is a hard business for a lover to speak as he
should of the maid who first taught him his lessons in that art; but I
think it was her silence, and the look in her eyes, that embodied for me
at first what I found so dear afterwards. She was neither tall nor
short; she was very slender; and she moved without noise. All these
things I write down now from my remembrance of the observations that I
made afterwards. It would be foolish to say that I loved her so soon as
I saw her; for no man does that in reality, whatever he may say of it
later; I was aware only that here was a maid whose presence made the
little room very pleasant to me, and with whom taking supper would be
something more than the swallowing of food and drink.

The rooms of my lodging were good enough, as I saw when my Cousin Tom
flung open the doors to show me them all. They were three in number:
this room into which we had first come from the stairs was hung in green
damask, with candles in sconces between the panels of the stuff; the
door on the left opened into the room where my Cousin Dorothy would lie,
with her maid; and that on the right my Cousin Tom and I would share
between us. The windows of all three looked out upon the piazza.

He said a great number of times that he was sorry that he had brought up
his daughter without giving me warning; but that the maid had set her
heart on it and would take no denial. (This I presently discovered to be
wholly false.) For a week, he said, and no more, I should be
discommoded; and after that, when I had come back from Hare Street, I
should be able to entertain my friends in peace.

I answered him, of course, with the proper compliments; but I liked his
manner less than ever. He was too boisterous, I thought, on a first
meeting; and too hearty in his expressions of goodwill. When we were set
down to supper, he began again, with what I thought a good deal of
indiscretion.

"So you are come from Rome!" he said loudly, "and from a monastery too,
as I hear. Well, no man loves a monk more than I do--in their
monasteries; but I am glad you are not to be one. We will teach him
better here--eh, Dolly, my dear?"

It was only my man James who was in the room when he spoke; yet as soon
as he was gone out to fetch another dish I thought I had best say a
word.

"Cousin," I said, "with your leave; I think it best not to speak of
monasteries--"

He interrupted me.

"Why, you need fear nothing," he cried. "We Catholics are all in the
fashion these days. Why, there is Mr. Huddleston that goes about in his
priest's habit: and the Capuchins at St. James', and the very Jesuits
too--"

"I think it would be better not--" I began.

"Oho!" cried Cousin Tom. "That is in the wind, is it? Why, I'll be as
mum as a mouse!"

I did not know what he meant; and I supposed that he did not know
himself, unless indeed by sheer blundering he had pitched upon the truth
that I was come on a mission. But so soon as James was in the room
again, he began upon the other tack, and talked of Prince this and the
Duke of that, with whom I might be supposed to be on terms of intimacy,
winking on me all the while, so that my man saw it. However, I answered
him civilly. I could do no less; for he was my cousin, and in a manner
my host; and, most of all, I must depend upon him for a few days at
least, to tell me how I must set about my audiences and my personal
affairs.

My Cousin Dorothy said little or nothing all this time; but sat with
downcast eyes, giving a look now and again at the table to see if we had
all that we needed; for she was housekeeper at Hare Street, her mother
having died ten years before, and she herself being the only child. She
did not look at me at all, or shew any displeasure; and yet it seemed to
me that she was not best pleased with her father's manners. Once,
towards the end of supper, when James came behind him with the wine-jug,
I saw her shake her head at him; and, indeed, Cousin Tom was already
pretty red in the face with all that he had drunk.

When the meal was finished at last, and the table cleared, and the
servants gone downstairs to their own supper, he began again with his
talk, stretching his legs in the window-seat where he sat; while I sat
still in my chair wheeled away from the table, and my Cousin Dorothy
went in and out of the rooms, bestowing the luggage that she and her
maid had unpacked. I watched her as she went to and fro, telling myself
(as some lads will, who pride themselves on being come to manhood) that
she was only a little maid.

"As to your affairs, Cousin Roger," he said, "they will soon be
determined. I take it that when you have kissed His Majesty's hand and
paid your duty to the Duke, you will have done all that you should for
the present."

I did not contradict him; but he was not to be restrained.

"You are come to seek your fortune, no doubt:" (he winked on me again as
he said this, to draw attention to his discretion); "and there is
nothing else in the world but that, no doubt, that brings you to
England." (He said this with an evident irony that even a child would
have understood.) "Not that you have not a very pretty fortune already:
I understand that it is near upon a thousand pounds a year; and great
estates in Normandy too, when you shall be twenty-eight years old. I am
right, am I not?"

Now he was right; but I wondered that he should take such pains to know
it all.

"There or thereabouts," I said.

"That condition of twenty-eight years is a strange one," he went on.
"Now what made your poor father fix upon that, I wonder?"

I told him that my father held that a man's life went by sevens, and
that every man was a boy till he was twenty-one, a fool till he was
twenty-eight, and a man, by God's grace, after that.

"Ah, that was it, was it?" he said, stretching his legs yet further. "I
have often wondered as to how that was."

And that shewed me that his mind must have run a good deal upon my
fortunes; but as yet I did not understand the reason.

When, presently, my Cousin Dorothy had shut the door of her room, and
my man was gone down again to the horses, he began again on his old
tack.

"You and I, Cousin Roger," he said, "will soon understand one another. I
knew that as soon as I clapped eyes on you. Come, tell me what your
business is here. I'm as close as the grave over a friend's secrets."

"My dear cousin," I said, "I do not know what business you mean. Was not
my letter explicit enough? I am come to live here as an English
gentleman. What other business should I have?"

He winked again at me.

"Yes, yes," he said. "And now having done your duty to your discretion,
do it to your friendship for me too. I know very well that a man who
comes from a Roman monastery, with letters from the French ambassador,
does not come for nothing. Is there some new scheme on hand?--for the
honour of Holy Church, no doubt?"

I thanked God then that I had said not one word in my letter that
Shaftesbury himself might not have read. I had been in two minds about
it; but had determined to wait until I saw my cousin and learned for
myself what kind of man he was.

"My dear cousin," I said again, "even if I had come on some such
mission, I should assure you, as I do now, that it was nothing of the
kind. How else could such missions be kept secret at all? It would be a
_secretum commissum_ in any case; as the theologians would say. I can
but repeat what I said in my letter to you; and, if you will think of
it, you will see that it is not likely that any matter of importance
would be entrusted to a young man of my age."

That seemed to quiet him. I have often noticed that to appeal to the
experience and wisdom of a fool is the surest way to content him.

He began then to talk of the Court; and it would not be decent of me to
record even a tenth part of the gossip he told me regarding the
corruption that prevailed in Whitehall. Much of it was no doubt true;
and a great deal more than he told me in some matters; but it came
pouring out from him, and with such evident pleasure to himself, that it
was all I could do to preserve a pleasant face towards him. He told me
of the little orange-girl, Nell Gwyn, who was now just twenty-eight
years old; and how she lived here and there as the King gave her
houses--in Pall Mall, and in Sandford House in Chelsea, and at first at
the "Cock and Pie" in Drury Lane; and how her hair was of a reddish
brown, and how, when she laughed her eyes disappeared in her head; and
of the Duchess of Cleveland, that was once Mrs. Palmer and then my Lady
Castlemaine, now in France; and of the Duchess of Portsmouth, and her
son created Duke of Richmond three years ago; and of the mock marriage
that was celebrated, in my Lord Arlington's house at Euston, seven years
ago between her and the King. And these things were only the more decent
matters of which he spoke; and of all he spoke with that kind of
chuckling pleasure that a heavy country squire usually shews in such
things, so that I nearly hated him as he sat there. For to myself such
things seem infinitely sorrowful; and all the more so in such a man as
the King was; and they seemed the more sorrowful the more that I knew of
him later; for he had so much of the supernatural in him after all, and
knew what he did.

Then presently my Cousin Jermyn began upon the Duke; and at that I
nearly loosed my tongue at him altogether. For I knew very well that the
guilt of the Duke was heavier even than the guilt of the King, since
James had the grace of the Sacraments to help him and the light of the
Faith to guide him. But I judged it better not to shew my anger, since I
was, as the Holy Father had told me, to be "in the world," though
interiorly not of it: and so I feigned sleep instead, and presently had
to snore aloud before my cousin could see it: and, as he stopped
speaking, my Cousin Dorothy came in to bid us good-night.

"Why, I have been half asleep," I said. "I am tired with my journey.
What were you saying, cousin?"

He leered again at that, as if to draw attention to his daughter's
presence.

"Why, we were talking of high matters of state," he said, "when you fell
asleep--matters too high for little maids to hear of. Give me a kiss, my
dear."

When she came to me, I kissed her on the forehead, and not upon the
cheek which she offered me.

"Is that the Italian custom?" cried my Cousin Tom. "Why, we can teach
you better than that--eh, Dolly?"

She said nothing to that; but looked at me a little anxiously and then
at the table where the wine stood; and I thought that I understood her.

"Well, cousin," I said, "I, too, had best be off to bed. We had best
both go. I do not want to lie awake half the night; and if you wake me
when you come to bed, I shall not sleep again."

He tried to persuade me to stay and drink a little more; but I would
not: and for very courtesy he had to come with me.

In spite of my drowsiness, however, when I was once in bed and the light
was out I could not at once sleep. I heard the watchman go by and cry
that it was a fine night; and I heard the carriages go by, and the
chairs; and saw the light of the links on the ceiling at the end of my
bed; and I heard a brawl once and the clash of swords and the scream of
a woman; as well as the snoring of my Cousin Tom, who fell asleep at
once, so full he was of French wine. But it was not these things that
kept me awake, except so far as they were signs to me of where I was.

For here I was in London at last, which, whatever men may say, is the
heart of the world, as Rome is the heart of the Church; and there,
within a gunshot, was the gate of Whitehall where the King lived, and
where my fortunes lay. Neither was I here as a mere Englishman come home
again after seven years, but as a messenger from the Holy See, with work
both to find and to do. To-morrow I must set out, to buy, as I may say,
the munitions of war--my clothes and my new periwigs and my swords and
my horses; and then after that my holy war was to begin. I had my
letters not only to the Court, but to the Jesuits as well--though of
these I had been careful to say nothing to my cousin; for I could
present these very well without his assistance. And this holy war I was
to carry on by my own wits, though a soldier in that great army of
Christ that fights continually with spiritual weapons against the
deceits of Satan.

I wondered, then, as I lay there in the dark, as to whether this war
would be as bloodless as seemed likely; whether indeed it were true (and
if true, whether it were good or bad) that Catholics should again almost
be in the fashion, as my cousin had said. There were still those old
bloody laws against us; was it so sure that they would never be revived
again? And if they were revived, how should I bear myself; and how would
my Cousin Jermyn, and all those other Catholics of whom London was so
full?

Of all these things, then, I thought; but my last thoughts, before I
commended myself finally to God and Our Lady, were of my Cousin
Dorothy--that little maid, as I feigned to myself to think of her. Yes;
I would go down to Hare Street in Hertfordshire so soon as I
conveniently could, without neglecting my business. It would be pleasant
to see what place it was that my Cousin Dorothy called her home.




CHAPTER II


It was again a fair evening, five days later, when, in one of my new
suits, with my new silver-handled sword, I set out on foot to Whitehall
to see the King first and the Duke afterwards, as word had been brought
me from the Chamberlain's office; for I had presented my letters on the
morning after I had come to London.

Those four days had passed busily and merrily enough in company with my
cousins. The first two days I had spent in the shops, and had expended
above forty pounds, with both my cousins to advise me. It would not be
to the purpose to describe all that I bought; but there was a blue suit
I had, that was made very quickly, and that was the one I wore when I
went to see the King, that was very fine. All was of blue; the coat was
square-cut, with deep skirts, and had great laced cuffs that turned up
as high as the elbow, showing the ruffled wristbands of the shirt
beneath; the waistcoat below--in the new fashion--was so hung as to come
down to my knees; and both coat and waistcoat had buttons all the way
down the front, with silver trimming. My stockings--for the brodequins
were out of fashion again now--were of a darker blue, and my shoes of
strong leather, with a great rosette upon each, for buckles were not
usual at this time. Then my cravat was of Flanders lace; and my Cousin
Dorothy showed me how to fasten it so that the ends lay down square in
front; and my hat was round with a blue favour in it upon the left side;
and I wore it with what was called the "Monmouth cock." I carried a long
cane in my hand, with a silver head, and a pair of soft leather gloves,
without cuffs to them. Then, as my own hair was still short, I bought a
couple of dark periwigs of my own colour, and put on, the better to go
to Whitehall in. Besides these things I had three other suits, one very
plain, of grey, and two less plain; a case of pistols, and a second
sword, very plain and strong, in a leather scabbard, with its belt; two
pair of riding-boots, besides other shoes; and two dozen of shirts and
cravats, of which half were plain, without lace.

While we went to and fro on all those businesses, we saw something both
of the town and of the folks. On our way back from Cheapside one day, we
turned aside to see the Monument, with the lying inscription upon it;
and then to see the Cathedral, which was already of a considerable
height. Of the persons of importance we saw one day the Duke of
Buckingham in his coach, drawn by two white horses, with riders before
and behind, pass along towards Whitehall; and a chair went by us one
evening in which, it was said, was the Duchess of Portsmouth (once
Madame de la Querouaille, or Mrs. Carwell); but it was so closely
guarded that I could not see within. Also, we saw my Lord Shaftesbury, a
sly yet proud looking fellow, I thought him, walking with Mr. Pepys, who
fell later under suspicion of being a Catholic, because his servant was
one.

On the Saturday evening we went to take the air in St. James' Park, and
walked by Rosamund's pond; and here we but just missed seeing the King
and Queen; for as we came into it from Charing Cross (where I had seen
for the first time in the public street the Punch-show, which I think
must take its origin from Pontius Pilate) their Majesties rode out--hand
in hand, I heard later--through the Park Gate into the Horse-Guards, and
so to Whitehall, with guards in buff and steel following. There was a
great company of gentlemen and ladies who rode behind, of whom we caught
a sight; but they were too far away for us to recognize any of them. (I
saw, too, the cress-carts come in from Tothill fields.)

On the Sunday morning we went all three together to hear mass sung in
St. James'; and here for the first time I saw Mr. Huddleston, who was of
the congregation, who was in his priest's habit--as my cousin had told
me--for this was allowed to him by Act of Parliament, because he had
saved the King's life after the battle of Worcester. He was a man that
looked like a scholar, but was very brown with the sun, too. We could
not see the Duke, for he was in his closet, with the curtains half
drawn--a tribune, as we should call it in Rome. It was very sweet to me
to hear mass again after my journey; and it was not less sweet to me
that my Cousin Dorothy was beside me; but the crush was so great, of
Protestants who had come to see the ceremonies, as well as of Catholics,
that there was scarcely room even to kneel down at the elevation. On our
way back we saw Prince Rupert, a fat pasty-faced man, driving out in his
coach. He spent all his time in chymical experiments, I was told. As
Sedley said, he had exchanged Naseby for Noseby.

I had been bidden, on the Monday, to present myself first at Mr.
Chiffinch's lodgings that were near the chapel, between the Privy Stairs
and the Palace Stairs; and, as I was before my time, when I came into
the Court, behind the Banqueting Hall, I turned aside to see the Privy
Garden. A fellow in livery, of whom there were half a dozen in sight,
asked me my business very civilly; and when I told him, let me go
through by the Treasury and the King's laboratory, so that I might see
the garden: and indeed it was very well worth seeing. There were sixteen
great beds, set in the rectangle, with paved walks between; there was a
stone vase on a pedestal, or a statue, in the centre of each bed, and a
great sundial in the midst of them all. There were some ladies walking
at the further end, beneath the two rows of trees; and the sight was a
very pretty one, for the sunlight was still on part of the garden and on
the Bowling-Green beyond the trees; and the flowers and the ladies'
dresses, and the high windows that flashed back the light, all conspired
to make what I looked upon very beautiful. The lodgings that looked on
to the Privy Garden and the Bowling-Green were much coveted, I heard
later; and only such personages as Prince Rupert, my Lord Peterborough,
Sir Philip Killigrew, and such like, could get them there.

Mr. Chiffinch's lodgings, when I came to them, were not so fine; for
they looked out upon little courts on both sides, and my Lady
Arlington's lodgings blocked his view to the river. I went up the
stairs, and beat upon the door with my cane: and a voice cried to me to
enter.

Now I had heard enough of Mr. Chiffinch to make me prejudge him; for his
main business, it seemed, was to pander to the King's pleasures; and he
had his rooms so near the river, it was said, that he might more easily
meet those who came by water and take them up to His Majesty's rooms
unobserved: yet when I saw him, I understood that any prejudgement was
unnecessary. For if ever man bore his character in his face it was Mr.
Chiffinch.

He had risen at my knock, and was standing in the light of the window.
He was dressed in a dark suit, very plain, yet of very rich stuff, and
had laid his periwig aside, so that I could see his features. He was a
dark secret-looking man with his eyes set near together, and with a lip
so short that it seemed as if he sneered; he stooped a little too. Yet I
am bound to say that his manner was perfection itself.

"Mr. Chiffinch," I said. And at that he bowed.

"I am Mr. Roger Mallock," I said; "and I was bidden to come here at this
hour."

"I am honoured to meet you, Mr. Mallock," he said. "I have had His
Majesty's instructions very particular in your regard. I am ashamed that
you should find me so unready; but I will not keep you above five
minutes, if you will sit down for a little."

He made haste to set me a chair near the window; and with another
apology or two he went out of a second door. The room in which he left
me was like the suit that he wore--in that it was both plain and rich.
There were three or four chairs with arms; a table, with twisted legs,
on which lay a great heap of papers and a pair of candlesticks: and
there was a tall lightly-carved press, with locks, between the windows.
The walls were plain, with a few good engravings hung upon them. I went
up to examine one, and found it to be a new one, by Faithorne.

