Lawrence Clavering Part 5

"His grandfather fell at Naseby, his father in the siege of Deny, and with those two lives, twice were the fortunes of the family lost."

The King rose from his table and came over to me. He laid a hand upon my shoulder.

"And so your father died for mine," he said, and there was something new, something more personal in the kindliness of his accent, as though my father's death raised me from a unit in the aggregate of his servants into the station of a friend; "and your grandfather for my grandfather."

"Your Majesty sees that it is a privilege which I inherit," I replied.

From the tail of my eye I saw my kinsman smiling appreciation of the reply.

"Lawrence has the makings of a courtier, your Majesty," said he, with a laugh.

"Nay," I interrupted hotly, "this is honest truth. Let the King prove me!"

It was the King who laughed now, and he patted my shoulder with a quite paternal air, though, in truth, he was not so many years older than myself.

"Well," he said, "why not? He is a hawk of the right nest. Why not?"

and he turned him again to Bolingbroke. "As you say, he is not known in c.u.mberland, and there is, besides, a very natural reason for his presence in the county." He stood looking me over for a second, and then went back abruptly to his papers on the table. "But I would you could give me reliable news as to those parts."

"News I can give your Majesty," I answered, "though whether it is reliable or not I cannot take it upon oath to say. But the man who pa.s.sed it to me was the steward of Blackladies, and he spoke in that spirit wherein I would have all men speak." And I told him all that Ashlock had recounted to me.

"Oh," said the King, when I had ended, and he made the suggestion eagerly to Bolingbroke. "Perhaps it were best, then, that I should land upon the coast of c.u.mberland in England. What say you?"

I saw Bolingbroke's eyebrows lift ever so slightly.

"I thought," he answered, with the merest touch of irony in his tone, "that your Majesty had determined some half an hour since to land at Montrose?"

"I know," said the King, with something of petulance; "but these later advices may prove our best guide."

"But are they true?" said Bolingbroke, spreading out his hands.

"They tally with the report of Mr. Rookley," said the King.

I started at the mention of the name, and the King remarked the movement. He looked towards me, then again at the letter in his hand, which was written in a round and clumsy character. I caught sight of a word in that letter, and I remembered it afterwards, because it chanced to be misspelt.

"Oh," said he, "Mr. Jervas Rookley signs himself of Blackladies? I fancied that the name was familiar to me, when first you uttered it."

I repeated all that Ashlock had related to me concerning the man, and how I was to hold his estate in trust for him until the King came to his throne.

"We will see to it," said he, "that Mr. Clavering shall not be the loser."

I felt the blood rush into my face.

"It was with no thought of that kind that I spoke," I declared earnestly. "I pray your Majesty to believe me."

But Lord Bolingbroke broke in upon my protestations.

"This steward is with you at Commercy? Then, if it please your Majesty, I would advise that we see the man here, and question him closely face to face. For Mr. Jervas Rookley----" And he filled the gap of words with a shrug of significance.

"You distrust him?" asked the King; "yet it appears his loyalty has cost him an estate."

"It is that perplexes me; for I know these country gentlemen," and his voice sharpened to the bitterest sneer. "At night, over their cups, they are all for King James; then they consult their pillows, and in the sober morning they are all for King George. Oh, I know them! A sore head makes a world of difference in their politics."

The words seemed to me hot and quick, with all the memories of his defeated labours during those last six years of Queen Anne's reign, and I fancied the King himself was inclined to discount their value on that account.

"Yet," he urged, "these letters speak in no uncertain terms."

"They speak only of a disposition towards your Majesty," rejoined his minister. "It is a very tender, delicate, and unsatisfactory thing, a disposition. What we would have is their resolve. Are they resolved to drive on with vigour, if matters tend to a revolution? Will they support the revolution with advantage, if it spins out to a war? It is on these points your Majesty needs to be informed; and it is on these points they keep so discreet a silence. We ask them for their plan, as Marshall Berwick asked them time out of mind, and we get the same answer that he received. How many troops will his most Christian Majesty land? How many stands of arms? how many thousand crowns? Not one word of a definite design; not one word of a precise statement of their resources."

He walked about the room as he spoke, with every mark of discouragement in his gestures and expression, while the King listened to him in an uneasy impatience, as though he was rather irritated than impressed by Bolingbroke's doubts.

