The child looked at him boldly. "_Faut il?_" said he.

"_Oui! oui!_ Say _merci_, and go."

"_Merci, Monsieur_," the boy answered. And then to us with a solemn nod. "J'ai eu sa Majeste for my chevaux!"

"Cheval! Cheval!" corrected the gentleman in black. "And be off."

CHAPTER XXIV

Apprised by what I heard, not only that I stood in the Gallery of Kensington Court--a mansion which His Majesty had lately bought from Lord Nottingham, and made his favourite residence--but that the gentleman in black whom I had found so simply employed was no other than the King himself, I ask you to imagine with what interest I looked upon him. He whom the old King of France had dubbed in bitter derision, the "Little Squire of ----," and whom two revolutions had successfully created Stadtholder of Holland and Sovereign of these Isles, was at this time forty-six years old, already prematurely bent, and a prey to the asthma which afflicted his later life. Reserved in manner, and sombre, not to say melancholy, in aspect, hiding strong pa.s.sions behind a pale mask of stoicism as chilling to his friends as it was baffling to his enemies, he was such as a youth spent under the eyes of watchful foes, and a manhood in the prosecution of weighty and secret designs, made him. Descended on the one side from William the Silent, on the other from the great Henry of France, he was thought to exhibit, in more moderate degree, the virtues and failings which marked those famous princes, and to represent, not in blood only, but in his fortunes, the two soldiers of the sixteenth century whose courage in disaster and skill in defeat still pa.s.sed for a proverb; who, frequently beaten in the field, not seldom garnered the fruits of the campaign, and rose, Antaeus-like, the stronger from every fall.

That, in all stations, as a private person, a Stadtholder and a King, his late Majesty remembered the n.o.ble sources whence he sprang, was proved, I think, not only by the exactness with which his life was wrought to the pattern of those old mottoes of his house, _S[oe]vus tranquillus in Undis_, and _Tandem fit Surculus arbor_, whereof the former was borne, I have read, by the Taciturn, and the latter by Maurice of Na.s.sau--but of two other particulars of which I beg leave to mention. The first was that _more majorum_ he took naturally and from the first the lead as the champion of the Protestant religion in Europe; the second, that though he had his birth in a republic, and was called to be King by election (so that it was no uncommon thing for some of his subjects to put slights upon him as little more than their equal--ay, and though he had to bear such affronts in silence), he had the true spirit and pride of a King born in the purple, and by right divine. Insomuch that many attributed to this the gloom and reserve of his manners; maintaining that these were a.s.sumed less as a shield against the malice of his enemies, than as a cloak to abate the familiarity of his friends.

And certainly some in speaking of him of late years belittle his birth no less than his exploits, when they call him Dutch William, and the like; speaking in terms unworthy of a sovereign, and as if he had drawn his blood from that merchant race, instead of--as the fact was--from the princely houses of Stuart, Bourbon, Na.s.sau, and Medici; and from such ancestors as the n.o.ble Coligny and King Charles the Martyr. But of his birth, enough.

For the rest, having a story to tell, and not history to write, I refrain from recalling how great he was as a statesman, how resourceful as a strategist, how indomitable as a commander, how valiant when occasion required in the pitched field. Nor is it necessary, seeing that before the rise of my Lord Marlborough (who still survives, but alas, _quantum mutatus ab illo!_) he had no rival in any of these capacities, nor in the first will ever be excelled.

Nor, as a fact, looking on him in the flesh as I then did for the first time, can I say that I saw anything to betoken greatness, or the least outside evidence of the fiery spirit that twice in two great wars stayed all the power of Louis and of France; that saved Holland; that united all Europe in three great leagues; finally, that leaping the bounds of the probable, won a kingdom, only to hold it cheap, and a means to farther ends. I say I saw in him not the least trace of this, but only a plain, thin, grave, and rather peevish gentleman, in black and a large wig, who coughed much between his words, spoke with a foreign accent, and often lapsed into French or some strange tongue.

He waited until the door had fallen to behind the child, and the long gallery lay silent, and then bade my lord speak. "I breathe better here," he said. "I hate small rooms. What is the news you have brought?"

"No good news, sir," my patron answered. "And yet I can scarcely call it bad. In the country it will have a good effect."

"_Bien!_ But what is it?"

"I have seen Ferguson, sir."

"Then you have seen a d----d scoundrel!" the King exclaimed, with an energy I had not expected from him; and, indeed, such outbreaks were rare with him. "He is arrested, then?"

"No, sir," the Duke answered. "I trust, however, that he will be before night."

"But if he be free, how came you in his company?" the King asked, somewhat sharply.

My lord hesitated, and seemed for a moment at a loss how to answer.

Being behind him, I could not see his face, but I fancied that he grew red, and that the fourth person present, a stout, burly gentleman, marked with the small-pox, who had advanced and now stood near the King, was hard put to it not to smile. At last, "I received a letter, sir," my lord said, speaking stiffly and with constraint, "purporting to come from a third person----"

"Ah!" said the King, drawling the word, and nodding dry comprehension.

