"You infer that he is telling the truth about me?" cried my lord, fuming, yet covering his rage with a decent appearance since a hundred eyes were on them as they drove slowly round in the gla.s.s coach.

"Not altogether. There are other things."

"What other things?"

"The talk there was about your Grace and Middleton at the time of your resignation."

My lord groaned. "All the world knows that, it seems," he said. "And should know that I have never denied it."

"True."

"But this! It is the most absurd, the most ridiculous, the most fantastical story! How could I go out of town for twenty-four hours, and the fact not be known to half London? Let Sir John name the day."

"He has," the other Duke answered. "He lays it on the tenth of June."

"Well?"

"There was a Land Bank meeting of the Council on that day. But your Grace did not attend it."

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE SHUT HIMSELF IN WITH HIS TROUBLE]

"No? No, I remember I did not. It was the day my mother was taken ill.

She sent for me, and I lay at her house that night and the next."

His Grace of Devonshire coughed. "That is unfortunate," he said, and leaned forward to bow to the Bishop of London, whose chariot had just entered the Square.

"Why?" said my lord, ready to take offence at anything.

"Because, though I do not doubt your word, the world will require witnesses. And Lady Shrewsbury's household is suspect. Her Jacobite leanings are known, and her people's evidence would go for little.

That that should be the day--but there, there, your Grace must take courage," the Duke continued kindly. "All that the party can do will be done. Within the week Lord Portland will be here bringing his Majesty's commands, and we shall then know what he proposes to do about it. If I know the King, and I think I do----"

But the picture which these words suggested to my lord's mind was too much for his equanimity. To know for certain that the King, who had extended indulgence to him once, was in possession of this new accusation, and perhaps believed it, that was bad enough. But to hear that Portland also was in the secret, and grim, faithful Dutchman as he was, might presently, in support of the low opinion of English fidelity which he held, quote him, the first Minister of England, was too much! In a hoa.r.s.e voice he cut the Duke short, asking to be set down before they quarrelled; and his Grace, hastening with a hurried word of sympathy to comply, my lord stepped out, and looking neither to right nor left, pa.s.sed into the house, and to the library, where, locking the door, he shut himself in with his trouble.

CHAPTER XLII

I have commonly reckoned it among my lord's greatest misfortunes that in a crisis of his affairs which demanded all the a.s.sistance that friendship, the closest and most intimate could afford, he had neither wife nor child to whom he could turn, and from whom, without loss of dignity, he might receive comfort and support. He was a solitary man; separated from such near relations as he had, by differences as well religious as political, and from the world at large by the grandeur of a position which imposed burdens as onerous as the privileges it conferred were rare.

To a melancholy habit, which some attributed to the sad circ.u.mstances attendant on his father's death, and others to the change of faith, which he had been induced to make on reaching manhood, he added a natural shyness and reserve, qualities which, ordinarily veiled from observation by manners and an address the most charming and easy in the world, were none the less obstacles, where friendship was in question. Not that of friendship there was much among the political men of that day, the perils and uncertainties of the time inculcated a distrust, which was only overcome where blood or marriage cemented the tie--as in the case of Lords Sunderland, G.o.dolphin, and Marlborough, and again of the Russells and Cavendishes. But, be that as it may, my lord stood outside these bonds, and enjoyed and rued a splendid isolation. As if already selected by fortune for that strange combination of great posts with personal loneliness, which was to be more strikingly exhibited in the death-chamber of her late Majesty Queen Anne, he lived, whether in his grand house in St. James's Square, or at Eyford among the Gloucestershire Wolds, as much apart as any man in London or in England.

Withal, I know, men called him the King of Hearts. But the popularity, of which that t.i.tle seemed the sign and seal, was fact.i.tious and unreal; born, while they talked with him, of his spontaneous kindness and boundless address; doomed to perish an hour later, of spite and envy, or of sheer inanition. Since the Duke was sensitive, over-proud for intimacy, flattered no man, and gave no man confidences.