"Very well," said the King, tapping his foot on the floor, "we will examine Mr. Clavering's steward;" and he bade me go and fetch Ashlock into the room. But search as I might, nowhere could I find a trace of him. He had stayed no more than five minutes in the house, the people of the inn informed me. I hurried to the stables, thinking perchance to find him there. I questioned the ostlers, the drawers, even the wench who had boxed my ears. No one had knowledge of his whereabouts, and since it would be an idle business to go hunting for him through the unfamiliar streets of Commercy, I left a sharp word that he should come up the moment he returned, and so got me back chapfallen to Lord Bolingbroke's apartment.

The King's secretary, Mr. Edgar, was now in the room, gathering together the papers which overspread the table.

"It is no great matter," said the King, when I explained how that I had failed in my search, "for I doubt me that I could have heard him out. Besides, Mr. Clavering, I have had some talk concerning you with your kinsman here, and since your inheritance and your journey hither fit so aptly with our needs, it were a pity to miss the occasion."

"Your Majesty," I cried, and I felt my heart swell and leap within me, and my head spin with exultation. Here was the very thing of which I had dreamed hopelessly so often during those weary months at Paris, letting my fancies dally with it as with some bright and charming fairy tale, and, lo! it had come true. It had come true! The words made a silent music at my heart, and animated all my blood. It had come true! and then, of a sudden, there shot through me, chilling me to the centre, the rector's warning, and the forebodings that had flowed from it. Did this mission, which the King a.s.signed to me, harbinger the hour of trial? Should I fail when it came? I set my teeth and clenched the nails into the palms of my hands. My whole body cried No! No! but underneath I seemed to hear a voice, very low, very persistent, speaking with full knowledge, and it said Yes! Yes!

"Then this will be your charge," continued the King, recalling me to myself. "You will journey with all speed to London, and bear with you a letter in my hand to the Duke of Ormond, at Richmond," and he paused upon the words. "It must pa.s.s from your hand into the Duke's. You will then go north to your estate, and collect knowledge for our use as to what help we may expect from c.u.mberland, and, so far as you can gather, from the counties adjoining. Lord Bolingbroke will inform you more of the particulars. Your errand, of course, you will keep secret--locked up from all--from our supporters, no less than from our opponents. It would be of detriment to us if they came to think that we distrusted them. Nor do we--it is their judgment, not their loyalty, about which we wish to be a.s.sured. We think, therefore, that it would be prudent in you to make no parade of your convictions. Hear both sides like one that holds the balance evenly. For, if you take one side openly, you will hear from our friends just what we hear so far away as Bar-le-Duc; and so G.o.d speed you!" and he held out his hand to me, and I kissed it. Then Mr. Edgar opened the door, and the King walked to it. He was already across the threshold, when he stopped and turned back, pulling a silver medal from his fob.

"This," said he, "is the fac-simile of that medal which the d.u.c.h.ess of Gordon presented to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, seven years back," and he gave it into my hand. "It may serve to keep me in your heart and memories. Moreover, a day may come when it will be necessary for you to convince our friends in the North, on whose side you stand; and this will help you to the end. For there is no other copy."

I knelt down and kissed the medal reverently. On the one side was struck the head of King James--very true and life-like--with the words "cujus est;" on the other a picture of the British Islands, with this motto inscribed beneath it, "Reddite."

"It is a text," I said, and indistinctly enough, for that simple word "Reddite," so charged was it with a sad and pitiful significance, brought the tears welling to my throat "It is a text I would have every man in England preach from."

"You will act on it," said the King; and I flattered myself with the thought that I noted something of a veritable tenderness in his accent "You will act on it; that is better;" and so he went out of the room.

Lord Bolingbroke closed the door, flung himself into a chair, and yawned prodigiously.

"Lawrence," he said, "I am very thirsty."

A bottle of Rhenish wine was standing on a sideboard at one end of the room. He went over and opened it, and filled two gla.s.ses.

"Let us drink," said he, and handed one to me "Let us drink to ourselves," and he raised the gla.s.s to his lips.

"Nay," I cried, "to the King first"

"Very well, to the King first, if you will, and to ourselves next.

What matters the toast, so long as we drink it?" and he drained his gla.s.s to the bottom. I followed his example.

"Now to ourselves," said he; and he filled them again. "It is a good fashion," he continued, in a musing tone, "that of drinking to the King. For so one drinks double, and never a word can be said against it." I noticed, however, that he drank triple and quadruple before he had come to an end. Then he looked at my breeches and laughed.

"And so the wench boxed your ears," he said, and, becoming quite serious, he took me by the arm. "Lawrence, let's drink to her!"

"I should reel in my saddle if I did," said I, drawing back.

"Then don't sit in it!" he replied. "Let's drink to her several times, and then we'll go to bed."