"On the faith of which, believing it to be from that other--if you understand, sir----"

"I understand perfectly," said the King, and coughed.

"I was induced," my lord said doggedly, "to give the villain a meeting. And learned, sir, partly from him, and partly from this man here"--this more freely--"enough to corroborate the main particulars of Mr. Prendergast's story."

"Ah?" said the King. "Good. And the particulars?"

"That Sir George Barclay, the person mentioned by Mr. Prendergast, is giving nightly rendezvous in Covent Garden to persons mainly from France, who are being formed by him into a band; the design, as stated by Prendergast, to fall on your Majesty's person in the lane between Fulham Green and the river on your returning from hunting."

"Does he agree as to the names?" the King asked, looking at me.

"He knows no names, sir," the Duke answered, "but he saw a number of the conspirators at the Seven Stars in Covent Garden last night, and heard them speak openly of a hunting party; with other things pointing the same way."

"Was Barclay there?"

"He can speak to a person who I think can be identified as Barclay,"

my lord answered. "He cannot speak to Charnock----"

"That is the Oxford man?"

"Yes, sir--or Porter, or King; or the others by those names. But he can speak to two of them under the names by which Prendergast said that they were pa.s.sing."

"_C'est tout!_ Well, it does not seem to me to be so simple!" the King said with a touch of impatience. "What is this person's name, and who is he?"

The Duke told him that I had been Ferguson's tool.

"That rogue is in it then?"

"He is privy to it," the Duke answered.

His Majesty shrugged his shoulders, as if the answer annoyed him. "You English draw fine distinctions," he said. "Whatever you do, however, let us have no repet.i.tion of the Lancashire fiasco. You will bear that in mind, my lord, if you please. Another of Taafe's pseudo plots would do us more harm in the country than the loss of a battle in Flanders.

Faugh! we have knaves at home, but you have a breed here--your Oates's and your Taafes and your Fullers--for whom breaking on the wheel is too good!"

"There are rogues, sir, in all countries," my lord answered somewhat tartly. "I do not know that we have a monopoly of them."

"The Duke of Shrewsbury is right there, sir," the gentleman behind the King who had not yet spoken, struck in, in a good-natured tone. "They are things of which there is no scarcity anywhere. I remember----"

"_Taisez! Taisez!_" cried the King brusquely, cutting short his reminiscences--whereat the gentleman, smiling imperturbably, took snuff. "Tell me this. Is Sir John Fenwick implicated?"

"There may be evidence against him," my lord answered cautiously.

The King sneered openly. "Yes," he said. "I see Porter and Goodman and Charnock are guilty! But when it touches one of yourselves, my lord, then 'There is evidence against him,' or 'It is a case of suspicion,'

or--oh, you all hang together!" And pursing up his lips he looked sourly at us. "You all hang together!" he repeated. "I stand to be shot at--_c'est dommage_. But touch a n.o.ble, and _Gare la n.o.blesse!_"

"You do us an injustice, sir," my lord cried warmly. "I will answer for it----"

"Oh, I do you an injustice, do I?" the King said, disregarding his last words. "Of course I do! Of course you are all faithful, most faithful. You have all taken the oath. But I tell you, my Lord Shrewsbury, the King to whom you swore allegiance, the King crowned in '89 was not William the Third, but n.o.blesse the first! _La n.o.blesse!_ Yes, my lord, you may look at me, and as angrily as you like; but it was so. _Par dieu et diable_, you tie my hands! You tie my hands, you cling to my sword, you choke my purse! I had as much power in Holland as I have here. And more! And more!"

He would have gone farther, and with the same candour I think; but at that the gentleman who had interrupted him before, struck in again, addressing him rapidly in what I took to be Dutch, and doubtless pointing out the danger of too great openness. At any rate I took that to be the gist of his words, not only from his manner, but from the fact that when he had done--the King looking gloomy and answering nothing--he turned to my lord.

"The King trusts your Grace," he said bluntly. "He has never said as much to an Englishman before. I am sure that the trust is well placed and that his Majesty's feelings will go no farther."

The Duke bowed. "Your Majesty authorises me to take the necessary steps then," he said, speaking somewhat drily, but otherwise ignoring what had pa.s.sed. "To secure your safety, sir, as well as to arrest the guilty, no time should be lost. Warrants should be issued immediately, and these persons taken up."

"Before Ferguson can warn them," the King said in his ordinary tone.

"Yes, see to it, my lord; and let the Council be recalled. The guards, too, should be doubled, and the regiment Prendergast mentioned displaced. Cutts must look to that, and do you, my lord," he continued rapidly, addressing the gentleman beside him, whom I now conjectured to be Lord Portland, "fetch him hither and lose no time. Take one of my coaches. It is a plot, if all be true, should do us good in the country. And that, I think, is your Grace's opinion."