"No, sir. Because if I were impeached by the Commons----"

The King shrugged his shoulders.

"Ah, these safeguards!" he muttered. "These town councils, and provincial councils, and States-General! And now these Commons and Lords! Shall I ever be quit of them? Well, there is but one way then.

I must do it. If they impeach me, I go back to Loo; and they may stew in their own juice!"

He rose with that, and moving stiffly to the table at which Lord Portland had been writing when we entered, he sought for and found a pen. Then sitting in the chair which the Groom of the Stole had left vacant, he tore a slip of paper from a folio before him and, writing some lines on it--about six, as far as I could judge--handed the paper to the Duke, who had remained standing at a formal distance.

"Voila, Monsieur," he said. "Will that suit your lordship?"

The Duke took it respectfully and looked at it. "But, sir, it is in my name!" he cried, aghast. "And bears my signature."

"_Eh, bien_, why not?" his Majesty answered lightly. "The name is the name of Jacob, but the hand is the hand of Esau. Take it and send it by a trusty messenger. Perhaps the man who came with you, and who--pheugh, my lord! I had forgotten that this person was here! We have spoken too freely."

The oath which the Duke let fall as he turned, and the face of dismay and anger with which he gazed on me, were proof enough that he shared the King's opinion, as he had shared his mistake. For a moment, the two glaring at me with equal disgust and vexation, I thought I should sink into the floor. Then the King beckoned me to come forward, and I obeyed him.

CHAPTER XXV

The odd and unexpected glimpse of generosity which the King had allowed to escape him, in his interview with the Duke, somewhat lessened the fears I must otherwise have entertained at that moment.

To which must be added that I am one of those who, when violence and physical danger are not in question, retain a fair mastery of their minds. Nevertheless, I am free to confess that as I went forward, I wished myself anywhere else in the world, and would have sacrificed half my remaining economies to be seated, pen in hand, and obscurely safe, in Mr. Brome's room.

But the thing took a turn which relieved me when I least expected it.

As I approached, the chagrin in the King's face gave place to a look of surprise; and that again, but more slowly, to one of intelligence.

"Ah! _Je me trompais!_" he muttered rapidly. "What did you say his name was?"

"Price," the Duke answered, continuing to glower at me.

"Price? _Ah, cela va sans dire!_ But--he is a cadet--a dependent? He is in some way connected--how do you say it--related to your family!"

"To mine, sir!" the Duke exclaimed in a voice of the utmost astonishment; and he drew himself up as if the King had p.r.i.c.ked him.

"_N'est-ce pas ca?_" his Majesty replied, looking from one to the other of us. "Yet he has so much a look of you that it might be possible in some lights to take him for your grace, were he differently dressed!"

The Duke looked purely offended. "Your Majesty is under a strange misapprehension," he said, very stiffly. "If this person resembles me--of which I was not aware--I know nothing of the cause; and the likeness for what it is worth, must be accidental. As a fact, I never saw him but once before in my life, sir, and that perfectly by chance." And he very briefly related the circ.u.mstances under which we came together.

The King listened to the story, but as if he scarcely believed it; and he smiled when the Duke came to tell how he allowed me to escape.

Then, "And you have never seen him from that day to this?" he said incredulously.

"Never!" said the Duke, positively. "But it is not my intention to lose sight of him again."

"Ah?" the King said.

"I have not told you, sir, all that happened," the Duke continued, reading, I think, the King's thoughts, "But briefly. Mr. Ferguson, who has come to be little short of a madman, drew a pistol on me at the close of our interview; and but for his friend here--who had been placed to listen, but at that broke from his place of hiding and knocked up the muzzle, so that it exploded harmlessly--I should have come off ill."

"And I not much better," the King said, nodding and looking grave.

"You are unhurt."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, that puts another face on it; and if you are retaining him beside you, what he has now heard will be of the less importance. Hark you, my friend," he continued, addressing me, "can you keep your mouth shut?"

I said humbly that I could and would.

"Then, _Taisez! Taisez!_" he answered emphatically. "And take this letter to Hogsden Gardens to Bishop Lloyd's. See Bishop Lloyd and put it in his hands. Say nothing, give no message, but go to your master's in St. James's Square. Will you seal it, Duke, with a plain seal?

Good. And go you out, man, by the way you came in, and answer no questions. And now for the council and the warrants, my lord. We have lost too much time already!"

To say that I went from the presence without knowing how I did it, and when I reached the courtyard had no more idea how I had gained it, or by what staircase I had descended, than if I had been blind, is but the truth; nor is it to be wondered at when the amazing thing which had happened to me is in the least degree taken into consideration. In truth I walked on air and saw nothing, I was so deeply overjoyed; and though it is certain that as I went out I met one and another, pa.s.sed the sentries, and ran the gauntlet of curious eyes--for who that quits a court escapes that ordeal?--I was no more conscious of the observations made upon me, or the surprise I excited as I went by, than if I had really walked in the clouds. Issuing from the gates I took by instinct rather than design the road to London, and hugging to my breast the letter which the King--the King!--had entrusted to me, made the best of my way towards Tyburn.