Now that I was drawing so near to the King, I found my apprehensions
returning upon me, for half my success, I knew, if not all, turned upon
the manner I first shewed to him. I knew very well that I could bear
myself with sufficient address; but sufficient address was not all that
was needed: I must so act that His Majesty would remember me afterwards,
and with pleasure. Yet how was I to ensure this?

As I was so thinking to myself, Mr. Chiffinch came in again, having,
with marvellous speed, changed his suit into one of brown velvet, with a
great black periwig, from which his sharp face looked out like a ferret
from a hole.

"I must ask your pardon, Mr. Mallock," he said, as I stood up to meet
him, "again and again; but I have scarcely an hour to myself day or
night. Duty treads on the heels of duty all day long. But we have still
time: His Majesty does not expect us till half-past five."

I made the usual compliments and answers, to which he bowed again; and
then, as I thought he would, he began upon what was not his business--at
least I thought not then.

"You are come from Rome, I hear. I trust that His Holiness was in good
health?"

"The reports were excellent," I said, determined not to be taken in this
way.

"You have seen His Holiness lately, no doubt?"

"It was the French and Spanish ambassadors," I said, "who gave me my
letters. A poor gentleman like myself does not see the Holy Father once
in a twelvemonth."

He seemed contented with that; and I think he put me down as something
of a well-bred simpleton, which was precisely what I wished him to
think; for his manner changed a little.

"You have seen His Majesty before, no doubt?"

"I have not been in England for seven years," I said, smiling. "I saw
His Majesty once when I was a lad, as he went to dinner; and I have seen
him once, on Saturday last; at least, I saw the top of his hat from a
hundred yards off."

"And the Duke of York?" he asked.

"I have never seen the Duke of York in my life, to my knowledge," I
said.

Now I saw well enough what he was after. Without a doubt he had a
suspicion that I was an emissary in some way from the Holy Father, or at
least that I was more than I appeared to be; and being one of those men
who desire to know everything, that they may understand, as the saying
is, which way the cat will jump, and how to jump with her, he was
determined to find out all that he could. On my side, therefore, I
assumed the air of a rather stupid gentleman, to bear out better the
character that I had--that I was a mere gentleman from Rome, recommended
by the Catholic ambassadors; and I think that, for the time at anyrate,
he took me so to be; for his manner became less inquisitive.

"We must be going to His Majesty, sir," he said presently, rising; and
then he added as if by chance: "You are a Catholic, Mr. Mallock?"

"Why, yes," I said: for there was no need of any concealment on the
point of my religion.

       *       *       *       *       *

As we went downstairs and along the passage that led by Sir Francis
Clinton's lodgings, he began to speak of how I was to behave myself to
the King, and how kiss his hand and the rest. I knew very well all these
things, but I listened to him as if I did not, and even put a question
or two; and he answered me very graciously.

"You should be very modest with His Majesty," he said, "if you would
please him. He likes not originals over-much; or, rather, I would
say--(but it must not be repeated)--that he likes to be the only
original of the company."

And when Mr. Chiffinch said that I knew that he was lying to me; for the
very opposite was the truth; and I understood that he still had his
suspicions of me and wished me to fail with the King. But I nodded
wisely, and thanked him.

A couple of Yeomen of the Guard--of which body no man was less than six
feet tall--stood at the foot of the little stairs that led up to the
King's lodgings: and these made no motion to hinder the King's page and
his companion. So English were they that they did not even turn their
eyes as we went through, Mr. Chiffinch preceding me with an apology.

At the door on the landing of the first floor he turned to me again
before he knocked.

"His Majesty will be within the second room," he said. "Will you wait,
Mr. Mallock, please, in this first anteroom, and I will go through. This
is a private reception by His Majesty. There will be no formalities."

He tapped upon both the doors that were one inside the other; and then
led me through. The first chamber was very richly furnished, though
barely. There was a long table with chairs about it; and he led me to
one of these. Then with a nod or two he passed on to a second door,
tapped upon it softly and went through, closing it behind him. I heard a
woman's laugh as he went through, suddenly broken off.

There was, I supposed (and as I learned afterwards to be the case) one
other way at least out of the King's lodgings, through his private
library, where he kept all his clocks and wheels and such-like; for
when, after a minute or two, the door opened again and Mr. Chiffinch
beckoned me in, there was no woman with the King.

It was a great room--His Majesty's closet as it was called--which he
used for such solitary life as he led; and while I was with him, and
afterwards upon other occasions, I saw little by little how it was
furnished. The table in the midst, at which His Majesty wrote, was all
in disorder; it was piled high with papers and books, for he would do
what writing or reading he cared to do by fits and starts. The walls
were hung with panels of tapestry, and tall curtains of brocade hung at
the windows. Between the panels were pictures hung upon the walls--three
or four flower-pictures by Varelst; three pictures of horses and dogs by
Hondius, and a couple of Dutch pictures by Hoogstraaten. Over the
fireplace was a chimney-breast by Gibbons; and the ceiling was all
a-sprawl with gods and goddesses, I suppose by Verrio. In the windows,
which looked out on two sides, over the river and into a little court,
were little tables covered with curious things, for His Majesty
delighted in such ingenuities--Dutch figures in silver, clockwork, and
the like, and a basket of spaniels lay beneath one of the tables. A
second great table stood against the wall on the further side from that
on which I entered, covered with retorts and instruments, and behind it
a press, and near it sat the King. The floor was carpeted with rush
matting, loosely woven, with rugs upon it. But of all these things I saw
little or nothing at the first, for Mr. Chiffinch was gone out behind
me, and I was alone with His Majesty. One of the spaniels had given a
little yelp as I came in; but disposed himself to sleep again.

Now I am not one of those who think that those who are noble by birth
must always be noble by character, though I know that it should be so. I
knew, too, very well that Charles was less than noble in a great number
of ways. His women did what they liked with him; he would spend fortunes
on those who pleased him and did him nothing but injury, and would let
his faithful lovers and servants go starve. He lived always, you would
say, only for the flesh and the pride of the eyes; he was careless and
selfish and ungrateful; in short, he was as dissolute as a man could be,
or, rather, as dissolute as a king could be, and that is much more. Yet
for all this, he was a man of an extraordinary power, if he had cared to
use it. It was said of him that "he could, if he would, but that he
would not"; and of his brother that "he would if he could, but that he
could not"; and I know no better epigram on the two than that. James was
all intention without success; and Charles all success without
intention. And so James at the end lived and died as a saint, though he
was far from being one at this time; and Charles lived and died a
sinner, though, thank God, a penitent one.

Now although I knew all this well enough, and how Charles' private life
stank in the nostrils of God and man, I cannot describe how he affected
me with loyalty and compassion and even a kind of love, in this little
while that I had with him in private, nor how these emotions grew upon
me the more that I knew him.

He was sitting in his great chair, not yet dressed for supper, for his
wristbands were tumbled and turned back, and his huge dark brown periwig
was ever so little awry. He was in a dark suit, with a lace cravat; and
his rosetted shoes were crossed one over the other as he sat. The light
of the window fell full upon him from one side, shewing his swarthy
face, his thin close moustaches, and his heavy eyes under his arched
brows--shewing above all that air of strange and lovable melancholy that
was so marked a trait in those of the Stuart blood. He smiled a little
at me, but did not move, except to put out his hand. I came across the
floor, kneeled and kissed his hand, then, at a motion from him, stood up
again.

"So you are Mr. Roger Mallock," he said. "Welcome to England, Mr. Roger
Mallock. You bring good news of His Holiness, I hope."

"His Holiness does very well, Sir," I said.

"We should all do as well if we were as holy," said the King. "And you
come to look after my soul, I am informed."

(He said this with a kind of gravity that can scarcely be believed.)

"I am no priest, Sir," I said, "if you mean that. I am only a
forerunner, at the best."

"_Vox clamantis in deserto_," said the King. "I hope I shall be no Herod
to cut off your head. But it is very kind of you to come to this
wilderness. And have you seen my brother yet?"

"I am to see his Royal Highness immediately," I said. "I waited upon
Your Majesty first."

"Poor James!" said the King. "He wants looking after, I think. And what
have you come to do in England, Mr. Mallock?"

Now I felt that I was cutting a poor figure at present; and that I must
say something presently, if I could, to make the King remember me
afterwards. It appeared to me that he was trying me, as he tried all
newcomers, to see whether they would be witty or amusing; but, for the
life of me, I could think of nothing to say.

"I am come to put myself wholly at Your Majesty's disposal," I said.

"Come! come! That's better," said Charles. "It is usually the other way
about. _Servus servorum Dei_, you know. And in what manner do you
propose that I should use you?"

"I will clean Your Majesty's shoes, if you will. Or I will run errands
in my own. Or I will sing psalms, or ditties; or I will row in a boat;
or I will play tennis, or fence. I am what is called an accomplished
young gentleman, Sir."

Now I think I put in a shade too many clauses, for I was a little
agitated. But the King's face lightened up very pleasantly.

"But I have plenty of folks who can do all that," he said. "In what are
you distinguished from the rest?"

Then I determined on a bold stroke; for I knew that the King liked such
things, if they were not too bold.

"I am a Jesuit at heart, Sir;" I said. "I desire to do these things, if
Your Majesty wills it so, simply that I may serve His Holiness in
serving Your Majesty."

"Oho!" said Charles; and he gathered his feet under him and looked at me
more closely. I met his eyes fairly and then dropped my own.

"Oho! That is frank enough, Mr. Mallock. You know all about me, I
suppose. You seem very young for such work. How old are you?
Twenty-five?"

"I pass as twenty-five, Sir. But I am only twenty-one!"

"I would that I were!" said Charles earnestly. "And so you are a Jesuit
in disguise--a wolf in sheep's clothing."

"No, Sir. I am a Jesuit at heart only, in that I would do anything in
God's cause. But I am rather a sheep in wolf's clothing. I was a
Benedictine novice till lately."

He seemed not to hear me. He had dropped his chin on his hand, and was
looking at me as if he were thinking of something else.

"So you are come to serve me," he said presently, "in any way that I
will; and you will serve me only that you may serve your master better.
And what wages do you want?"

"None that Your Majesty can give," I said.

"Better and better," said Charles. "Nor place, nor position?"

"Only at Your Majesty's feet."

"And what if I kick you?"

"I will look for the halfpence elsewhere, Sir."

Then the King laughed outright, in the short harsh way he had; and I
knew that I had pleased him. Then he stood up, and I saw that he was
taller than I had thought. He was close upon six feet high.

"Well, Mr. Mallock," he said, "this seems all very pleasant and
satisfactory. You said you would run errands. I suppose you mean to
Rome?"

"To Rome and back, Sir," I said. "Or to anywhere else, except Hell."

"Oh! you draw the line there, do you?"

"No, Sir. It is God Almighty who has drawn it. I am not responsible."

"But you observe God His line?"

"Yes, Sir. At least, I try to."

"We all do that, I suppose. The pity is that we do not succeed more
consistently ... Well, Mr. Mallock, I have nothing for you at present. I
am a great deal too busy. These ladies, you know, demand so much. I
suppose you heard one of them laugh just now?"

"I hear nothing but Your Majesty's commands," I said very meekly.

Charles laughed again and began to walk up and down.

"Well--and there are all these clockwork businesses, and chymical and
the like. And there is so much to eat and drink and see: and there are
the affairs of the kingdom--I had forgot that. Well; I have no time at
present, Mr. Mallock, as you can see for yourself. But I will not forget
you, if I want you. Where do you lodge?"

I named my lodgings in Covent Garden.

"And I have a cousin, Sir," I said, "who has bidden me to his house in
Hare Street. I shall be here or there."

"His name?"

"Thomas Jermyn, Sir."

The King nodded.

"I will remember that," he said. "Well, it may be a long time before I
have anything more to say to His Holiness. 'He that will not when he
may--' You know all about that, I suppose, Mr. Mallock?"

"I know that Your Majesty has the reunion of Christendom at heart," I
said discreetly.

"Yes, yes; I understand," said Charles. "I have received very favourable
accounts of you, sir. And your letters, which are for the public eye,
are perfectly in order. Well; I will remember, Mr. Mallock. Meanwhile
you had best not shew yourself at Court in public too much." (And this
he said very earnestly.)

He put out his hand to be kissed.

"And you will give my compliments to my brother James," he said.

       *       *       *       *       *

One of the spaniels snored in his sleep as I went out again.




CHAPTER III


My interview with the Duke was a very different matter. I was informed
at his lodgings that he was not yet come from tennis; and upon asking
how long he would be, or if I might go to the tennis-court, was told
that he might be half an hour yet, and that I might go there if I
wished; so I went up from the river again, with a fellow they sent to
guide me, down through the Stone Gallery, across the Privy Garden, and
so across the street, midway between the gates, and so by the Duke of
Monmouth's lodgings to the tennis-court. Here, as I went across the
street, I caught sight of the sentries changing guard. These were the
Coldstream Guards, in their red coats; for it was these foot-guards who
did duty for the most part in the Palace and round about at the gates.
The other troops about His Majesty were, first the King's Guards proper,
who attended him when he rode out: these were in buff coats and
cuirasses, very well mounted, and very gay with ribbons and velvet and
gold lace and what not: and to each troop of these were attached a
company of grenadiers with their grenades. Besides these were the Blues,
also cavalry; and the dragoons, who were infantry on horseback, and
carried bayonets. Of the foot-soldiers, such as the Buffs, most were
mousquetaires; but some trailed pikes, and every one of them had a
sword. These troops I saw constantly in town; besides the Yeomen who
were closely attached to the person of his Sacred Majesty.

It was by the Duke of Monmouth's lodgings that I had my first sight of
the Duke of Monmouth himself; for as I came towards the archway, by
which were the lodgings of my Lady Suffolk, he himself came out from his
own. I did not know who he was, until the fellow by me saluted him and
doffed his cap, whereupon I did the same. I think I have never seen a
more handsome lad in all my life (for he looked no more, though he was
near thirty years old). His face was as smooth as a girl's, though not
at all effeminate; he had a high and merry look with him, and bore
himself, with his two friends, like a prince; he had violet eyes and
arched brows over them. It is piteous to me now to think of his end, and
that it was against his uncle by blood (whom I was to see presently)
that he rebelled later, and by his uncle that he was condemned; and it
is yet more piteous to think how he met that end, crying and cringing
for fear of his life, both in the ditch in which he was discovered, and
afterward in prison. He looked very kindly on me as he passed, lifting
his hand to his hat; but I think he would not have so looked if he had
known all about me; for he was as venomous against the Catholics as a
man could be, or at least feigned himself so, for I think he had not a
great deal of religion at any time. But he was to know me better
afterwards.

When I came up into the gallery of the tennis-court I found it pretty
full; yet not so full but that I could get a sight of the players. The
Duke was in the court of the _dédans_ when I first came in, so I could
see no more of him than his back and his cropped head; but when, after
two _chaces_ he crossed over, I had a good view of him.

He was more heavily built than Charles; but his features were not unlike
the King's, though he was fairer in complexion, I suppose; and his lip
was shorter, and he wore no hair on his face. He had somewhat of a
heavier look too in his face, without the fire that burned like embers
in his brother's eyes. All this I noticed somewhat of, even from the
gallery, though he was all a-sweat with his exercise.

I had left word with one of the men below as to my name and my business;
and when the game was ended and the Duke went out, I remained still
upstairs for a little, thinking that perhaps another would be played,
and then perhaps he would send for me. But a servant came up presently
and told me I was to follow to the Stone Gallery, where the Duke would
walk for a while before changing his clothes, as his custom was. This
Stone Gallery, as I had seen, was roofed, with skylights in it, and had
presses of books all along the walls, together with collections of all
kinds.

When I came to the Gallery he was at the further end, walking with Sir
Robert Murray, as I learned afterwards, who was a very earnest
Protestant, but always at Court; but when he saw me he sent Sir Robert
away and beckoned to me to come. So I went up to him and kissed his
hand, and he bade me walk with him for a little. (He had put on a cloak
and hat to prevent his taking cold.)

Now his manner was wholly different from His Majesty's. There was a
courtesy always in Charles that was not in James; for the Duke said
nothing as to his receiving me here in his _déshabille_, but began
immediately to talk in a low voice.

"I am pleased that you are come to England, Mr. Mallock. I have had news
of you from Rome."

Then he asked very properly of the Holy Father, and of a Cardinal or two
that he knew; and I answered him as well as I could. But I very soon saw
that His Royal Highness wanted nothing like wit from me: he was somewhat
of a solemn man, and had great ideas of his rights, and that all men who
were below his own station should keep their own. He desired deference
and attention above all things.

He spoke presently of Catholics in England.

"God hath blest us very highly," he said, "both in numbers and
influence. But we can well do with more of both; for I never heard of
any cause that could not. There is a feeling against us in many
quarters, but it is less considerable every year. You are to attach
yourself to His Majesty, I understand?"

"But I am to have no place or office, sir," I said. "I am rather to be
at His Majesty's disposal--to fetch and carry, I may say, if he should
need my services."

His Highness looked at me sidelong and swiftly; and I understood that he
did not wish any originality even in speech.

"We must all be discreet, however," he said--(though I suppose there was
never any man less discreet than himself, especially when he most needed
to be so). "It is useless to say that we are altogether loved; for we
are not. But you will soon acquaint yourself with all our politics."