Such an one bade fair, when in trouble, to eat out his heart. p.r.o.ne to fancy all men's hands against him, he doubled the shame and outdid the most scandalous. So far, indeed, was he from deriving comfort from things that would have restored such men as my Lord Marlborough to perfect self-respect and composure, that I believe, and in fine had it from himself, that the letter which the King wrote to him from Loo (and which came to his hands through Lord Portland's, three days after the interview with his Grace of Devonshire) pained him more sensibly than all that had gone before.

"You may judge of my astonishment," His Majesty wrote, "at his effrontery in accusing you. You are, I trust, too fully convinced of the entire confidence which I place in you to think that such stories can make any impression on me. You will observe this honest man's sincerity, who only accuses those in my service, and not one of his own party."

It will be understood that that in His Majesty's letter which touched my lord home was less the magnanimity displayed in it than the remembrance that once before the Sovereign had dealt with the subject in the same spirit, and that now the world must know this. Of the immediate accusation, with all its details of time and circ.u.mstance, he thought little, believing, not only that the truth must quickly sweep it away, but that in the meantime few would be found so credulous as to put faith in it. But he saw with painful clearness that the charge would rub the old sore and gall the old raw; and he winced, seated alone in his library in the silence of the house, as if the iron already seared the living flesh. With throes of shame he foresaw what staunch Whigs, such as Somers and Wharton, would say of him; what the _Postboy_ and the _Courant_ would print of him; what the rank and file of the party--exposed to no danger in the event of a Restoration, and consequently to few temptations to make their peace abroad--would think of their trusted leader, when they learned the truth.

On Marlborough and Russell, G.o.dolphin and Sunderland, the breath of suspicion had blown: on him never, and he had held his head high. How could he meet them now? How could he face them? Nay, if that were all, how, he asked himself, could he face the honest Nonjuror? Or the honest Jacobite? Or the honest Tory? He, who had taken the oaths to the new government and broken them, who had set up the new government and deceived it, who had dubbed himself patriot--_cui bono?_ Presently brooding over it, he came to think that there was but one man in England, _turp.i.s.simus_; that it would be better in the day of reckoning for the meanest carted pickpocket, whose sentence came before him for revision, than for the King's Secretary in his garter and robes!

Nor, if he had known all that was pa.s.sing, and all that was being said, among those with whom his fancy painfully busied itself, would he have been the happier. For Sir John's statement got abroad with marvellous quickness. Before Lord Portland arrived from Holland the details were whispered in every tavern and coffee-house within the Bills. The Tories and Jacobites, aiming above everything at finding a counterblast to the a.s.sa.s.sination Plot, the discovery of which had so completely sapped their credit with the nation, pounced on the scandal with ghoulish avidity, and repeated and exaggerated it on every occasion. Every Jacobite house of call, from the notorious Dog in Drury Lane, the haunt of mumpers and foot-pads, to the Chocolate House in St. James's rang with it. For Sir John, all (they said among themselves) that they had expected of him was surpa.s.sed by this. He was extolled to the skies alike for what he had done and for what he had not done; and as much for the wit that had confounded his enemies as for the courage that had protected his friends. For what Jacobite, seeing the enemy hoist with his own petard could avoid a sn.i.g.g.e.r? Or hear the word Informer without swearing that Sir John was the most honest man who ever signed his name to a deposition.

The Whigs on the other hand, exasperated by an attack as subtle as it was unforeseen, denied the charges with a pa.s.sion and fury that of themselves betrayed apprehension. Here, they said, was another Taafe; suborned by the same gang and the same vile machinations that had brought about the Lancashire failure, and hounded Trenchard to his death. Not content with threatening Sir John with the last penalties of treason and felony, and filling the Rose Tavern with protestations, which admitted the weight while they denied the truth of the charges brought against their leaders, the party called aloud for meetings, enquiries, and prosecutions; to which the leaders soon found themselves pledged, whether they would or no.

My lord out of sensitiveness, or that over-appreciation of what was due to himself and others which in a degree unfitted him for public life, had a week before this, pleading indisposition, begun to keep the house; and to all requests proffered by his colleagues that he would take part in their deliberations, returned a steadfast negative.