I had been wiser had I gone by the other road through the village and taken the first coach I found; there are commonly one or two at Kensington waiting to carry pa.s.sengers to London. But in the fl.u.s.ter of my spirits, I did not measure the distance I had to go, or the time I should consume in walking. My main anxiety for the moment was to be alone; alone, and at leisure to probe my fortune and success, and appreciate both the relief and the good luck I had compa.s.sed. I could have sung as I walked; I could have skipped and danced; and a gleam of sunshine breaking the March sky, and gilding the leafless arms of the trees and the flat green pastures that border the road north of Hyde Park, I was moved to raise my hat and look upwards and reverently thank Providence for this wonderful instance of its goodness, which I had not had the heart to do for some time.

When I descended a little to earth--a step which was hastened by a flash of recollection that showed me Ferguson's niece waiting at Clerkenwell Gate, a little figure, forlorn and desolate, yet with eyes of wrath and a face puckered with determination--when I came I say a little to myself and to think of Hogsden Gardens, and remembered that it lay on the farther side of town by Bunhill Fields, I was already at Tyburn turning; and it seemed to be no longer worth while to ride. The day was on the wane, and the road thence to St. Giles's Pound was lively with persons come out to take the air, through whom I threaded my way at a good pace, and coming to Holborn without mishap, turned up Cow Lane, and so got speedily to Smithfield, and across the market to Long Lane, knowing my way so far without having need to ask.

Here, however, I took sudden fright. My mind, which as I walked had been busy with the girl and the steps I should take to find her--if indeed I wished to find her, about which I was puzzled, the surrounding circ.u.mstances being so different--was invaded by the notion that I had been long on the road. To this was added next moment the reflection that messengers sent to arrest the Duke could by taking a coach forestall me. The thought threw me into a hot fit, which increased on me when I considered that I did not know the remainder of the road, and might waste much time in tracing it. Naturally my first impulse in this strait was to seek a guide; but Long Lane by Smithfield is only one degree better than Whetstone Park, and I shrank from applying to the sots and drabs who stood at the doors and corners, or lounged out of the patched windows, and, lazily or rudely, watched me go by.

In this difficulty, and growing the more diffident and alarmed the more slowly I walked, I looked about eagerly for some person, of pa.s.sable aspect, of whom I could enquire. I saw none, and my uncertain glances and loitering steps were beginning to draw on me advances and an attention that were anything but welcome, when, reaching a corner where an alley, now removed--I think it was then called Dog Alley--runs out of Long Lane, I saw a man, decently habited, come out of a house a little way down the alley. He closed the door sharply behind him, and, as I looked, went off in the opposite direction.

Here was my opportunity. Without losing a moment I ran after him, and he, hearing my steps, turned; and we came face to face. Then, when it was too late to retreat, I saw with unutterable dismay that the man I had stopped was no stranger, but the person who had dressed me up the night before and taken me to the mysterious house in the suburbs; the man called Smith whom I had first seen under the Piazza in Covent Garden, and again in Ferguson's room.

To come face to face with anyone of the gang with the knowledge that I had but now left the palace after informing against them was of itself enough to make my knees tremble under me. But of this man, though his civil treatment had been in pleasant contrast to Ferguson's brutality, I had conceived an instinctive dread, based as much on his silence and reserve and a sort of strict power with which I credited him, as on his contemptuous treatment of my tyrant. In a word, had I come on Ferguson himself I could scarcely have been more overcome.

On hearing my footsteps he had turned on me very sharply, with the air of a man who had no mind to be followed, and no taste for followers.

But on seeing who it was his face grew light and he whistled his surprise. "I was on my way to you," he said, "and here you are. That is good luck. I suppose Ferguson sent you?"

"No," I stammered, avoiding his eyes, and wondering, with inward quakings, what was going to happen to me. "I--I lost my road."

"Oh!" said he, and looked keenly at me. "Lost your road, did you?

Well, it was very much to the purpose, as it happened. May I ask where you were going?"

I shifted my feet uneasily. "To Bunhill Fields," I said, naming the first place of which I could think.

"Ah!" he answered, with apparent carelessness, and though it seemed scarcely possible he should fail to observe the heat and disorder into which his presence had thrown me, he made no sign. "Well, you are not far out," he continued, "and I will come with you. When you have done your errand we will talk over my business. This way. I know this end of the town well. And so it was not Ferguson," he added with a sharp look at me, "who sent you after me?"

"No," I said.

"Nor his errand that brought you here?"

"No," I said again, my mouth dry. "And I need not give you the trouble to come with me. I shall be taking you----"

"Out of my way? Not at all," he answered briskly. "And it is no trouble. Come along, my friend."

I dared say no more, nor show farther reluctance; and so, with feet like lead and eyes roving furtively for a way of escape, I turned and went with him. Nay, it was not my feet only that were weighted; the letter, and my consciousness of it, lay so heavy on my mind that it was like lead in the pocket.

I was indeed in a strait now! And in one so difficult I could discern no way out of it; for though I could in part, and in part only, command my countenance, I failed absolutely to command my thoughts, which did nothing but revolve tumultuously about the words, "What am I to do? What am I to do?" words that seemed written in red letters on my brain. Only one thing was clear to me in the confusion, and that was the urgent necessity I lay under of hiding my errand, the disclosure of which must carry with it the disclosure of the place whence I came and the company I had been keeping. With time to think and coolness to distinguish I should doubtless have seen the possibility of announcing my errand to the Duke, yet laying it on Ferguson's shoulders; but pushed for time and unable at a pinch to weigh all the issues, I could form no determination, much less one leading to so daring a step. After one denial, that is.