I did not say that I had already done so; but assured him that I would
do my best.

"As a general guide, I may say," he went on; "where there is Whiggery,
there is disloyalty, however much the Whigs may protest. They say they
desire a king as much as any; but it is not a king that they want, but
his shadow only."

He talked on in this manner for a little, for we had the Gallery to
ourselves, telling me, what I knew very well already, that the Catholics
and the High Churchmen were, as a whole, staunch Royalists; but that the
rest, especially those of the old Covenanting blood, still were capable
of mischief. He did not tell me outright that it was largely against his
own succession that the disaffection was directed; nor that the Duke of
Monmouth was his rival; but he told me enough to show that my own
information was correct enough, and that in the political matters my
weight, such as it was, must be thrown on to the side of the Tories--as
the other party was nicknamed. I understood, even in that first
conversation with him, why he was so little loved; and I remembered,
with inward mirth, how His Majesty once, upon being remonstrated with by
his brother for walking out so freely without a guard, answered that he
need have no fears; for "they will never kill me," said he, "to set you
upon the throne."

"You have seen Father Whitbread, no doubt," said the Duke suddenly.

"No, sir. I waited to pay my homage first to His Majesty and to
yourself."

He nodded once or twice at that.

"Yes, yes; but you will see him presently, I take it. You could not have
a better guide. Why--"

He broke off on a sudden.

"Why here is the man himself," he said.

A man in a sober suit was indeed approaching, as His Highness spoke. He
was of about the middle-size, clean-shaven, of grave and kindly face,
and resembled such a man as a lawyer or physician might be. He was
dressed in all points like a layman, though I suppose it was tolerably
well known what he was, if not his name.

He saluted as he came near, and made as if he would have passed us.

"Mr. Whitbread! Mr. Whitbread!" cried the Duke.

The priest turned and bowed again, uncovering as he did so. Then he came
up to the Duke and kissed his hand.

"I was on my way to see your Royal Highness," he said, "but when I saw
you were in company--"

"Why, this is Mr. Mallock, come from Rome, who has letters to you. This
will save you a journey, Mallock."

The priest and I saluted one another; and I found his face and manner
very pleasant.

"I have heard of you, Mr. Mallock," he said, "but I hope His Highness is
misinformed, and that this will not save you a journey, after all."

"I was just telling this gentleman," broke in the Duke, as we continued
our walking, "that he must take you for his mentor, Dr. Whitbread, in
these difficult times. Mr. Mallock seems very young for his business,
but I suppose that the Holy Father knows what he is about."

"The Holy Father, sir," I said, "has committed himself in no sort of way
to me. I am scarcely more than a free-lance who has had his blessing."

"Well, well; it is all the same thing," said James a little impatiently.
"Free-lance or drilled soldier--they fight for the same cause."

He continued to talk in the same manner for a little, as if for my
instruction; and I listened with all the meekness I had. He did not tell
me one word which I did not already know; but I had perceived by now
what kind of man he was--well intentioned, no doubt, as courageous as a
lion, and as impatient of opposition, and not a little stupid: at least
he had not a tenth of his brother's wits, as all the world knew. He
solemnly informed me therefore of what all the world knew, and I
listened to him.

When he dismissed me at last, however, he remembered to ask where I
lodged, and I told him.

"A very good place too," he said. "I am glad your cousin had the sense
to put you there. Then I will remember you, if I need you for anything."

"I will go with Mr. Mallock," said the priest, "if Your Royal Highness
will permit. I came but to pay my respects; and it is a little late."

The Duke nodded; and gave us his hand to kiss.

As we went out through the Courtyard, Father Whitbread pointed out a few
things to me which be thought might be of interest; and I liked the man
more at every step. He was a complete man of the world, with a certain
gentle irony, yet none the less kindly for it. He did not say one
disparaging word of anyone, nor any hint of criticism at His Royal
Highness; yet he knew, and I knew that he knew, and he knew that again,
that our Catholic champion was a shade disappointing; and that, not in
his vices only--of which my Lady Southesk could have given an
account--but in that which I am forced to call his stupidity. But, after
all, our Saviour uttered a judgment generally as to the children of
light and the children of this world, that must always be our
consolation when our friends are dull or perverse. Father Whitbread only
observed emphatically that the Duke was a man of excellent heart.

He showed me the windows of a number of lodgings on the way, and the
direction of a great many more: for indeed this Palace of Whitehall was
liker a little town than a house. Father Patricks, he said, had a
lodging near the Pantry, which he shewed me.

"There be some of us priests who have an affinity, do you not think, Mr.
Mallock? with pantries and butteries and such like--good sound men too,
many of them. I have not a word to say against Mr. Patricks."

He shewed me too how the Palace was in four quarters, of which two were
divided from two by Whitehall itself and the street between the
gatehouses. That half of it that was nearer to the Park held the
tennis-court and the cock-pit and the lodgings of the Duke of Monmouth
and others nearer Westminster, and the other half the Horse Guards and
the barracks: and that nearer the river held, to the south the Stone
Gallery, the Privy Garden, the Bowling Green and a great number of
lodgings amongst which were those of the King and of his brother and
Prince Rupert, and of the Queen too, as well as of their more immediate
attendants--and this part contained what was left of the old York House;
to the north was another court surrounded by lodgings, the Wood-Yard,
the two courts called Scotland Yard, and the clock-house at the
extremity, nearest Charing Cross. In the very midst of the whole Palace,
looking upon Whitehall itself, was the Banqueting House where His
Majesty dined in state, and from a window of which King Charles the
First, of blessed memory, went out to lose his head. Indeed as we went
by the end of the Banqueting House the trumpets blew for supper; and we
saw a great number of cooks and scullions run past with dishes on their
heads.

       *       *       *       *       *

As we went up Whitehall, Mr. Whitbread began to speak of more intimate
things.

"You are a stranger in England, Mr. Mallock, I think."

I told him I had not been in the country for seven years.

"You will find a great many changes," he said; "and I think we are on
the eve of some more. Certainly His Majesty has wonderfully established
his position; and yet, if you understand me, there is a great and
growing disaffection. It is the Catholic Faith that they fear; and I
cannot help thinking that some victims may be required again presently,
though I do not know what they can allege against us. There is a deal of
feeling, too, against the Queen; she has borne no children--that is
true; but the main part of it arises from her religion: and so with the
Duke of York also. Certainly we are in the fashion in one way: but those
who are on the top of the wave must always look to come down suddenly."

Here again, Father Whitbread did not tell me anything that I did not
know; yet he put matters together as I had not heard them put before;
and he seemed to me altogether a shrewd kind of man whose judgment I
might very well rely upon; and as we went up the Strand he spoke again
of the Queen.

"His Majesty hath been urged again and again to divorce her; but he will
not. He said to the Duke himself in my hearing one day that an innocent
woman should never suffer through him--which is good hearing. But Her
Majesty is not very happy, I am afraid."

When we came to the Maypole, which I had already seen, in the midst of
the Strand, he spoke to me of how it had been carried there and set up
with great rejoicing, after the Restoration. It was a great structure,
hung about by a crown and a vane; and he said that it stood as a kind of
symbol against Puritanism.

"There are many," he told me, "who would pull it down to-morrow if they
could, as if it were some kind of idol."

He saw me as far as the door of my lodgings; but he would not come in.
He said that he had no great desire to be known more widely than be was
at present known.

"But if you have time to come in to-morrow morning about ten o'clock to
Mr. Fenwick's lodgings in Drury Lane--over the baker's shop--I shall be
there, and Mr. Ireland also--all Fathers of our Society; and I will very
gladly make you known to them. My own lodgings are in Weld Street--at
the Ambassador's."

I thanked him for his kindness, and said I would be there; and so I bade
him good-night.

       *       *       *       *       *

Although I had learned very few things that day which I had not known
already, I felt that evening as I sat at supper, and afterwards, in the
coffee house at 17, Fleet Street (which he recommended to me) that I
knew them in a different manner. For I had spoken with some of the
principal actors, and, above all, with the King himself. My cousin
questioned me delightedly upon my experiences when we were alone with
our pipes at one end of the great room that had been a council-chamber;
and related to me all his own experiences with the King at great
length; and how Charles had made to him some witty remarks which I think
must have lost in the telling, for they were not witty at all when I
heard them. It appeared that my cousin had spoken with the King three or
four times, at City-banquets and such like; and he would know all that
His Majesty had said to me. But much I would not tell him, and some I
could not: I could not that is, even if I would, have conveyed to him
the strange compassion that I felt, and the yet more strange affection,
for this King who might have done so much, and who did so little--except
what he should not; and I would not on any account tell him of what the
King had said as to Rome and his desires and procrastinations. But I
told him how I had met Father Whitbread, and how I was to go and see him
on the morrow.

"Why, I will come with you myself," he said. "I know Mr. Fenwick's
lodgings very well: and we will ride afterwards as far as Waltham Cross,
and lie there; and so to Hare Street for dinner next day."

All the way home again, and when my Cousin Dorothy was gone to bed, and
we sat over a couple of tankards of College Ale, he would talk of
nothing but the Jesuits.

"They are too zealous," he said. "I am as good a Catholic as any man in
England or Rome; but I like not this over-zeal. They are everywhere,
these good fathers; and it will bring trouble on them. They hold their
consults even in London, which I think over-rash; and no man knows what
passes at them. Now I myself--" and so his tongue wagged on, telling of
his own excellence and prudence, and even his own spirituality, while
his eyes watered with the ale that he drank, and his face grew ever more
red. And yet there was no true simplicity in the man; he had that kind
of cunning that is eked out with winks and becks and nods that all the
world could see. He talked of my Cousin Dorothy, too, and her virtues,
and what a great lady she would be some day when these virtues were
known; and he, declared that in spite of this he would never let her go
to Court; and then once more he went back again to his earlier talk of
the corruptions there, and of what my Lady this and Her Grace of that
had said and done and thought.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Fenwick's lodgings in Drury Lane were such as any man might have.
The Jesuit Fathers lived apart in London--Father Whitbread in the City,
Father Ireland in Russell Street, and Father Harcourt, who was called
the "Rector of London," I heard, in Duke Street, near the arch--lest too
much attention should be drawn to them if they were all together. They
were pleasant quiet men, and received me very kindly--for my cousin who
had forgot some matter he had to do before he went into the country, was
gone down into the City to see to it. Mr. Grove, whom I learned later to
be a lay brother of the Society, opened the door to me; and shewed me to
the room where they were all three together.

They were all three of them just such men as you might meet anywhere, in
coffee-houses or taverns, none of them under forty or over sixty years
old. Father Harcourt was seventy--but he was not there. They were in
sober suits, such as a lawyer might wear, and carried swords. These were
not all the Jesuits thereabouts; for I heard them speak of Father John
Gavan and Father Anthony Turner (who were in the country on that day),
and others.

As I talked with them, and gave my news and listened to theirs, again
and again I thought of the marvellous misjudgments that were always
passed upon the Society; of how men such as these were always thought to
be plotting and conspiring, and how any charge against a Jesuit was
always taken as proven scarcely before it was stated; and that not by
common men only, but by educated gentlemen too, who should know better.
For their talk was of nothing but of the most harmless and Christian
matters, and of such simplicity that no man who heard them could doubt
their sincerity. It is true that they spoke of such things as the
conversion of England, and of the progress that the Faith was making;
and they told many wonderful stories of the religion of the common
people in country places, and how a priest was received by them as an
angel of God, and of their marvellous goodness and constancy under the
bitterest trials; but so, I take it, would the Apostles themselves have
spoken in Rome and Asia and Jerusalem. But as to the disloyalty that was
afterwards charged against them, still less of any hatred or murderous
designs, there was not one such thought that passed through any of their
minds.

It was a plain but well-furnished chamber in which we sat. Beneath the
windows folks came and went continually. There were hangings on the
wall; and a press full of books and papers, and two or three tables; but
there was no concealment of anything, nor thought of it. Through the
door I saw Mr. Grove laying for dinner.

"But you will surely stay for dinner," said Father Fenwick, when I said
that I must be gone presently.

I told him that I was to ride to Waltham Cross with my cousins, and that
I was to meet them for dinner first at the coffee-house beside the
Maypole in the Strand.

"And to Hare Street to-morrow, then," said Father Whitbread--or Mr.
White as he was called sometimes.

I told him, Yes; and that I did not know how long I should be there.

"The King will be at Windsor next month, I think," he said; "but he will
be back again for August. You had best be within call then, if he should
send for you." (For I had told them all freely what had passed between
myself and His Majesty, and what His Holiness had said to me too.)

"You can command any of us at any time," he added, "if we can be of
service to you. There are so many folks of all kinds, here, there and
everywhere, that it is near impossible for a stranger to take stock of
them all; and it may be that our experience may be of use to you, to
know whom to trust and of whom to beware. But the most safe rule in
these days is, Trust no man till you know him, and not entirely even
then. There are men in this City who would sell their souls gladly if
any could be found to give them anything for it; how much more then, if
they could turn a penny or two by selling you or me or another in their
stead!"

I thanked him for his warning; and told him that I would indeed be on
my guard.

"Least of all," he said, "would I trust those of my own household. I
know your cousin for a Catholic, Mr. Mallock, but you will forgive me
for saying that it is from Catholics that we have to fear the most. I do
not mean by that that Mr. Jermyn is not excellent and sincere; for I
know nothing of him except what you have told me yourself. But zeal
without discretion is a very firebrand; and prudence without zeal may
become something very like cowardice; and either of these two things may
injure the Catholic cause irreparably in the days that are coming. St.
Peter's was the one, and Judas', I take it, was the other; for I hold
Judas to have been by far the greater coward of the two."

       *       *       *       *       *

When I came out into the passage with him, I kneeled down and asked his
blessing; for I knew that this was of a truth a man of God.




CHAPTER IV


It was a little after noon next day that first we saw the Norman church
upon the hill, and then the roofs of Hare Street.

I had been astonished at the badness of the roads from London, coming as
I had from Rome, where paved ways go out in every direction. We came out
by Bishopsgate, by the Ware road, and arrived at Waltham Cross a little
before sunset, riding through heavy dust that had hardly been laid at
all by the recent rains. We rode armed, with four servants, besides my
Cousin Dorothy's maid, for fear of the highwaymen who had robbed a coach
only last week between Ware and London. My Cousin Dorothy rode a white
mare named Jenny which mightily became her. We lay at the _Four Swans_
at Waltham Cross, and went out before supper to see the Cross which was
erected where Queen Eleanor's body had lain--of which the last was at
Charing Cross--and I was astonished that the Puritans had not more
mutilated it. The beds were pretty comfortable, and the ale excellent,
so that once more my Cousin Tom drank too much of it. And so, early in
the morning we took horse again, and rode through Puckeridge, where we
left for the first time the road by which the King went to Newmarket,
when he went through Royston; and we found the track very bad
thenceforward. My Cousin Tom carried with him, though for no purpose
except for show, a map by John Ogilby which shows all the way from
London to King's Lynn, very ingeniously, and which was made after the
Restoration to encourage road traffic again; but it was pleasant for me
to look at it from time to time and see what progress we made towards
Hormead Magna which is the parish in which Hare Street lies.

Now it was very pleasant for me to ride, as I did a good deal, with my
Cousin Dorothy; for her father, for a great part, rode with the men and
cracked stories with them. For journeying with a person sets up a great
deal of intimacy; and acquaintance progresses at least as swiftly as
the journey itself. She spoke to me very freely of her father, though
never as a daughter should not; and told me how distressed she was
sometimes at the quantity of ale and strong waters that he drank. She
told me also how seldom it was that a Catholic could hear mass at Hare
Street: sometimes, she said, a priest would lie there, and say mass in
the attic; but not very often; and sometimes if a priest were in the
neighbourhood they would ride over and hear mass wherever he happened to
be. The house, she said, lay near upon the road, so that they would hear
a good deal of news in this way. But she told me nothing of another
matter--for indeed she could not--which distressed her; though I
presently guessed it for myself, as will appear in the course of this
tale.

My horse, Peter (as I had named him after the Apostle when I bought him
at Dover), was pretty weary as we came in sight of the church of Hormead
Parva; for I had given him plenty to do while I was in London; and he
stumbled three or four times.

"We are nearly home," said my Cousin Dorothy; and pointed with her whip.

"It is pleasant to hear such a word," I said: "for, as for me, I have
none."

She said nothing to that; and I was a little ashamed to have said it;
for nothing is easier than to touch a maid's heart by playing Othello to
her Desdemona.

"I have no business to have said that, cousin," I went on presently:
"for England is all home to me just now."

"I hope you will find it so, cousin," she said.

The country was pretty enough through which we rode; though in no ways
wonderful. It was pasture-land for the most part, with woods here and
there; and plenty of hollow ways (all of which were marked upon the map
with great accuracy), by which drovers brought their sheep to the
highway. I saw also a good many fields of corn. The hills were lowish,
and ran in lines, with long valleys between; and there was one such on
the right as we came to Hare Street, through which flowed a little
stream, nearly dry in the summer.

The house itself was the greatest house in the village, and lay at the
further end of it upon the right; sheltered from the road by limes, in
the midst of which was the gateway, and the house twenty yards within.
My Cousin Tom came up with us as we entered the village, and shewed me
with a great deal of pride his new iron gate just set up, with a twisted
top.

"It is the finest little gate for ten miles round," he said, "and cost
me near twenty pound."

We rode past the gate, however, into the yard just beyond; and here
there was a great barking of dogs set up; and two or three men ran out.
I helped my Cousin Dorothy from her horse; and then all three of us went
through a side-door to the front of the house.