This notwithstanding, everything that was done was communicated to him; and announcements of the meetings, which it was now proposed to hold--one at Lord Somers' in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the other at Admiral Russell's--would doubtless have been made to him within the hour. As it chanced, however, he received the news from another source. On the day of the decision, as he sat alone, dwelling gloomily on the past, the Square was roused at the quietest time of the forenoon by an arrival. With a huge chitter, the Countess's gla.s.s chariot, with its outriders, running footmen, and lolling waiting-women, rolled up to the door; and in a moment my lady was announced.

It is probable that there was no one whom he had less wish to see. But he could not deny himself to her; and he rose with an involuntary groan. The Countess on her side was in no better temper, as her first words indicated. "My life, my lord, what is this I hear," she cried roundly, as soon as the door closed upon her. "That you are lying down to be trodden on! And cannot do this, and will not do that, but pule and cry at home while they spin a rope for you! Sakes, man, play the one side, play the other side--which you please! But play it! play it!"

My lord, chagrined as much by the intrusion as by the reproach, answered her with more spirit than he was wont to use to her. "I thought, Madam," he answered sharply, "that the one thing you desired was my withdrawal from public life?"

"Ay, but not after this fashion!" she retorted, striking her ebony cane on the floor and staring at him, her reddled face and huge curled wig trembling. "If all I hear be true--and I hear that they are going to hold two inquests on you--and you continue to sit here, it will be a fine withdrawal! You will be doomed by James and blocked by William, and that d----d rogue John Churchill will wear your clothes!

Withdrawal say you? No, if you had withdrawn six months ago when I bade you, you would have gone and been thanked. But now, the fat is in the fire, and, wanting courage, you'll frizzle, my lad."

"And whom have I to thank for that, Madam?" he asked, with bitterness.

"Why, yourself, b.o.o.by!" she cried.

"No, Madam, your friends!" he replied--which was so true and hit the mark so exactly that my lady looked rather foolish for a moment.

Without noticing the change, however, "Your friends. Madam," he continued, "Lord Middleton and Sir John Fenwick, and Montgomery, and the rest, whom you have never ceased pressing me to join! Who unable to win me will now ruin me. But you are right, Madam. I see, for myself now, that it is not possible to play against them with clean hands, and therefore I leave the game to them."

"Pack of rubbish!" she cried.

"It is not rubbish. Madam, as you will find," he answered coldly. "You say they will hold two inquests on me? There will be no need. Within the week my resignation of all my posts will be in the King's hands."

"And you?"

"And I, Madam, shall be on my way to Eyford."

Now there is nothing more certain than that for a year past the Countess had strained every nerve to detach the Duke from the Government, with a view to his reconciliation with King James and St.

Germain's. But, having her full share of a mother's pride, she was as far from wishing to see him retire after this fashion as if she had never conceived the notion. And to this the asperity of her answer bore witness. "To Eyford?" she cried, shrilly. "More like to Tower Hill! Or the Three Trees and a thirteenha'penny fee--for that is your measure! G.o.d, my lad, you make me sick! You make me sick!" she continued, her wrinkled old face distorted by the violence of her rage, and her cane going tap-a-tap in her half-palsied hand. "That a son of mine should lack the spirit to turn on these pettifoggers!"

"Your friends, Madam," he said remorselessly.

"These perts and start-ups! But you are mad, man! You are mad," she continued. "Mad as King Jamie was when he fled the country--and who more glad than the Dutchman! And as it was with him so it will be with you. They will strip you, Charles. They will strip you bare as you were born! And the end will be, you'll lie with Ailesbury in the Tower, or bed with Tony Hamilton in a garret--_la bas!_"

"Which is precisely the course to which you have been pressing me," he replied with something of a sneer.

"Ay, with a full purse!" she screamed. "With a full purse, fool! With Eyford and fifty thousand guineas, my lad! But go, a beggar, as you'll go, and it is welcome you'll be--to the doorkey and the kennel, or like enough to King Louis' Bastile! Tell me, man, that this is all nonsense! That you'll show your face to your enemies, go abroad and be King again!"

My lord answered gravely that his mind was quite made up.

"To go?" she gasped. "To go to Eyford?" And raising her stick in her shaking hand, she made a gesture so menacing that, fearing she would strike him, my lord stepped back.