The house without was of timber and plaster, very solidly built, but in
no way pretentious; and the plaster was stamped, in panels, with a kind
of comb-pattern in half circles, peculiar, my cousin told me, to that
part of the country. Within, it was very pleasant. There was a little
passage as we came in, and to right and left lay the Great Chamber (as
it was called), and the dining-room. Beyond the little passage was the
staircase, panelled all the way up, with the instruments of the Passion
and other emblems carved on a row of the panels; and at the foot of the
staircase on the right lay a little parlour, very pretty, with hangings
presenting the knights of the Holy Grail riding upon their Quest. Upon
the left of the staircase, lay a paved hall, with a little pantry under
the stairs, to the left, and the kitchens running out to the back; and
opposite to them, enclosing a little grassed court, the brewhouse and
the bakehouse. Behind all lay the kitchen gardens; and behind the
brewhouse a row of old yews and a part of the lawn, that also ran before
the house. The house was of three stories high, and contained about
twenty rooms with the attics.

It is strange how some houses, upon a first acquaintance with them, seem
like old friends; and how others, though one may have lived in them
fifty years are never familiar to those who live in them. Now Hare
Street House was one of the first kind. This very day that I first set
eyes on it, it was as if I had lived there as a child. The sunlight
streamed into the Great Chamber, and past the yews into the parlour; and
upon the lawns outside; and the noise of the bees in the limes was as if
an organ played softly; and it was all to me as if I had known it a
hundred years.

My Cousin Tom carried me upstairs presently to the Guest-chamber--a
great panelled room, with a wide fire-place, above the dining-room--that
I might wash my hands and face before dinner; and my heart smote me a
little for all my thoughts of him, for, when all was said, he had
received me very hospitably, and was now bidding me welcome again, and
that I must live there as long as I would, and think of it as my home.

"And here," he said, opening a door at the foot of the bed, "is a little
closet where your man can hang your clothes; it looks out upon the yard;
and my room is beyond it, over the kitchen."

I thanked him again and again for his kindness; and so he left me.

       *       *       *       *       *

We dined below presently, very excellently. The room was hung with
green, with panels of another pattern upon it; and the dishes were put
in through a little hatch from the kitchen passage. My man James waited
with the rest, and acquitted himself very well. Then after dinner, when
the servants were gone away, my Cousin Tom carried me out, with a
mysterious air, to the foot of the stairs.

"Now look well round you, Cousin Roger," he said, when he had me
standing there; "and see if there be anything that would draw your
attention."

I looked this way and that but saw nothing; and said so.

"Have you ever heard of Master Owen," he said, "of glorious memory?"

"Why, yes," I said, "he was a Jesuit lay-brother, martyred under
Elizabeth: and he made hiding-holes, did he not?"

"Well; he hath been at work here. Look again, Cousin Roger."

I turned and saw my Cousin Dorothy smiling--(and it was a very pretty
sight too!)--but there was nothing else to be seen. I beat with my foot;
and it rang a little hollow.

"No, no; those are the cellars," said my Cousin Tom.

I beat then upon the walls, here and there; but to no purpose; and then
upon the stairs.

"That is the sloping roof of the pantry, only," said my Cousin Tom.

I confessed myself outwitted; and then with great mirth he shewed me
how, over the door into the paved hall, there was a space large enough
to hold three or four men; and how the panels opened on this side, as
well as into the kitchen passage on the other.

"A priest or suchlike might very well lie here a week or two, might he
not?" asked my Cousin Tom delightedly; "and if the sentry was at the one
side, he might be fed from the other. It is cunningly contrived, is it
not? A man has but to leap up here from a chair; and he is safe."

I praised it very highly, to please him; and indeed it was very curious
and ingenious.

"But those days are done," I said.

"Who can tell that?" he cried--(though a week ago he had told me the
same himself). "Some priest might very well be flying for his life along
this road, and turn in here. Who knows whether it may not be so again?"

I said no more then on that point; though I did not believe him.

"And there is one more matter I must shew you in your own chamber; if
you have any private papers and suchlike."

Then he shewed me in my own room, by the head of the bed that stood
along the wall, how one of the panels slid back from its place,
discovering a little space behind where a man might very well keep his
papers or his money.

"Not a living soul," he said, "knows of that, besides Dolly and myself.
You are at liberty to use that, Cousin Roger, if you like."

I thanked him; and said I would do so.

The rest of that day I spent in going about the house, and acquainting
myself with it all. My Cousin Dorothy shewed me the rooms. Her own was a
little one at the head of the stairs; and she told me, smiling, that a
ghost was said to walk there.

"But I have never been troubled with it," she said. "It is a tall old,
woman, they say, who comes up the stairs and into the room; but she does
no harm to anyone."

Next her room, along the front of the house, lay two other greater
rooms, one with a fire-place and one without: then was my chamber, and
then her father's: and upstairs were the attics where the men lay. The
maids lay in two little rooms above the kitchen.

It was mighty pleasant to me to be with my Cousin Dorothy. She had
changed her riding clothes into others more suitable for a country
maid--with a white starched neckerchief that came down upon her
shoulders, and a grey dress and petticoat below that. Her sleeves were
short, as the custom is in the country, with great linen cuffs folded
back upon them, so as to leave her hands and arms to the elbow free for
her occupations. But most of all I loved her simplicity and her
quietness and her discretion. Her father bade her expressly to shew me
all the house; or she would not have done it, for she was very maidenly
and modest; but as soon as he said that, she did it without affectation.
She shewed me the parlour too, with the hangings upon the walls, and the
chapel of the Grail, with the Grail itself upon an altar within, flanked
by two candlesticks, that was represented over the fire-place. She came
out with me too to shew me the bakehouse where the baking was already
begun, and the brewhouse--both of which too were all built of timber and
plaster; and there my Cousin Tom came upon us, and carried me off to see
his garden and his pasture; for he farmed a few acres about here, and
made a good profit out of it: and it was while I walked with him that
for the first time I understood what his intention was towards me.

He was speaking, as he very often did, of his daughter Dorothy--which I
had taken to be a father's affection only. (We were walking at the time
up and down in the pasture below the garden; and the house lay visible
among the gardens, very fair and peaceful with the sunlight upon it.)

"She will be something of an heiress," he said; "and when I say that, I
do not mean that she will have as many acres as yourself. But she will
have near a thousand pound a year so soon as poor Tom Jermyn dies: and I
may die any day, for I am short in the neck, and might very well be
taken with an apoplexy. I wish above all things then, to see her safely
married before I go--to some solid man who will care for her. There is a
plenty of Protestants about here that would have her; for she is a
wonderful housewife, and as pure as Diana too."

He paused at that; and looked at me in that cunning way of his that I
misliked so much. Yet even now I did not see what he would be at; for
gentlemen do not usually fling their daughters at the head of any man;
and he knew nothing of me but that I was pretty rich and would be more
so one day. But I suppose that that was enough for him.

"I had thought at one time," he went on, "of sending her to Court. I
could get her in, under the protection of my Lady Arlington. But the
Court is no place for a maiden who knows nothing of the world. What
would you advise, Cousin Roger? I would not have her marry a Protestant,
if I could help it."

And with that he looked at me again.

Then, all of a sudden I saw his meaning; and my heart stood still; for
not only did his words reveal him to me, but myself also; and I
understood why he had questioned me so closely in town, as to my
fortune. I cannot say at this time that I loved my Cousin Dolly--for I
had not known that I loved her--but his words were very effective.
Indeed I had not thought to marry, though I was free to do so; for a
novice does not quickly shake off his monkishness. I had thought far
more of the mission I was come to England upon, and what I could
accomplish, with God's blessing, for Christ and His Church. But, as I
say, my heart stood still when my cousin said that to me; for, as in a
vision, I saw myself here as her husband, and her as my wife, in this
house among its gardens. Here we might live a life which even the angels
might envy--harmless, innocent, separate from sinners, as the Apostle
says--not accomplishing, maybe, any great things, but at least
refraining from the hindering of God's Kingdom. The summers would come
and go, and we still be here, with our children growing about us, to
inherit the place and the name, such as it was. And no harm done, no
vows broken, no offence to any. Such thoughts as these did not as yet
shew any very great ardour of love in me; and indeed I had not got this
yet; but she was the first maid I had ever had any acquaintance with, at
least for some while; and this no doubt, had its effect upon me. All
this came upon me of a sudden; and as I lifted my eyes I saw my Cousin
Dolly's sunbonnet going among the herbs of the garden; and saw her in my
mind's eye too as I had seen her just now, cool and innocent and good,
with that touch of hidden fire in her eyes that draws a man's heart.
Neither had she looked unkindly on me: our intimacy had made wonderful
progress, though I had known her scarcely more than a week: she had
spoken to me of her father, too, as one would speak only to a friend.
Yet I could not say one word of this to him; for he had not said
anything explicit to me: and I knew, too, that I must give myself time;
for a man does not, if he is wise, change the course of his life on an
instant's thought. Yet I must not say No outright, and thereby, maybe,
bang the door on my new hopes.

"I could not advise you at present," I said. "I do not know my cousin
well enough to advise anything. I am one with you so far as concerns the
Court: I cannot think that any Catholic father should send his daughter
into such a den of lions--and worse. And I am one with you as concerns
marrying her to a Protestant. Yet I can say no more at present."

And at that my Cousin Tom looked at me in such a manner as near to ruin
his own scheme; for his eyes said, if his mouth did not, that now we
understood one another; and were upon the same side, or at least not
opposed; and to think that I was leagued with him against her made my
heart hot with anger.

"Very well," he said; "we will say no more at present." And he bade me
observe an old ram that was regarding us, with a face not unlike Cousin
Tom's own: but I suppose that he did not know this.

       *       *       *       *       *

In this manner, then, began our life at Hare Street; for I was there six
weeks before I went back again to London in the way I shall relate
presently. The days were passed for the most time, from rising until
dinner, upon the farm, or in hunting; for we rode out now and again with
the neighbours after a stag who had come from the woods. But we did not,
because of the Papistry of the house, see a great deal of the
neighbours, or they of us. The parson of Hormead came to see us now and
again, and behaved very civilly: but during those six weeks we had no
sight of a priest, except once when we rode to Standon to hear mass.
After dinner, I gave myself up to writing; for I thought that I could
best serve His Holiness in this way, making my diary each day in
shorthand (as I had learned from an Italian); and it is from that very
diary that this narrative is composed; and I wrote too a report or two,
apologizing for the poverty of it, which I determined to send to the
Cardinal Secretary as soon as I had an opportunity. I read too a little
Italian or Spanish or French every day; and thus, for the most part kept
to my chamber. But all my papers I put away each afternoon in the little
hiding-place in my chamber; and made excuse for keeping my room on the
score of my practice in languages.

We supped at five o'clock--which was the country hour; and after that,
to me, came the best part of the day.

For my Cousin Dorothy, I had learned, was an extraordinary fine
musician. We had, of course, no music such as was possible in town; but
she had taught a maid to play upon a fiddle, and herself played upon the
bass-viol; and the two together would play in the Great Chamber after
supper for an hour or two, when the dishes were washed. In this manner
we had many a corrant and saraband; and I was able to prick down for
them too some Italian music I remembered, which she set for the two
instruments. Sometimes, too, when Cousin Tom was not too drowsy after
his day and his ale, the three would sing and I would listen; for my
Cousin Tom sang a plump bass very well when he was in the mood for it.
As for me, I had but a monk's voice, that is very well when all the
choir is a-cry together, but not of much use under other circumstances.
In this way then I made acquaintance with a number of songs--such as Mr.
Wise's "It is not that I love you less" and his duet "Go, perjured man!"
of which the words are taken from Herrick's "Hesperides," and of which
the music was made by Mr. Wise (who was a gentleman of the Chapel Royal)
at His Majesty's express wish.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have many very pleasant memories of Hare Street, but I think none more
pleasant than of the music in the Great Chamber. I would sit near the
window, and see them in the evening light, with their faces turned to
me; or, when it grew late with the candlelight upon them and their
dresses or sometimes when the evening was fair and warm I would sit out
upon the lawn, and they at the window, and listen to the singing coming
out of the candlelight, and see them move against it. My Cousin Dorothy
would make herself fine in the evening--not, I mean, like a Court lady,
for these dresses of hers were put away in lavender--but with a lace
neckerchief on her throat and shoulders, and lace ruffles at her wrists.

Yet all this while I made no progress with her or even with myself; for
every time that I was alone with her, or when her father was asleep in
his chair, a remembrance of what he had said came over me with a kind of
sickness, and I could not say one word that might seem to set me on his
side against her; and so I was torn two ways, and the very thing by
which he had hoped to encourage me, (or rather to help himself) had the
contrary effect, and silenced me when I might have spoken.

For I understood very well by now what was in his mind. He saw no
prospect of marrying Dolly to a Protestant--or I take it, if I know the
man, he would have leapt at it; neither was there any hope of marrying
her to a Catholic; and as for his talk about my Lady Arlington I did not
believe one word of it. Therefore, since I was at hand, and would be a
wealthy man some day, and indeed even now did very well on my French
_rentes_, he had set his heart on this. It was not wholly evil; yet the
cold-bloodedness of it affected me like a stink....

       *       *       *       *       *

The matter ended, for the time, on the evening of the thirteenth of
August, in the following manner, when my adventures, of which my life,
ever since my audience with our Most Holy Lord the Pope, had been but a
prelude, properly began--those adventures for whose sake I have begun
this transcript from my diary, and this adventure was pre-shadowed, as I
think now, by one or two curious happenings.

On the morning of the thirteenth of August, two days before the Feast of
the Assumption (on which we had intended to hear mass again at Standon)
my Cousin Dorothy came down a little late, and found us already over our
oatbread and small beer which we were accustomed to take upon
rising--and which was called our "morning."

"I slept very ill," she said; and no more then.

Afterwards, however, as I was lighting my pipe in the little court at
the back of the house, she came out and beckoned me in; and I saw that
something was amiss. I went after her into the little hung parlour and
we sat down.

"I slept very ill, cousin," she said again; and I observed again that
her eyes looked hollow. "And I dare not tell my father my fancies," she
said, "for he is terrified at such things; and has forbade the servants
to speak of such things."

"The tall old woman, then?" I said; for I had not forgotten what she had
told me before.

"Yes," she said, smiling a little painfully--"and yet I was not at all
afraid when she came; or when I thought that she did."

"Tell me the whole tale," I said.

"I awakened about one o'clock this morning," she said, "and knew that my
sleep was gone from me altogether. Yet I did not feel afraid or
restless; but lay there content enough, expecting something, but what it
would be I did not know. The cocks were crowing as I awakened; and then
were silent; and it appeared to me as if all the world were listening.
After a while--I should say it was ten minutes or thereabouts--I turned
over with my face to the wall; and as I did so, I heard a soft step
coming up the stairs. One of the maids, thought I, late abed or early
rising, for sickness. When the steps came to my door they ceased; and a
hand was laid upon the latch; and at that I made to move; but could not.
Yet it was not fear that held me there, though it was like a gentle
pricking all over me. Then the latch was lifted, and still I could not
move, not even my eyes; and a person came in, and across the floor to my
bed. And even then I could not move nor cry out. Presently the person
spoke; but I do not know what she said, though it was only a word or
two: but the voice came from high up, as almost from the canopy of the
bed, and it was the voice of an old woman, speaking in a kind of
whisper. I said nothing; for I could not: and then again the steps moved
across the floor, and out of the door; and I heard the latch shut again;
and then they passed away down the stairs."

My Cousin Dorothy was pale as death by this time; and her blue eyes were
set wide open. I made to take her by the hand; but I did not.

"You were dreaming," I said; "it was the memory of the tale you have
heard."

She shook her head; but she said nothing.

"You have never had it before?" I asked.

"Never," she said.

"You must lie in another chamber for a week or two, and forget it."

"I cannot do that," she said. "My father would know of it." And she
spoke so courageously that I was reassured.

"Well; you must cry out if it comes again. You can have your maid to
sleep with you."

"I might do that," she said; and then--

"Cousin Roger; doth God permit these things to provide us against some
danger?"

"It may be so," I said, to quiet her; "but be sure that no harm can come
of it."

At that we heard her father calling her; and she stood up.

"I have told you as a secret, Cousin Roger; there must be no word to my
father."

I pledged myself to that; for I could see what a spirit she had; and we
said no more about it then.

As the day passed on, the sky grew heavy--or rather the air; for the sky
was still blue overhead; only on the horizon to the south the clouds
that are called _cumuli_ began to gather. The air was so hot too that I
could scarcely bear to work, for I had set myself to take some
plant-cuttings in a little glass-house that was in the garden against
the south wall; and by noon the sky was overcast.

After dinner I went up to my chamber; and a great heaviness fell upon
me, till I looked out of the window and saw that beyond the limes the
clouds spewed a reddish tint that marked the approach of thunder; and at
that grew reassured again; and not only for myself but for my Cousin
Dorothy, whose tale had lain close on my heart through the morning: for
this thought I, is the explanation of it all: the maid was oppressed by
the heat and the approaching storm, and fancied all the rest.

I fell asleep in my chair, over my Italian; and when I awakened it was
near supper-time, and the heaviness was upon me again, like lead; and my
diary not written.

After supper and some talk, I made excuse to do my writing; and as it
was growing dark, and I was finishing, I heard music from the Great
Chamber beneath. They were singing together a song I had not heard
before; and I listened, well pleased, promising myself the pleasure too
of going downstairs presently and hearing it.

Between two of the verses, I heard on a sudden, over the hill-top beyond
the village, the beat of a horse's hoofs, galloping; but I thought no
more of it. At the end of the next verse, even before it was finished, I
heard the hoofs again, through the music; I ran to the window to see who
rode so fast; and was barely in time to see a courier, in a blue coat,
dash past the new iron gate, pulling at his horse as he did so; an
instant later, I heard the horse turn in at the yard gate, and
immediately the singing ceased.

As I came down the stairs, I saw my Cousin Dolly run out into the inner
lobby, and her face, in the dusk, was as white as paper; and the same
instant there came a hammering at the hall door.

"What is it? What is it?" cried she; and clung to me as I came down.

I saw, through the inner door, my Cousin Tom unbolting the outer one; he
had taken down a pistol that hung upon the wall, for the highwaymen
waxed very bold sometimes; then when he opened the door, I heard my
name.

I went forward, and received from the courier, a sealed letter; and
there, in the twilight I opened and read it. It was from Mr. Chiffinch,
bidding me come to town at once on King's business.

"I must ride to town," I said. "Cousin Tom, will you order my horse for
me; and another for this man? I do not know when I shall be back again."

And, as I said these words, I saw my Cousin Dorothy's face looking at me
from the dusk of the inner hall, and knew what was in her mind; and that
it was the matter of the tall old woman in her room.




CHAPTER V


The storm was broken before we could set out, and the ride so far as
Hoddesdon was such as I shall never forget; for the wind was violent
against us; and it was pitchy dark before we came even to Puckeridge;
the thunder was as if great guns were shot off, or bags of marbles
dashed on an oak floor overhead; and the countryside was as light as day
under the flashes, so that we could see the trees and their shadows,
and, I think, sometimes the green colour of them too. We wore, all three
of us--the courier, I and my man James--horse-men's cloaks, but these
were saturated within half an hour. We had no fear of highwaymen, even
had we not been armed, for the artillery of heaven had long ago driven
all other within doors.

The hardest part of the journey was that I knew, no more than the
dead--indeed not so much--why it was that Mr. Chiffinch had sent for me.
He had said nothing in his letter, save that His Majesty wished my
presence at once; and on the outside of the letter was written the word
"Haste," three times over. I thought of a hundred matters that it might
be, but none of them satisfied me.

It is near forty miles from Hare Street to Whitehall; but so bad was the
way that, though we changed horses at Waltham Cross--at the _Four
Swans_--we did not come to London until eight o'clock in the morning;
and it was half-past eight before we rode up to Whitehall. The last part
of the journey was pretty pleasant, for the rain held off; and it was
strange to see the white hard light of the clouded dawn upon the fields
and the trees. But by the time we came to London it was long ago broad
day--by three or four hours at the least; and all the folks were abroad
in the streets.

I went straight to Mr. Chiffinch's lodgings, sending my man to the
lodging in Covent Garden, to bestow the horses and to come again to the
guard-house to await my orders. Mr. Chiffinch was not within, for he
had not expected me so early, a servant told me; but he had looked for
my coming about eleven or twelve o'clock, and had given orders that I
was to be taken to a closet to change my clothes if I needed it. This I
did; and then was set down to break my fast; and while I was at it, Mr.
Chiffinch himself came in.

He told me that I had done very well to come so swiftly; but he smiled a
little as he said it.

"His Majesty is closeted with one or two more until ten o'clock. I will
send to let him know you are come."

I did not ask him for what business I had been sent for; since he did
not choose to tell me himself; and he went out again. But he was
presently back once more; and told me that His Majesty would see me at
once.

My mind was all perturbed as I went with him in the rain across the
passages: I felt as if some great evil threatened, but I could make no
conjecture as to what it was about; or how it could be anything that was
at once so sudden and that demanded my presence. We went straight up the
stairs, and across the same ante-room; and Mr. Chiffinch flung open the
door of the same little closet where I had spoken with the King,
speaking my name as he did so.

His Majesty was sitting in the very same place where he sat before, with
his chair wheeled about, so that he faced three men. One of them I knew
at once, for my cousin had pointed him out to me in the park--my Lord
Danby, who was Lord Treasurer at this time--and he was sitting at the
end of the great table, nearest to the King: on the other side of the
table, nearer to me as I entered, were two men, upon whom I had never
set eyes before--one of them, a little man in the dress of an apothecary
or attorney; and the other a foolish-looking minister in his cassock and
bands. All four turned their eyes upon me as I came in, and then the two
who were standing, turned them back again towards His Majesty. There was
a heap of papers on the table below my Lord Danby's hand.

His Majesty made a little inclination of his head to me, but said
nothing, putting out his hand; and when I had kissed it, and stood back
with the other two, he continued speaking as if I were not there. His
face had a look, as if he were a little _ennuyé_, and yet a little merry
too.

"Continue, my Lord," he said.

"Now, doctor," said my Lord, in a patient kind of voice as if he
encouraged the other, "you tell us that all these papers were thrust
under your door. By whom were they thrust, do you think?"

"My Lord, I have my suspicions," said the minister; "but I do not know."

"Can you verify these suspicions of yours, do you think?"

"My Lord, I can try."

"And under how many heads are they ranged?" asked the King, drawling a
little in his speech.

"Sir; they are under forty-three heads."

The King rolled his eyes, as if in a droll kind of despair; but he said
nothing.

"And you tell me--" began my Lord; but His Majesty broke in:

"_Mon Dieu_!" he said; "and here is good Mr. Mallock, come here
hot-foot, and knows not a word of the proceedings. Mr. Mallock, these
good gentlemen--Doctor Tonge, a very worthy divine and a physician of
the soul, and Mr. Kirby, a very worthy chymist, and a physician of the
body--are come to tell me of a plot against my life on the part of some
of my faithful lieges, whereby they would thrust me swiftly down to
hell--body and soul together. So that, I take it is why God Almighty
hath raised up these physicians to save me. I wish you to hear their
evidence. That is why I sent for you. Continue, my Lord."

My Lord looked a little displeased, pursing up his mouth, at the manner
in which the King told the tale; but he said nothing on that point.

"Grove and Pickering, then, it appears, were to shoot His Majesty; and
Wakeman to poison him--"

("They will take no risks you see, Mr. Mallock," put in the King.)

"Yes, my Lord," said Tonge. "They were to have screwed pistols, with
silver bullets, champed, that the wounds may not heal."

("Prudent! prudent!" cried the King.)

Then my Lord Danby lost his patience; and pushed the papers together
with a sweep of his arm.

"Sir," he said, "I think we may let these worthy gentlemen go for the
present, until the papers are examined."

"With all my heart," said the King. "But not Mr. Mallock. I wish to
speak privately with Mr. Mallock."

So the two were dismissed; but I noticed that the King did not give them
his hand to kiss. They appeared to me a pair of silly folks, rather than
wicked as others thought them afterwards, who themselves partly
believed, at any rate, the foolish tale that they told. Mr. Kirby was a
little man, as I have said, with a sparrow-like kind of air; and Doctor
Tonge had no great distinction of any kind, except his look of
foolishness.

When they were gone, my Lord Danby turned to the King, with a kind of
indignation.

"Your Majesty may be pleased to make a mock of it all; but your loving
subjects cannot. I have permission then to examine these papers, and
report to Your Majesty?"

"Why, yes," said the King, "so you do not inflict the forty-three heads
upon me. I have one of my own which I must care for."

My Lord said no more; he gathered his papers without a word, saluted the
King at a distance, still without speaking, and went out, giving me a
sharp glance as he went.

"Now, Mr. Mallock," said His Majesty, "sit you down and listen to me."

I sat down; but I was all bewildered as to why I had been sent for. What
had I to do with such affairs as these?

"Do you know of a man called Grove?" the King asked me suddenly.

Now the name had meant nothing to me when I had heard it just now; but
when it was put to me in this way I remembered. I was about to speak,
when he spoke again.

"Or Pickering?" he said.

"Sir; a man called Grove is known to me; but no Pickering."

"Ha! then there is a man called Grove--if it be the same. He is a
Papist?"

"Sir, he is a lay-brother of the Society of Jesus, and dwells--"

The King held up his hand.

"I wish to know nothing more than I am obliged. Pickering is some sort
of Religious, too, they tell me. And what kind of a man is Grove?"

"He is a modest kind of man, Sir. He opened the door to me, and I saw
him a-laying of the table for dinner. I know no more of him than that."

Then the King drew himself up in his chair suddenly, as I had seen him
do before, and his mocking manner left him. It was as if another man sat
there.

"Mr. Mallock," he said, shaking his finger at me with great solemnity,
"listen to me. I had thought for a long time that an attempt would be
made against the Catholics. There is a great deal of feeling in the
country, now that my brother is one of them, and I myself am known not
to be disinclined towards them. And I make no doubt at all that this is
such an attempt. They have begun with the Jesuits; for that will be the
most popular cry; and they have added in Sir George Wakeman's name, Her
Majesty's physician, to give colour to it all. By and by they will add
other names; (you will see if it be not so), until not a Jesuit, and
scarce a Catholic is left who is not embroiled in it. I do not know who
is behind this matter; it may be my Lord Danby himself, or Shaftesbury,
or a score of others. Or it may be some discontented fellow who will
make his fortune over it; for all know that such a cry as this will be a
popular one. But this I know for a verity--that there is not one word of
truth in the tale from beginning to end; and it will appear so
presently, no doubt. Yet meanwhile a great deal of mischief may be done;
and my brother, may be, and even Her Majesty, may suffer for it, if we
are not very prudent. Now, Mr. Mallock, I sent for you, for I did not
know who else to send for. You are not known in England, or scarcely:
you come commended to me by the Holy Father himself; you are neither
priest nor Jesuit. What, then, you must do for me is this. First, you
must speak not one word of the matter to any living soul--not even your
confessor; for if we can quash the whole matter privately, so much the
better. I had you in just now, that Danby and the others might see that
you had my confidence; but I said nothing of who you were nor where you
came from; and, if they inquire, they will know nothing but that you
come commended by the ambassadors. Very well then; you must go about
freely amongst the Jesuits, and rake together any evidence that you can
that may be of use to them if the affair should ever be made public; and
yet they must know nothing of the reason--I lay that upon you. And you
must mix freely in taverns and coffee-houses, especially among the
smaller gentry, and hear what you can--as to whether the plot hath yet
leaked out--(for it is no less)--and what they think of it; and if not,
what it is that they say of the Catholics. You understand me, Mr.
Mallock?"

I said, Yes: but my heart had grown sick during the King's speech to me;
for all that I had ever thought in Rome, of England, seemed on the point
of fulfilment. His Majesty too had spoken with an extraordinary
vehemence, that was like a fire for heat. But I must have commanded my
countenance well; for he commended me on my behaviour.

"Your manner is excellent, Mr. Mallock," he said, "both just now and a
few minutes ago. You take it very well. And I have your word upon it
that you will observe secrecy?"

"My word on it, Sir," I said.

Then His Majesty leaned back again and relaxed a little.

"That is very well," he said; "and I think I have chosen my man well.
You need not fear, Mr. Mallock, that any harm will come to the good
Fathers, or to Grove or Pickering either. They cannot lay a finger upon
them without my consent; and that they shall never have. It is to
prevent rather the scandal of the whole matter that I am anxious; and
to save the Queen and my brother from any trouble. You do not know yet,
I think, all the feeling that there is upon the Catholics."

I said nothing: it was my business to listen rather, and indeed what His
Majesty said next was worth hearing.

"There be three kinds of religion in my realm," he said. "The
Presbyterian and Independent and that kind--for I count those all one;
and that is no religion for a gentleman. And there is the Church of
England, of which I am the head, which numbers many gentlemen, but is no
religion for a Christian; and there is the Catholic, which is the only
religion (so far as I am acquainted with any), suited for both gentlemen
and Christians. That is my view of the matter, Mr. Mallock."

The merry look was back in his eyes, melancholy though they always were,
as he said this. For myself, it was on the tip of my tongue to ask His
Majesty why, if he thought so, he did not act upon it. But I did not,
thinking it too bold on so short an acquaintance; and I think I was
right in that; for he put it immediately into words himself.

"I know what you are thinking, Mr. Mallock. Well; I am not yet a good
enough Christian for that."

I knew very well what His Majesty meant when he said that: he was
thinking of his women to whom as yet he could not say good-bye; and the
compassion surged up in me again at the thought that a man so noble as
this, and who knew so much (as his speeches had shewed me), could be so
ignoble too--so tied and bound by his sins; and it affected me so
much--here in his presence that had so strange a fascination in it--that
it was as if a hand had squeezed my throat, so that I could not speak,
even if I would.

"Well, sir," he said, "I must thank you for coming so quickly when I
sent for you. Mr. Chiffinch knows why you are come; but no one else; and
even to him you must not say one word. You will do well and discreetly;
of that I am sure. I will send for you again presently; and you may come
to me when you will."

He gave me his hand to kiss; and I went out, promising that no pains
should be spared.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was indeed a difficult task that His Majesty had laid upon me. I was
to speak freely to the priests, yet not freely; and how to collect the
evidence that was required I knew not; since I knew nothing at all of
when the conspiring was said to be done, nor what would be of avail to
protect them; and all the way to my lodgings with my man James, I was
thinking of what was best to do. My man had ordered that all things
should be ready for my entertainment, and I found the rooms prepared,
and the beds laid; and the first thing I did after dinner was to go to
bed, after I had written to my Cousin Tom at Hare Street, and sleep
until the evening.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I was dressed and had had supper in the coffee-house, listening as
well as I could to the talk, but hearing nothing pertinent, I went back
again to Drury Lane, to Mr. Fenwick's lodging, to lay the foundation of
my plan. For I had determined, between sleeping and waking, that the
best thing to be done, was to shew myself as forward and friendly as I
could, so that I might mix with the Fathers freely, in the hope that I
might light on something; and it so fell out, that although my small
adventures that evening had no use in them in the event, yet they were
strangely relevant to what took place afterwards.

The first small adventure was as follows:

I was walking swiftly up Drury Lane, scanning the houses, for it was
falling dark, and the oil-lights that burned, one before every tenth
house, cast but a poor illumination, when just beyond one of the lights
I knocked against a fellow who was coming out suddenly from a little
passage at the side, just, as it chanced, opposite to Mr. Fenwick's
house. I turned, to beg his pardon, for it was more my fault than his,
that we had come together; and I set my eyes upon the most strange and
villainous face that I have ever seen. The fellow was dressed in a dark
suit, and wore a crowned hat, and carried a club in his hand, and he
appeared to be one of the vagrom-men as they are called, who are at the
bottom of all riots and such like things. He was a smallish man in his
height, but his face was the strangest thing about him; and in the light
from the lamp I thought at first that he had some kind of deformity in
it. For his mouth was, as it were in the very midst of his face; there
was a little forehead above, with eyes set close beneath it, and a
little nose, and then his mouth, turned up at the corners as if he
smiled, and beneath that a vast chin, as large as the rest of his face.

He cried out "Lard!" as I ran against him; by which I understood him to
say "Lord!"

I asked his pardon.

"O Lard!" he said again, "'tis nothing, sir. My apologies to you, sir."

I bowed to him civilly again, and passed on; but as I knocked upon Mr.
Fenwick's door, I saw that he was staring after me, from the entrance to
that same passage from which he had come.

       *       *       *       *       *

My second adventure was that, upon coming upstairs, I found that in the
chamber with Mr. Fenwick were the mother and sister of Mr. Ireland,
waiting for him to come and take them back to their lodging. They were
quiet folks enough--a little shy, it appeared to me, of strange company.
But I did my best to be civil, and they grew more talkative. Mrs.
Ireland would be near sixty years old, I would take it, dressed in a
brown sac, such as had been fashionable ten years back, and her
daughter, I should think about thirty years old. They told me that they
had been to supper, and to the play in the Duke's Playhouse, where Mr.
Shirley's tragi-comedy _The Young Admiral_ had been done; and that Mr.
Ireland was to come for them here, as presently he did, for it was
scarce safe for ladies to be abroad at such an hour in the streets
without an escort, so wild were the pranks played (and worse than
pranks), by even the King's gentlemen themselves, as well as by the
riff-raff.

We sat and talked a good while; and Mr. Grove brought chocolate up for
the ladies. But for myself, I had such a variety of thoughts, as I
talked with them all, knowing what I did, and they knowing nothing, that
I could scarce command my voice and manner sometimes. For here were
these innocent folk--with Mr. Grove smiling upon them with the
chocolate--talking of the play and what-not, and of which of the actors
pleased them and which did not--and I noticed that the ladies, as
always, were very severe upon the women--and the good fathers, too,
pleased that they were pleased, and rallying them upon their
gaiety--(for it appeared that these ladies did not go often into
company); and here sat I, with my secret upon my heart, knowing--or
guessing at least--that a plot was afoot to ruin them all and turn their
merriment into mourning.

But I think that I acquitted myself pretty well; and that none guessed
that anything was amiss with me; for I spoke of the plays I had seen in
Rome, before that I was a novice, and of the singers that I heard there;
and I listened, too, to their own speeches, gathering this and that, of
what they did and where they went, if by chance I might gather something
to their own advantage thereafter.

It was pretty to see, too, how courteous and gallant Mr. Ireland was
with his mother and sister; and how he put their cloaks about them at
the door, and feigned that he was a constable to carry them off to
prison--(at which my heart failed me again)--for frequenting the company
of suspected persons; and how he gave an arm to each of them, as they
set off into the dark.

       *       *       *       *       *

That night too, as I lay abed, I thought much of all this again. I had
established a great friendliness with the Fathers by now, telling them I
was come up again to London, as Mr. Whitbread had recommended me, until
the Court should go again to Windsor, and that perhaps I should go with
it thither. They had told me at that, that one of their Fathers was
there, named Mr. Bedingfeld (who was of the Oxburgh family, I think),
and that he was confessor to the Duke of York, and that they would
recommend me to him if I should go. But all through my anxiety I
comforted myself with the assurance the King had given to me, that,
whatever else might ensue, not a hair of their heads should be touched,
for I had great confidence in His Majesty's word, given so solemnly.




CHAPTER VI


Now begins in earnest that chapter of horrors that will be with me till
I die; and the learning of that lesson that I might have learned long
before from one that was himself a Prince, and knew what he was talking
of--I mean King David, who bids us in his psalm to "put no trust in
princes nor in any child of man."

For several days all passed peacefully enough. I waited upon Mr.
Chiffinch, and asked whether the King had spoken of me again, and was
told he had not; so I went about my business, which was to haunt the
taverns and to frequent the company of the Jesuits.

I made an acquaintance or two in the taverns at this time, which served
me later, though not in the particular manner that I had wished; but for
the most part matters seemed quiet enough. Men did not speak a great
deal of the Catholics; and I always fenced off questions by beginning,
in every company that I found myself in, by speaking of some Church of
England divine with a great deal of admiration, soon earning for myself,
I fear, the name of a pious and grave fellow, but at the same time, of a
safe man in matters of Church and State.

One of these acquaintances was a Mr. Rumbald, a maltster (which was all
I thought him then), who frequented the Mitre tavern, without Aldgate,
where I went one day, dressed in one of my sober country suits, wearing
my hat at a somewhat rakish cock, that I might seem to be a simple
fellow that aped town-ways.

The tavern was full when I came to it, and called for dinner; but I made
such a to-do that the maid went to an inner room, and presently
returning, told me I might have my dinner there. It was a little parlour
she spewed me to, with old steel caps upon the wall, and strewed rushes
under foot; and there were three or four men there who had just done
dinner, all but one. This one was a ruddy man, with red hair going
grey, dressed very plain, but well, with a hard kind of look about him;
and he had had as much to drink as a man should have, and was in the
merry stage of his drink. Here, thought I, is the very man for me. He is
of both country and town; here is a chamber of which he seems lord--for
he ordered the maid about royally, and cursed her once or twice--and it
is a chamber apart from the rest. So I thought this a very proper place
to hear some talk in, and a very proper fellow to hear it from. For a
while I thought he had something of the look of an old soldier about
him; but then I thought no more of it.

When the others were gone out, and there was a little delay, I too--(God
forgive me!)--cursed the poor maid for a slut once or twice, and bade
her make haste with my dinner; and my manner had its effect, for the
fellow warmed to me presently and told me that he was Mr. Rumbald, and I
said on my part that my name was Mallock; and we shook hands upon it,
for that was the mood of the ale that was in him. (But he had other
moods, too, I learned later, when he was very repentant for his drink.)

I began then, to speak of Hare Street, and said that I lodged there
sometimes; and then began to speak of the parson there, and of what a
Churchman he was.

"Of Hare Street, eh?" said he. "Why I am not far from there myself. I am
of Hoddesdon, or near to it. Where have you lodged in Hare Street, and
what is your business?"

I was in a quandary at that, for it seemed to me then (though it was not
in reality), a piece of bad fortune that he should come from
thereabouts.

"I am Jack-of-all-trades," I said. "I did some garden work there for Mr.
Jermyn, the Papist."

"The Papist, eh?" cried Mr. Rumbald.

"I would work for the Devil," said I, "if he would pay me enough."

The words appeared to Mr. Rumbald very witty, though God knows why: I
suppose it was the ale in him: for he laughed aloud and beat on his leg.

"I'll be bound you would," he said.

And it was these words of mine which (under God's Providence, as I think
now) established my reputation with Mr. Rumbald as a dare-devil kind of
fellow that would do anything for money. He began, too, at that (which
pleased me better at the time), to speak of precisely those matters of
which I wished to hear. It was not treasonable talk, for the ale had not
driven all the sense out of him; but it was as near treasonable as might
be; and it was above all against the Catholics that he raged. I would
not defile this page by writing down all that he said; but neither Her
Majesty nor the Duke of York escaped his venom; there appeared nothing
too bad to be said of them; and he spoke of other names, too, of the
Duchess of Portsmouth whom he called by vile names (yet not viler than
she had rightfully earned) and the Duchess of Cleveland; and he began
upon the King, but stopped himself.

"But you are a Church of England man?" he said. "Well, so am I now, at
least I call myself so, though I should be a Presbyterian; but--" And he
stopped again.

Now all this was mighty interesting to me; for it was worse than
anything I had heard before; and yet he said it all as if it was common
talk among his kind, where he came from; and it was very consonant with
what the King had set me to do, which was to hear what the common people
had to say. My gorge rose at the man again and again; but I was a
tolerable actor in those days, and restrained myself very well. When he
went at last he clapped me on the back, as if it were I who had done all
the bragging.

"You are the right kind of fellow," he said, "and, by God, I wish there
were more of us. You will remember my name--Mr. Rumbald the maltster--I
am to be heard of here at any time, for I come up on my business every
week--though I was not always a maltster."

I promised I would remember him: and indeed after a while all England
has remembered him ever since.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was that same evening, I think (for my diary is confused at this
time, and no wonder), that when I came back to my lodgings about
supper-time, I found that a man had been from Mr. Chiffinch to bid me
come to Whitehall as soon as I returned; but the messenger had not
seemed greatly perturbed, James told me; so I changed my clothes and had
my supper and set out.

It would be about half-past seven o'clock when I came to Mr.
Chiffinch's; and when I tapped I had no answer. I tapped again; and then
a servant of Mr. Chiffinch's came running up the stairs (who had left
his post, I suspect) and asked me what I wanted there. When I told him
he seemed surprised, and he said that Mr. Chiffinch had company in his
inner closet; but that he would speak with him. So he left me standing
there; and went through, and I heard a door shut within. Presently he
came out again in something of a hurry, and bade me come in; and, to my
astonishment we went through the first room that was empty, and out
again beyond and down a dark passage. I heard voices as I went, talking
rapidly somewhere, but there was no one to be seen. Then he knocked
softly upon a door at the end of the passage; a voice cried to us to
come in; and I entered; and, to my astonishment, not only was the little
closet half full of persons, but these persons were somewhat
exceptional.

At the end of the table that was opposite me, sat His Majesty, tilting
his chair back a little as if he were weary of the talk; but his face
was flushed as if with anger. Upon his right sat the Duke, with his
periwig pushed a little back, and his face more flushed even than the
King's. Opposite to the Duke sat two men, whom I took to be priests by
their faces--one fair, the other dark--(and I presently proved to be
right)--and beside him Mr. Chiffinch, very eager-looking, and lean,
talking at a great speed, with his hands clasped upon the table.
Finally, my Lord Danby sat next to the Duke, opposite to Mr. Chiffinch,
with a sullen look upon his face. There was a great heap of papers,
again, upon the table, between the five men. All these persons turned
their eyes upon me as I came in and bowed low to the company; and then
Mr. Chiffinch jerked back a chair that was beside him, and beckoned to
me to sit down in it. The room appeared to me a secret kind of place,
with curtains pulled across the windows, where a man might be very
private if he wished. Mr. Chiffinch ended speaking as I came in, and all
sat silent.

His Majesty broke the silence.

"You are very late, Mr. Mallock," he said--no more than that; but I felt
the reproof very keenly. "Tell him, Chiffinch."

Then Mr. Chiffinch related to me an extraordinary story; and he told it
very well, balancing the two sides of it, so that I could not tell what
he thought.

It appeared that a day or two ago, Doctor Tonge had come to my Lord
Danby, in pursuance of the tale he had told before, saying that he had
received further information, from the very man whom he had suspected,
and now had certified, to be the writer of the first information under
forty-three heads, to the effect that a packet of letters was on its way
to Windsor, to that very Mr. Bedingfeld (of whom Mr. Whitbread had
spoken to me), on the matter of the plot to murder the King, and the
Duke too unless he would consent to the affair. My Lord Danby posted
immediately to Windsor that he might intercept these letters and examine
them for himself; but found that not only had Mr. Bedingfeld received
them, but had taken them to the Duke, saying that he did not understand
one word that was written in them. Those letters purported to have been
written from a number of Jesuits, and others--amongst whom were a Mr.
Coleman, an agent of the Duke's, and Mr. Langhorn, a lawyer; and related
to a supposed plot, not only to murder the King, and his brother, too,
perhaps, but to re-establish the Popish domination, to burn Westminster,
as they had already burned the City; and that the new positions in the
State had already been designed to certain persons, whose names were all
mentioned in the letters, by the Holy Father himself. The matter that
was now being discussed in this little chamber was, What was best to be
done?

Mr. Chiffinch told me this, as shortly almost as I have written it
down, glancing at His Majesty once or twice, and at the Duke, as if he
wished to know whether he were telling it properly; and as soon as he
ended His Majesty began:

"That is where we stand now, Mr. Mallock. As for me, I do not believe
one word of the tale, as I have said before: and I say that it is best
to destroy the letters, to tell Doctor Tonge that he is a damned fool,
if not worse, so to be cozened, and to say no more of it. I would not
have this made public for a thousand pounds. It is as I said before: I
knew that the matter would grow."

"And I say, Sir," put in the Duke savagely, "that Your Majesty forgets
who it is who are implicated--that it is these good Jesuit Fathers, and
my own confessor, too"--(he bowed slightly to the fair man, who returned
it)--"and that if the matter be not probed to the bottom, the names of
all will suffer, in the long run."

"Brother, brother," said Charles, "I entreat you not to speak so
violently. We all know how good the Fathers are, and do not suspect any
one of them. It is to save their name--"

"And I tell you," burst in James again, "that mine is the only way to do
it! Do you think, Sir, that these folks who are behind it all will let
the matter rest? It will grow and grow, as Your Majesty said; and we
shall have half the kingdom involved."

Here was a very pretty dispute, with sense on both sides, and yet there
appeared to me that there was more on His Majesty's than on the other.
If even then Dr. Tonge had been sent for and soundly rated, and made to
produce his informant, and the matter sifted, I believe we should have
heard no more of it. But it was not ordained so. They all spoke a good
deal, appealing to the two priests--Mr. Bedingfeld and Mr. Young--and
they both gave their opinions.

Presently Charles was silent; letting his chair come forward again on to
its four legs, and putting his head in his hands over the table. I had
never seen him so perturbed before. Then I ventured on a question.

"Sir, may I ask who is Doctor Tonge's informant?"

His Majesty glanced up at me as if he saw me for the first time.

"Tell him, Chiffinch," he said.

"His name is Doctor Oates," said the page. "He was a Papist once, and is
turned informer, he says. He still feigns secretly to be friends with
one or two of the Jesuits, he says."

"But every word you hear here is _sub sigillo_, Mr. Mallock," added the
King.

I knew no such name; and said no more. I had never heard of the man.

"Have you anything to say, Mr. Mallock?" asked the King presently.

"I have some reports to hand in, Sir," I said, "but they do not bear
directly upon this matter."

The King lifted his heavy eyes and let them fall again. He appeared
weary and dispirited.

       *       *       *       *       *

When we broke up at last, nothing was decided. On the one hand the
letters were not destroyed, and the Duke was still unforbidden to pursue
his researches; and, on the other there was no permission for a public
inquiry to be held. The counsels, in short, were divided; and that is
the worst state of all. The Duke said nothing to me, either at the table
or before he went out with Mr. Bedingfeld--or Mr. Mumford as he was
usually called: he appeared to consider me too young to be of any
importance, and to tolerate me only because the King wished it. I handed
to Mr. Chiffinch the reports of what folks had said to me in taverns and
elsewhere: and went away.

The days went by; and nothing of any importance appeared further. I
still frequented the company of the Jesuit Fathers, and the taverns as
before; but no more was heard, until a few days before the end of
September. On that day I was passing through the Court of Whitehall to
see if there were anything for me at Mr. Chiffinch's--for the King was
at Windsor again--when I saw Father Whitbread and Father Ireland, coming
swiftly out from the way that led to the Duke's lodgings--for he stayed
here a good deal during these days. They were talking together, and did
not see me till I was close upon them. When I greeted them, they stopped
all of a sudden.

"The very man!" said Mr. Whitbread.

Then he asked me whether I would come with them to the lodgings of Mr.
Fenwick, for they had something to say to me; and I went with them very
willingly, for it appeared to me that perhaps they had heard of the
matter which I had found so hard to keep from them. We said nothing at
all on the way; and when we got within, Mr. Whitbread told Mr. Grove to
stand at the foot of the stairs that no one might come up without his
knowledge. They bolted the door also, when we were within the chamber.
Then we all sat down.

"Now, Mr. Mallock," said Father Whitbread, "we know all that you know;
and why you have been with us so much; and we thank you for your
trouble."

I said nothing; but I bowed to them a little. But I knew that I had been
of little service as yet.

"It is all out," said the priest, "or will be in a day or two. Mr. Oates
hath been to Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, the Westminster magistrate, with
the whole of his pretended information--his forty-three heads to which
he hath added now thirty-eight more, and he will be had before the
Council to-morrow. Sir Edmund hath told Mr. Coleman his friend, and the
Duke's agent, all that hath been sworn to before him; Mr. Coleman hath
told the Duke and hath fled from town to-night; and the Duke has
prevailed with the King to have the whole affair before the Council. I
think that His Majesty's way with it would have been the better; but it
is too late for that now. Now the matter must all come out; and Sir
Edmund hath said sufficient to shew us that it will largely turn upon a
consult that our Fathers held here in London, last April, at the White
Horse Tavern; for Oates hath mingled truth and falsehood in a very
ingenious fashion. He was at St. Omer's, you know, as a student; and was
expelled for an unspeakable crime, as he was expelled from our other
college at Valladolid also, for the same cause: so he knows a good deal
of our ways. He feigns, too, to be a Doctor of Divinity in Salamanca
University; but that is another of his lies, as I know for a truth. What
we wish to know, however, is how he knows so much of our movements
during these last months; for not one of us has seen him. You have been
to and fro to our lodgings a great deal, Mr. Mallock. Have you ever
seen, hanging about the streets outside any of them, a fellow with a
deformed kind of face--so that his mouth--"

And at that I broke in: for I had never forgotten the man's face,
against whom I had knocked one night in Drury Lane.

"I have seen the very man," I cried. "He is of middle stature; with a
little forehead and nose and a great chin."

"That is the man," said Mr. Whitbread. "When did you see him?"

I told them that it was on the night that I found Mrs. Ireland and her
daughter come from the play.

"He was standing in the mouth of the passage opposite," I said, "and
watched me as I went in."

"He will have been watching many nights, I think," said Mr. Whitbread,
"here, and in Duke Street, and at my own lodgings too."

I asked what he would do that for, if he had his tale already.

"That he may have more truth to stir up with his lies," said Mr.
Whitbread. "He will say who he has seen go in and out; and we shall not
be able to deny it."

He said this very quietly, without any sign of perturbation; and Mr.
Ireland was the same. They seemed a little thoughtful only.

"But no harm can come to you," I cried. "His Majesty hath promised it."

"Yes: His Majesty hath promised it," said Mr. Whitbread in such a manner
that my heart turned cold; but I said no more on the point.

"Now, Mr. Mallock," said the priest, "we must consider what is best to
be done. When the case comes on, as it surely will, the question for us
is what you must do. I doubt not that you could give evidence that you
have found us harmless folk"--(he smiled as he said this)--"but I do not
know that you will be able to add much to what other of our witnesses
will be able to say. I am not at all sure but that it may not be best
for you to keep away from the case at first at any rate. You have the
King's ear, which is worth more to us than any testimony you could
give."

"Why do you not fly the country?" I cried.

He smiled again.

"Because that," he said, "would be as much as to say that we were
guilty; and so the whole Society would be thought guilty, and the Church
too. No, Mr. Mallock, we must see the matter out, and trust to what
justice we can get. But I do not think we shall get a great deal."

So it was decided then, that I would not give testimony unless there was
some call for it; and I took my leave, marvelling at the constancy of
these men, who preferred to imperil life itself, sooner than reputation.

       *       *       *       *       *

Well; all went forward as Mr. Whitbread had said it would. On the
twenty-eighth day of September Dr. Oates appeared before the Council to
give his testimony; and it was to the same effect as was that which I
had heard Mr. Chiffinch relate before, as to the Jesuit plot to murder
the King, and if need be, the Duke too, and to establish Catholic
domination in England.

I went into a gallery in the Council room for a little, to confirm with
my own eyes whether it were Dr. Titus Oates himself against whom I had
knocked in Drury Lane; and it was the man without doubt, though he
looked very different in his minister's dress. It was not a very great
room, and only those were admitted who had permission. His Majesty
himself was there upon the second day; and sat in the midst of the
table, at the upper end, with the Duke beside him, and the great
officers round about; amongst whom I marked my Lord Shaftesbury, who I
was beginning to think knew more of the plot than had appeared; Dr.
Oates stood in a little pew at one side, so that when he turned to speak
I could see his face. Dr. Tonge and Mr. Kirby and others sat on a seat
behind him.

He was dressed as a minister--for he had been one, before his pretended
reconciliation to the Catholic Church--in gown and bands and wore a
great periwig; and not his face only--which no man could forget who had
once set eyes on it--but the strange accent with which he spoke,
confirmed me that it was the man I had seen.

My Lord Danby, I think it was, questioned him a good deal, as well as
others: and he repeated the same tale with great fluency, with many
gibes and aphorisms such as that the Jesuits had laid a wager that if
Carolus Rex would not become R.C.--which is Roman Catholic--he should
not much longer remain C.R. He said too that he had been reconciled to
the Church on Ash Wednesday of last year; but that "he took God and His
holy angels to witness that he had never changed the religion in his
heart," but that it was all a pretence to spy out Papistical plots.

His Royal Highness broke out, when he had done, declaring the whole
matter a bundle of lies; and when one or two asked Oates for any
writings or letters that he had--since he had been so long amongst the
Jesuits, and was so much trusted by them--he said that he had none; but
could get them easily enough if warrants and officers were given him. I
suppose the truth was that he had not wit enough to write them as yet,
but had thought the Windsor letters (as I may call them) would be
enough. (These questions had also been put to him on the day before, but
were repeated now for the King's benefit.)

His Majesty himself, I think, proved the shrewdest examiner of them all.

"You said that you met Don Juan, the Spaniard, in your travels, Doctor
Oates. Pray, what is he like in face and figure?"

"My Lard--Your Majesty," said Oates, "he is a tall black thin faylow,
with swatthy features"--(for so he pronounced his words.)

"Eh?" asked the King.

Dr. Oates repeated his words; and the King turned, nodding and smiling,
to His Royal Highness; for the Spanish bastard is far more Austrian than
Spanish, and is fair and fat and of small stature.

"Excellent, Doctor Oates," said the King. "And now there is another
small matter. You told these gentlemen yesterday that you saw--with your
own eyes--the bribe of ten thousand pound paid down by the French King's
confessor. Pray, where was this money paid?"

"In the Jesuits' house in Paris, your Majesty," said the man.

"And where is that?"

"That--Your Majesty--that house is--is near the King's own house." (But
he spoke hesitatingly.)

Then the King broke out in indignation; and beat his hand on the table.

"Man!" he cried. "The Jesuits have no house within one mile of the
Louvre!"

It pleased me to hear the King say that; for I was a little uneasy at
Father Whitbread's manner when he had spoken of the King's promise; but
I was less pleased a day or two afterwards to hear that His Majesty was
gone to Newmarket, to the races, and had left the Council to do as best
it could; and that the Jesuits had been taken that same
night--Michaelmas eve--after Oates had been had before the Council.
There had been a great to-do at the taking of Father Whitbread, for the
Spanish soldiers had been called out to save the Ambassador's house, so
great was the mob that went to see him taken.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next public event in the whole affair was the last and worst of all
the links that were being forged so swiftly: and the news of it came to
me as follows.

I had gone to sup in Aldgate, where I had listened to a good deal of
talk from some small gentry, as to the Papist plot; and had been happy
to hear three or four of them declare that they believed there was
nothing in it, and even the rest of them were far from positive on the
matter; and I had stayed late over my pipe with them, so that it was
long after my usual time when I returned towards my lodgings, walking
alone, for I said good-bye to the last of my companions in the City.

As I came up into the Strand, I saw before me what appeared to be the
tail of a great concourse of people, and heard the murmur of their
voices; and, mending my pace a little, I soon came up with them. I went
along for a little, trying to hear what they were saying upon the
affair, and to learn what the matter was; for by now the street was one
pack of folk all moving together. Little by little, then, I began to
hear that someone had been strangled, and that "he was found with his
neck broken," and then that "his own sword was run through his heart,"
and words of that kind.

Now I had heard talk before that Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was run away
with a woman, and to avoid the payment of his debts, which, if it were
true, were certainly a very strange happening at such a time, since he
was the magistrate before whom Oates had laid his information; but six
days were gone by, and I had not thought very much of it, for his
running away could not now in any way affect the information that had
been laid. He was a very gentle man, though melancholy; and, though a
good Protestant, troubled no man that was of another religion than
himself--neither Papist nor Independent.

But when I heard the people about me speaking in this manner, the name
of Sir Edmund came to my mind; and I asked a fellow that was tramping
near me, who it was that was strangled and where the body was. But he
turned on me with such a burst of oaths, that I thought it best to draw
no more attention to myself, and presently slipped away. Then I thought
myself of a little rising ground, a good bit in advance, whence, perhaps
I might be able to see something of what was passing; and I made my way
across the street, to a lane that led round on the north. As I came
across, in the fringes of the crowd, I saw a minister walking, in his
cassock; so I saluted him courteously, and asked what the matter was.

He looked at me with an agitated face, and said nothing: his lips
worked, and he was very pale, yet it seemed to me with anger: so I asked
him again; and this time he answered.

"Sir, I do not know who you are," he said. "But it is Sir Edmund Berry
Godfrey who has been foully murdered by the Papists. He hath been found
on Primrose Hill, and we are taking him to his house. I do not know,
sir--"

But I was gone; and up the lane as fast as I could run. All that I had
heard, all that I had feared, all even that I had dreamed, was being
fulfilled. The links were forging swiftly. I do not know, even now as I
write, how it was that Sir Edmund met his end, whether he had killed
himself, as I think--for he was of a melancholiac disposition, as was
his father and his grandfather before him--or whether, as indeed I think
possible, he was murdered by the very man who swore so many Catholic
lives away, by way of giving colour to his own designs--for if a man
will swear away twenty lives, what should hinder him from taking one?
One thing only I know, that no Catholic, whether old or young, Jesuit or
not, saint or sinner, had any act or part in it; and on that I would lay
down my own life.

By the time that I arrived at the rising mound--for a force mightier
than prudence drove me to see the end--the head of the great concourse
was beginning to arrive. Across the street from side to side stretched
the company, all tramping together and murmuring like the sound of the
sea. It was as if all London town was gone mad: for I do not believe
there were above twenty men in that great mob, who were not persuaded
that here was the corroboration of all that had been said upon the
matter of the plot; and that the guilt of the Papists was made plain.
Some roared, as they came, threats and curses upon the Pope, the
Jesuits, and every Catholic that drew breath; but the most part marched
silently, and more terribly, as it appeared to me. The street was
becoming as light as day, for torches were being kindled as they came;
and, at the last, came the great coach, swaying upon its swings, in
which the body was borne.

I craned my head this way and that to see; and, as the coach passed
beneath me, I saw into its interior, and how there lay there, supported
by two men, the figure of another man whose face was covered with a
white cloth.




CHAPTER VII


It would occupy too much space, were I to set down in detail all that
passed between the finding of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey's body, and the
being brought to trial of the Jesuit Fathers. But a brief summary must
be given.

The funeral of Sir Edmund was held three or four days later in St.
Martin's, and the sermon was preached by Dr. Lloyd, his friend, who
spoke from a pulpit guarded by two other thumping divines, lest he
should be murdered by the Papists as he did it. There was a concourse of
people that cannot be imagined; and seventy-two ministers walked in
canonicals at the head of the procession. Dr. Lloyd spoke of the dead
man as a martyr to the Protestant religion.

By the strangest stroke of ill-fortune Parliament met ten days before
the funeral, which happened on the thirty-first of October; so that the
excitement of the people--greatly increased by the exhibition of the
dead body of Sir Godfrey--was ratified by their rulers--I say their
rulers, since His Majesty, it appeared, could do nothing to stem the
tide. It was my Lord Danby who opened the matter in the House of Peers
that he might get what popularity he could to protect him against the
disgrace that he foresaw would come upon him presently for the French
business; and every violent word that he spoke was applauded to the
echo. The House of Commons took up the cry; a solemn fast was appointed
for the appeasing of God Almighty's wrath; guards were set in all the
streets, and chains drawn across them, to prevent any sudden rising of
the Papists; and all Catholic householders were bidden to withdraw ten
miles from London. (This I did not comply with; for I was no
householder.) Besides all this, both men and women went armed
continually--the men with the "Protestants' flails," and ladies with
little pistols hidden in their muffs. Workmen, too, were set to search
and dig everywhere for "Tewkesbury mustard-balls," as they were
called--or fire-balls, with which it was thought that the Catholics
would set London a-fire, as Oates had said they would--or vast treasures
which the Jesuits were thought to have buried in the Savoy and other
places. Folks took alarm at the leastest matters; once my Lord Treasurer
himself rode into London crying that the French army was already landed,
when all that he had seen were some horses in the mist; once it was
thought, from the noise of digging that some fat-head heard, that the
Papists were mining to blow up Westminster. The King, whom I dared not
go to see in all this uproar, and who did not send for me, went to and
fro even in Whitehall, guarded everywhere--in private, as I heard,
pouring scorn upon the plot, yet in public concealing his opinion; and
upon the ninth of November he made a speech in the House of Lords,
confirming all my fears, thanking his subjects for their devotion, and
urging them to deal effectually with the Popish recusants that were such
a danger to the kingdom! In October, too, five Catholic Lords--the Earl
of Powis, Viscount Stafford, my Lord Petre, my Lord Arundell of Wardour,
and my Lord Bellasis were committed to the Tower on a charge of treason.

I saw Dr. Oates more than once during these days, coming out of
Whitehall with the guards that were given to protect him, carrying
himself very high, in his minister's dress; and no wonder, for the man
was the darling of the nation and was called its "Saviour," and had had
a great pension voted to him of twelve hundred pounds a year. He did not
think then, I warrant, of the day when he would be whipped from Newgate
to Tyburn at a cart's tail; and again, laid upon a sled and whipped
again through the City, for that he could not stand by reason of his
first punishment. Another fellow too had come forward, named Bedloe,
once a stable-boy to my Lord Bellasis, who had given himself up at
Bristol, with "information," as he called it, as to Sir Edmund's murder,
which he said had been done in Somerset House itself, by the priests and
others, saying that the wax that was found upon the dead man's breeches
came from the candles of the altar that the priests had held over him
while they did it! Presently too, at the trial and even before it,
Bedloe made his evidence to concur with Oates', though at the first
there was no sign of it. Even before the trial, however, the audacity of
the two villains waxed so great, as even to seek to embroil Her Majesty
herself in the matter, and to make her privy to the whole plot; and this
Oates did, at the bar of the House of Commons. But the King was so wrath
at this, that little more was heard of it.

The Duke of York, during these proceedings, saved himself very well.
When the Bill for the disabling of Papists from the holding of office or
of sitting in either House of Parliament, had passed through the
Commons, he made a speech upon it in the House of Lords, speaking so
well that others as well as he were moved to tears by it. He said that
his religion should be a matter between his soul and God only; and
should never affect his public conduct; and this with so much weight
that the decision was given in his favour, since he was the King's
brother. I should never have thought that he could have done so well.

Mr. Coleman was the first to be brought to trial, at the beginning of
December, for he came back and gave himself up the day after he had at
first fled. He was already pre-judged; for so violent was the feeling
against the Papists that my Lord Lucas said in the House of Lords that
if he could have his way, he "would not have even a Popish cat to mew
and purr about the King." Coleman, I say, was the first of those who had
before been accused; but a Mr. Stayley, a Catholic banker (who had his
house not far from me in Covent Garden), was even before him judged and
executed, on account of some words that a lying Scotsman had said he had
heard him use in the tavern in the same place.

I did not go to the trial of Mr. Coleman; for that I had nothing to say
for him; and indeed Mr. Coleman's own letters--written three or four
years ago--were the severest witnesses against him, in which he had
written to Father La Chaise--(whom Oates at first called Father Le
Shee)--the French King's confessor, and others, that if he could lay
hands on a good sum of money, he could accomplish a great project he
had for the restoration of the Catholic religion in England. (These
letters were found in a drawer he had forgotten, when he had burned all
the rest; and proved very unfortunate for him.) He meant by this, I have
no doubt, the bribing of many Parliament-men to win toleration, and to
get His Royal Highness restored as Lord High Admiral. He said this was
his meaning; and I see no reason to doubt it, for he was a pragmatical
kind of man, full of great affairs; but Chief Justice Scroggs waved it
all away; and it was made to appear exactly consonant with all that
Oates and Bedloe had said as to the project of killing the King. So
great was the excitement, not of the common people only, but of those
who should have known better, and so shrewd were these who took
advantage of it, that my Lord Shaftesbury, who was waxing very hot upon
the supposed Plot, for his own ends, was heard to say that any man that
threw doubt on the plot must be treated as an enemy. Mr. Coleman was
executed at Tyburn on the third day of December.

       *       *       *       *       *

The trial of Father Ireland, Mr. Grove and Mr. Pickering--who was a
Benedictine lay-brother--was opened on the seventeenth day of December,
in the Sessions House at Justice Hall in the Old Bailey.

I was in the Court early, before the trial began, carrying a letter with
me which Mr. Chiffinch got for me from my Lord Peterborough, that I
might have a good place; and I had a very good one; for it was in a
little gallery that looked down into the well of the court, so that I
could see all that I wished, and the faces of all the prisoners, judges
and witnesses, and yet by leaning back could avoid observation--for I
had no wish, for others' sake, if not for my own, to be recognized by
any of the witnesses. The seats for my Lords were on the left, under a
state, with their desks before them; the place for the prisoners on the
right, facing the judges; and for the witnesses opposite to me. The jury
was beneath; and the counsels in front of them with their backs to me.

When the Court was full to bursting, my Lords came in, with the Chief
Justice--that is Sir William Scroggs--in the midst. I had never seen him
before, though I knew how hot he was against Catholics, and I looked to
see what he was like. It was a dark morning, and the candles were
lighted on my Lords' desks; and I could see his face pretty well in
their light. He was in scarlet, and wore his great wig; and he talked
behind his hand, with what seemed a great deal of merriment to Mr.
Justice Bertue, who sat on one side of him, and the Recorder Jeffreys
who sat upon the other. He had very heavy brows; his face was
clean-shaven, and his mouth was like a trap when he shut it, and looked
grave, as he did so soon as the clerk had done his formalities. He was a
strong man, I thought, who would brook no opposition, and would have his
way--as indeed he did; and the rest of my Lords had little or no say in
the proceedings; and least of all had the jury, except to do what the
Lord Chief Justice bid them.

The three prisoners--for Mr. Whitbread and Mr. Fenwick were presently
withdrawn to be tried later, since they could not get two false
witnesses against them at that time--were Mr. Ireland, Mr. Grove and Mr.
Pickering, and I looked upon them with infinite compassion, to see how
they would bear themselves. Mr. Pickering I had never seen before; so I
could not tell whether or no he bore himself as usual. But the two
others I had seen again and again; yet, with respect to them both I
remembered principally that occasion when Mr. Ireland had entertained
his mother and sister in Mr. Fenwick's lodging on that one night he was
in town, and gone off with them into the dark so merrily; and Mr. Grove
had brought up the chocolate in white cups, and we had all been merry
together. Now they stood here in the dock together, and answered to
their names cheerfully and courageously; and I could see that neither
anguish of heart nor the fear of death had availed to change their
countenances in the leastest degree. They stood there, scarcely moving,
except once or twice to whisper to one another, while Dr. Oates told his
lying tale.

It was now for the first time that I understood how shrewdly, and yet
how clumsily now and then, the man had weaved together his information.
He spoke with an abundance of detail that astonished me; he spoke of
names and places with the greatest precision; he related how himself had
been sent from St. Omer's with fifty pounds promised him, to kill Dr.
Tonge who had lately translated a book from the French named "The
Jesuits' Morals"; he spoke of a chapel in Mrs. Sanders' house, at
Wild-House, where he had been present, he said, at a piece of
conspiring; and so forth continually, interlarding his tale with bursts
of adjuration and piety and indignation, so evidently feigned--though
with something of the Puritan manner in it--that I marvelled that any
man could be deceived who did not wish to be; and all with his vile
accent. He spoke much also, as Mr. Whitbread had told me that he would,
of the consult of the Fathers--of all that is, who had the _jus
suffragii_ in England--that had been held at the White Horse Tavern in
the Strand, in April; pretending that at this the murder of the King was
again decided upon, and designed too, in all particulars; how Mr.
Pickering and Mr. Grove had been deputed to do the killing in St. James'
Park with screwed pistols, as His Majesty walked there, or if not there,
at Newmarket or Windsor; and how commissions had been given to various
persons (whom he named), which they were to hold in the army that was to
be raised, when His Majesty had been murdered, and the French King Louis
let in with his troops. Worst of all, however, was the assertion which
he made again and again that no Catholic's oath, even in Court, could be
taken to be worth anything, since the Pope gave them all dispensations
to swear falsely; for such an assertion as this deprives an accused man
of all favour with the jury and destroys the testimonies of all Catholic
witnesses. And, what amazed me most of all was that Chief Justice
Scroggs supported him in this, and repeated it to the jury again and
again. He said so first to Mr. Whitbread, before he was withdrawn.

"If you have a religion," he said, "that can give a dispensation for
oaths, sacraments, protestations and falsehoods, how can you expect that
we should believe you?"

"I know no such thing," said Mr. Whitbread very tranquilly.

Bedloe, too, told the same tale as he had told before, but with many
embellishments; and was treated by my Lords with as much respect, very
nearly, as Oates himself; and they were both given refreshment by the
Chief Justice's order.

       *       *       *       *       *

I could have found it in my heart to kill that man--Oates, I mean--as he
stood there in his gown and bands and periwig, with his guards behind
him, swearing away those good men's lives; now standing upright, now
leaning on the rail before him, and now reposing himself on a stool that
was brought for him. His monstrous countenance was as the face of a
devil; he feigned now to weep, now to be merry. But most of all I hated
the man, when the piteous sight was seen of the entrance of Mrs. Ireland
and her daughter, who came to testify that Mr. Ireland was not in London
at all on those days in August when Oates had sworn that he had spoken
with him there. They stood there, as gallant women as might be, turning
their eyes now and again upon the priest who was all the world to them
by ties both of nature and grace; but all their testimony went for
nothing, since, first my Lord had told the jury that a Catholic's oath
was worth nothing, and next the prisoners had had no opportunity to know
what charges precisely they were that were to be brought against them,
and had had therefore no time to get their witnesses together. They
complained very sharply of this; but my Lord puffed it all away, and
would scarcely allow them to finish one sentence without interruption.

Mr. Ireland said upon one occasion that though he had no witnesses, for
he had had no time to get them, yet he could get witnesses that there
were witnesses.

"I know," said the Chief Justice, "what your way of arguing is; that is
very pretty. You have witnesses that can prove you have witnesses, and
those witnesses can prove that you have more witnesses, and so _in
infinitum_. And thus you argue in everything you do."

It was growing dark when the evidence (for so it was called) was done;
and the end was drawing near; and the candles which had been put out
long ago were lighted again by an usher, who came in with a taper when
the Lord Chief Justice called for lights. But the candles burned very
badly, by reason of the closeness of the Court in which so many persons
had been gathered for so long; and shed but a poor illumination. My eyes
were weary too with staring upon the people--now upon the monstrous face
of Oates, that was like a nightmare for terror, now upon the prisoners
so patient in the dock, and now upon my Lords on their high seats
beneath the state, and especially upon that hard and bitter face of
Chief Justice Scroggs who, if ever a man murdered innocent folk, was
murdering to-day the three men before him, by the direction which he
gave to the jury, and the manner he conducted the case. I could, by now,
see the faces only one by one, as each leant into the light of the
candles; and it appeared to me, again and again, that these were mocking
demons and not men, and Oates the lord of them all and of hell itself
from which they all came, and to which they must return. I closed my
eyes sometimes, both to rest them, and that I might pray for bare
justice to be done; but my prayers were to me like the lifting of
weights too great for my strength. One hope only remained to me, and
that lay in His Majesty; for, although he had permitted the deaths of
Coleman and of Stayley, these might indeed have appeared guilty to one
who knew nothing of them; but I could not find it in my heart to believe
that he would suffer these Jesuits to die, of whom he had sworn to me
that not a hair of their heads should be injured. I had determined, too,
to go to His Majesty, so soon as the trial was done, and the verdict
given as I knew it would be, and hear from his own lips that he would
keep his word, at whatever cost to himself.

It was dark then, by the time that all the evidence had been given, and
the Chief Justice had done his directing of the jury. The Court, crowded
though it was with the people, was as still as death, so soon as the
jury came back after a very short recess. I could hear only the
breathing of the folks on all hands. A woman sat beside me, who had
been as early as myself that morning; but she had roared and clapped
with the rest, at the earlier stages, when the Chief Justice had
silenced the prisoners or thrown doubt upon what they said. She was
quiet now, however, and I wondered how the evidence had affected her.

When the jury were ready to give their verdict, the talking that had
broken out a little, grew silent again; but when the verdict of Guilty
was given, it broke out once more into a storm of shouting; so that the
rafters rang with it. The woman beside me--for I sat at the end of a
bench and had nothing but the wall beyond me--appeared to awaken at the
tumult and join her voice to it, beating with her hand at the edge of
the gallery in front of her. As for me I looked at the prisoners. They
were all upright in their places, Mr. Ireland in the midst of the three;
and were as still as if nothing were the matter. They were looking at
the Lord Chief Justice, at whom I too turned my eyes, and saw he was
grinning and talking behind his hand to the Recorder. It was a very
travesty of justice that I was looking at, and no true trial at all.
There were a thousand points of dissonance that I had remarked
myself--as to how it was, for instance, that one fellow had been
promised twenty guineas for killing the King and another fifteen hundred
pounds; as to how it was that Oates, who professed himself so loyal, had
permitted four ruffians to go to Windsor (as he said), with intent to
murder the King, and that he had said nothing of it at the time. But all
was passed over in this lust for the Jesuits' blood.

I knew that my Lord would make a great speech on the affair, before he
would make an end and give sentence; for this was a great opportunity
for him to curry favour not only with the people, but with men like my
Lord Shaftesbury who was behind him in all the matter; and as I had no
wish to hear what he would have to say (for I knew it all by heart
already) and, still less to hear the terrible words of the sentence for
High Treason passed upon these three good men in the dock, I rose up
quietly from my place, and slipped out of the door by which I had come
in. As I was about to close the door behind me I heard silence made, and
my Lord Justice Scroggs beginning his speech--and these were the words
which first he addressed to the jury.

"Gentlemen," he said, "you have done like very good subjects and very
good Christians; that is to say like very good Protestants; and now much
good may their thirty thousand masses do them!" When he said this, he
was referring to a piece of Dr. Oates' lying evidence as to a part of
the reward that they should get for killing the King. But I closed the
door; for I could bear to hear no more. But afterwards I heard that they
then adjourned for an hour or two, and that it was the Recorder--Sir
George Jeffreys--that gave sentence.

When I presented myself, half an hour later, at Mr. Chiffinch's
lodgings, I had very nearly persuaded myself that all would yet be well.
For I thought it impossible that any man to whom the report of the trial
should be brought, could ever think that justice had been done; least of
all the King who is the fount of it, under God. I knew very well that
His Majesty would have to bear the brunt of some unpopularity if he
refused to sign the warrants for their death; but he appeared to me to
care not very much for popularity--since he outraged it often enough in
worse ways than in maintaining the right. He had said to me, too, so
expressly that no harm should come to the Fathers or to Mr. Grove and
Mr. Pickering either; and he had said so, I was informed, even more
forcibly to the Duke and those that were with him--saying that his right
hand should rot off if ever he took the pen into his hand for such a
purpose. I remembered these things, even while the plaudits of the crowd
still rang in my ears, and the bitter cruelty of my Lord Chief Justice's
words to the jury. His Majesty, I said to myself, is above all these
lesser folk, and will see that no wrong is done. And, besides all this,
he is half a Catholic himself and he knows against what kind of men
these charges have been made.

I was pretty reassured then, when I knocked upon the door of Mr.
Chiffinch's lodgings, and told the man who opened to me that I must see
his master.

He took me through immediately into the little passage I had been in
before, and himself tapped upon the door of the inner parlour; then he
opened it, and let me through: for Mr. Chiffinch was accustomed by now
to receive me at any hour.

He rose civilly enough, and asked me what I wished with him, so soon as
the door was shut.

"The verdict is given," I said. "I must see His Majesty."

He screwed up his lips in a way he had.

"It is Guilty, I suppose," he said.

I told him Yes;

"And I have never seen," I said, "such a travesty of justice."

He looked down upon the table, considering, drumming his fingers upon
it.

"That is as may be," he said. "But as for His Majesty--"

I broke out on him at that: for I was fiercely excited.

"Man," I cried, "there is no question about that. I must see His Majesty
instantly."

He looked at me again, as if considering.

"Well," he said. "What must be, must. I will see His Majesty. He is not
yet gone to supper."

At the door he turned again.

"The verdict was Guilty?" he said. "You were there and heard it?"

I told him Yes; for I was all impatient.

"And how was that verdict received in court?"

"It was applauded," I said shortly.

He still waited an instant. Then he went out.

       *       *       *       *       *

I was all in a fever till he came back; for his manner and his
hesitation had renewed my terrors. Yet still I would not let myself
doubt. I went up and down the room, and looked at the pictures in it.
There was a little one by Lely, not finished, of my Lady Castlemaine,
done before she was made Duchess, which I suppose the King had given to
him; but I remembered afterwards nothing else that I saw at that time.

In about half an hour he came back again; but he shut the door behind
him before he spoke.

"His Majesty will see you in a few minutes," he said, "but he goes to
supper presently; and must not be detained. And there is something else
that I must ask you first."

I was all impatient to be gone; but impatience would not help me at all.

"Mr. Mallock," he said, sitting down, "did you see any man following you
from the Court? Or at the doors of the Palace?"

My heart stood still when he said that; for though I had done my best at
all times for the last month or two to pass unnoticed so far as I could,
I had known well enough that having been so much with the Jesuits as I
had, it was not impossible that I had been marked by some spy or other,
or even by Oates himself, since he had seen me go into Mr. Fenwick's
lodgings. But I had fancied of late that I must have escaped notice, and
had been more bold lately, as in going to the Court to-day.

"Followed?" I said. "What do you mean, Mr. Chiffinch?"

"You saw no fellow after you, or loitering near, at the gates, as you
came in?"

"I saw no one," I said.

"The gates were barred, as usual?"

"Yes," I said. "And the guard fetched a lieutenant before he would let
me in."

(For ever since the late alarms extraordinary precautions had been taken
in keeping the great gates of the Palace always guarded.)

"And you saw no one after you?"

"No one," I said.

"Well," said Mr. Chiffinch, "a fellow was after you. For when you were
gone in he came up to the guard and asked who you were, and by what
right you had entered. The lieutenant sent a mail to tell me so, and I
met him in the passage as I went out."

"Who was the fellow?"

"Oh! a man called Dangerfield. The lieutenant very prudently detained
him; and I went across and questioned him before I went to His Majesty.
I know nothing of the man, except that he hath been convicted, for I saw
the branding in his hand when we examined him. We let him go again
immediately."

"He knows my name?"

Mr. Chiffinch smiled.

"We are not so foolish as that, Mr. Mallock. He thinks you have some
place at Court; but we did not satisfy him as to your name."

I said nothing; for there was nothing to say.

"You had best be very careful, Mr. Mallock," went on the page, standing
up again. "You have been mixing a great deal with unpopular folks. You
will be of no service to His Majesty at all if you fall under suspicion.
You had best go back by water to the Temple Stairs."

He spoke a little coldly; and I perceived that he thought I had been
indiscreet.

"Well," he said, "we had best be going to His Majesty's lodgings."

I had flattered myself, up to the present, that I knew His Majesty's
capacities tolerably well. I thought him to be an easily read man, with
both virtues and vices uppermost, wearing his heart on his sleeve, as
the saying is--indolent, witty, lacking all self-control--yet not, as I
might say, a deep man. I was to learn the truth, or rather begin to
learn it, on this very night.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I entered his private closet he was sitting not where I had seen
him before, but at the great table in the midst of the floor, with his
papers about him, and an appearance of great industry. He did not do
more than look up for an instant, and then down again; and I stood
there before him, after I had bowed and been taken no notice of, as it
were a scholar waiting to be whipped.

He was all ready for supper, in his lace, with his hat on his head; and
he was writing a letter, with a pair of candles burning before him in
silver candlesticks. His face wore a very heavy and preoccupied look;
and I was astonished that he paid me no attention.

He finished at last, threw sand on the paper from the pounce-box, and
pushed it aside. Then he leaned his cheeks in his hands, and his elbows
on the table, and looked at me. But he did not speak unkindly.

"Here you are then," he said. "And I hear you bring news from the Old
Bailey?"

"I came from there half an hour ago, Sir."

"Ah! And the verdict was Guilty, Mr. Chiffinch tells me?"

"Yes, Sir."

"How did the people take it?"

"They applauded a great deal, Sir."

"They applauded, you say. At the end only, or all the while?"

"They applauded, Sir, whenever any of my Lords made a hit against the
Catholics."

"Were there any who did otherwise?"

"Not one, Sir, that I could hear."

"The Chief Justice. What did he say?"

"He made many protestations of devotion to your Majesty, Sir, and to the
Protestant Religion. He beat down the Catholics at every point. He
permitted none of their witnesses to speak freely."

The King was silent a moment. Then he went on again.

"And the prisoners. How did they bear themselves?"

"They bore themselves like gallant gentlemen, Sir. They fought every
point, so far as the Chief Justice would permit them."

"Did they shew any fear when the verdict was brought in?"

"None, Sir. They relied upon your Majesty's protection, no doubt."

Again His Majesty was silent. I still stood on the other side of the
table from him, waiting to say what I had to say. The King shewed no
sign of having heard what I had last said.

Then, to my astonishment he turned on me again very sharply.

"Mr. Mallock," he said, "I have a fault to find with you. Mr. Chiffinch
tells me that you were followed from the Court, and that a fellow was
asking after you at the gate. You say that you wish to serve me. Well,
those who serve me must be very discreet and very shrewd. Plainly, you
have not been so in this instance. You are a very young man; and I do
not wish to be severe. But you must remember, Mr. Mallock, that such a
thing as this must not happen any more."

My mouth was gone suddenly dry at this attack of His Majesty upon me. I
licked my lips with my tongue in readiness to answer; but before I could
speak, the King went on again.

"Now I had a little business to entrust to you; but I am not sure if it
be not best to give it to another hand."

He took up from the table before him a newly sealed little packet that I
had not noticed before; and sat weighing it in his hand, as if
considering, while his eyes searched my face.

"Sir--" I began.

"Yes, Mr. Mallock, I know what you would say. That is all very well; but
my servants must not make mistakes such as you have made. It was the
height of madness for you to go to the Court at all to-day. I have no
doubt that you were seen there, and followed; and you could have been of
no service to your friends there, in any case. Mr. Chiffinch tells me he
will provide a wherry for you immediately, that you may go back without
observation. You must do this. The question before my mind is as to
whether you shall take this packet with you, or not. What do you say,
Mr. Mallock?"

All the while he had been speaking, I had been in a torment of misery.
As yet I had done little or nothing for His Majesty, after all my
commissioning from Rome; and now that the first piece of work was on
hand, it was doubtful whether I had not forfeited it by my clumsiness.
For the moment I forgot what I had come for. I was all set on acquitting
myself well. I was but twenty-one years old!

"Sir," I cried, "if your Majesty will entrust that to me, you shall
never repent it."

He smiled; but his face went back again to its heaviness. "It is a very
difficult commission," he said. "And, what is of more importance than
all else is that the packet should fall into no hand other than the one
that should have it. For this reason, there is no name written upon it.
But I have sealed it with a private signet of my own, both within and
without; and you must bear the packet with you until you can deliver
it."

"I understand, Sir."

"I can send no courier with it, for the reasons of which I have spoken.
No man, Mr. Mallock, but you and I must know of its very existence.
Neither can I tell you now to whom the packet must be given. You must
bear it with you, sir, until you have a message from me, signed with the
same seal as that which it bears, telling you where you must take it,
and to whom. You understand?"

"I understand, Sir."

"You must leave London immediately until your face is forgotten, and
until this storm is over. You have a cousin in the country?"

"Yes, Sir; Mr. Jermyn at Hare Street."

"You had best lie there for the present; and I can send to you there, so
soon as I have an opportunity. Meanwhile you must have this always at
hand, and be ready to set out with it, so soon as you hear where you
must go with it. That is all plain, Mr. Mallock?"

"I understand, Sir."

The King rose abruptly, pushing back his chair; and as he rose I heard
the trumpets for supper, in the Court outside.

"Then you had best be gone. Take it, Mr. Mallock."

I came round and received the packet; and I kissed the King's hand
which he had not given to me as I had come in. My heart was overjoyed at
the confidence which he shewed me; and I slipped the packet immediately
within my waistcoat. It was square and flat and lay there easily in a
little pocket which the tailor had contrived there. Then, as I stood up
again, the memory of what I had come for flashed back on me again.

"Sir," I said, "there is one other matter."

His Majesty was already turning away; but he stopped and looked over his
shoulder.

"Eh?" he said.

"Sir, it is with regard to the Jesuits who were condemned to-day."

He jerked his hand impatiently in a way he had.

"I have no time for that," he said, "no time."

Then he was gone out at the other door, and I heard him going
downstairs.

Now as I came downstairs again the further way, and heard the trumpets
go, to shew that the King was come out, I had no suspicion of anything
but my own foolishness in not speaking of what I had come about. But, by
the time that I was at the Temple Stairs, I wondered whether or no the
King had not had that very design, to put me off from which I wished to
say. And at the present time I am certain of it--that His Majesty wished
to hear from me at once of the proceedings at the trial, and then spoke
immediately of that other matter of the packet, and of my being followed
to the Palace Gates, with the express purpose of hindering me from
saying anything; for I am sure that at this time he had not yet made up
his mind as to what he would do when the warrants were brought to him,
and did not wish to speak of it.




CHAPTER VIII


The first thing that I did when I got home was to call for my man James,
and bid him shut the door. (My man was about forty years old, and he had
been got for me in Rome, having fallen ill there in the service of my
Lord Stafford--being himself a Catholic, and a very good one, for he
went to the sacraments three or four times in the year, wherever he was.
He was a clean-shaven fellow, and very sturdy and quick, and a good hand
at cut and thrust and the quarter-staff, as I had seen for myself at
Hare Street on the summer evenings. I had found him always discreet and
silent, though I had not as yet given him any great confidence.)

"James," I said to him with great solemnity, "I have something to say to
you which must go no further."

He stood waiting on my word.

"A fellow hath been after me to-day--named Dangerfield--a very brown
man, with no hair on his face" (for so Mr. Chiffinch had told me). "He
hath been branded on the hand for some conviction. I tell you this that
you may know him if you see him again. I take him to be a Protestant
spy: but I do not know for certain."

He still stood waiting. He knew very well, I think, that I was on some
business, and that therefore I was in some danger too at such a time;
though I had never spoken to him of it.

"And another thing that I have to say to you is that we must ride for
Hare Street to-morrow, and arrive there by to-morrow night--without
lying anywhere on the road. You must have the horses here, and all
ready, by seven o'cl

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