Part 43 (1/2)
”Bah, bah, Monsieur! we need not be a conjurer to see that. It makes itself seen at all moments. You are jealous, my lord, and the maid of honor cannot look at another face without yours beginning to scowl. That which you do is unworthy, Monsieur; is inhospitable--is, is lache, yes, lache:” (he spoke rapidly in French, his rage carrying him away with each phrase:) ”I come to your house; I risk my life; I pa.s.s it in ennui; I repose myself on your fidelity; I have no company but your lords.h.i.+p's sermons or the conversations of that adorable young lady, and you take her from me, and you, you rest! Merci, Monsieur! I shall thank you when I have the means; I shall know to recompense a devotion a little importunate, my lord--a little importunate. For a month past your airs of protector have annoyed me beyond measure. You deign to offer me the crown, and bid me take it on my knees like King John--eh! I know my history, Monsieur, and mock myself of frowning barons. I admire your mistress, and you send her to a Bastile of the Province; I enter your house, and you mistrust me. I will leave it, Monsieur; from to-night I will leave it. I have other friends whose loyalty will not be so ready to question mine. If I have garters to give away, 'tis to n.o.blemen who are not so ready to think evil. Bring me a coach and let me quit this place, or let the fair Beatrix return to it. I will not have your hospitality at the expense of the freedom of that fair creature.”
This harangue was uttered with rapid gesticulation such as the French use, and in the language of that nation. The Prince striding up and down the room; his face flushed, and his hands trembling with anger. He was very thin and frail from repeated illness and a life of pleasure. Either Castlewood or Esmond could have broke him across their knee, and in half a minute's struggle put an end to him; and here he was insulting us both, and scarce deigning to hide from the two, whose honor it most concerned, the pa.s.sion he felt for the young lady of our family. My Lord Castlewood replied to the Prince's tirade very n.o.bly and simply.
”Sir,” says he, ”your Royal Highness is pleased to forget that others risk their lives, and for your cause. Very few Englishmen, please G.o.d, would dare to lay hands on your sacred person, though none would ever think of respecting ours. Our family's lives are at your service, and everything we have except our honor.”
”Honor! bah, sir, who ever thought of hurting your honor?” says the Prince with a peevish air.
”We implore your Royal Highness never to think of hurting it,” says Lord Castlewood with a low bow. The night being warm, the windows were open both towards the Gardens and the Square. Colonel Esmond heard through the closed door the voice of the watchman calling the hour, in the square on the other side. He opened the door communicating with the Prince's room; Martin, the servant that had rode with Beatrix to Hounslow, was just going out of the chamber as Esmond entered it, and when the fellow was gone, and the watchman again sang his cry of ”Past ten o'clock, and a starlight night,” Esmond spoke to the Prince in a low voice, and said--”Your Royal Highness hears that man.”
”Apres, Monsieur?” says the Prince.
”I have but to beckon him from the window, and send him fifty yards, and he returns with a guard of men, and I deliver up to him the body of the person calling himself James the Third, for whose capture Parliament hath offered a reward of 500L., as your Royal Highness saw on our ride from Rochester. I have but to say the word, and, by the heaven that made me, I would say it if I thought the Prince, for his honor's sake, would not desist from insulting ours. But the first gentleman of England knows his duty too well to forget himself with the humblest, or peril his crown for a deed that were shameful if it were done.”
”Has your lords.h.i.+p anything to say,” says the Prince, turning to Frank Castlewood, and quite pale with anger; ”any threat or any insult, with which you would like to end this agreeable night's entertainment?”
”I follow the head of our house,” says Castlewood, bowing gravely. ”At what time shall it please the Prince that we should wait upon him in the morning?”
”You will wait on the Bishop of Rochester early, you will bid him bring his coach hither; and prepare an apartment for me in his own house, or in a place of safety. The King will reward you handsomely, never fear, for all you have done in his behalf. I wish you a good night, and shall go to bed, unless it pleases the Marquis of Esmond to call his colleague, the watchman, and that I should pa.s.s the night with the Kensington guard. Fare you well, be sure I will remember you. My Lord Castlewood, I can go to bed to-night without need of a chamberlain.” And the Prince dismissed us with a grim bow, locking one door as he spoke, that into the supping-room, and the other through which we pa.s.sed, after us. It led into the small chamber which Frank Castlewood or MONSIEUR BAPTISTE occupied, and by which Martin entered when Colonel Esmond but now saw him in the chamber.
At an early hour next morning the Bishop arrived, and was closeted for some time with his master in his own apartment, where the Prince laid open to his counsellor the wrongs which, according to his version, he had received from the gentlemen of the Esmond family. The worthy prelate came out from the conference with an air of great satisfaction; he was a man full of resources, and of a most a.s.sured fidelity, and possessed of genius, and a hundred good qualities; but captious and of a most jealous temper, that could not help exulting at the downfall of any favorite; and he was pleased in spite of himself to hear that the Esmond Ministry was at an end.
”I have soothed your guest,” says he, coming out to the two gentlemen and the widow; who had been made acquainted with somewhat of the dispute of the night before. (By the version we gave her, the Prince was only made to exhibit anger because we doubted of his intentions in respect to Beatrix; and to leave us, because we questioned his honor.) ”But I think, all things considered, 'tis as well he should leave this house; and then, my Lady Castlewood,” says the Bishop, ”my pretty Beatrix may come back to it.”
”She is quite as well at home at Castlewood,” Esmond's mistress said, ”till everything is over.”
”You shall have your t.i.tle, Esmond, that I promise you,” says the good Bishop, a.s.suming the airs of a Prime Minister. ”The Prince hath expressed himself most n.o.bly in regard of the little difference of last night, and I promise you he hath listened to my sermon, as well as to that of other folks,” says the Doctor, archly; ”he hath every great and generous quality, with perhaps a weakness for the s.e.x which belongs to his family, and hath been known in scores of popular sovereigns from King David downwards.”
”My lord, my lord!” breaks out Lady Esmond, ”the levity with which you speak of such conduct towards our s.e.x shocks me, and what you call weakness I call deplorable sin.”
”Sin it is, my dear creature,” says the Bishop, with a shrug, taking snuff; ”but consider what a sinner King Solomon was, and in spite of a thousand of wives too.”
”Enough of this, my lord,” says Lady Castlewood, with a fine blush, and walked out of the room very stately.
The Prince entered it presently with a smile on his face, and if he felt any offence against us on the previous night, at present exhibited none.
He offered a hand to each gentleman with great courtesy. ”If all your bishops preach so well as Doctor Atterbury.” says he, ”I don't know, gentlemen, what may happen to me. I spoke very hastily, my lords, last night, and ask pardon of both of you. But I must not stay any longer,”
says he, ”giving umbrage to good friends, or keeping pretty girls away from their homes. My Lord Bishop hath found a safe place for me, hard by at a curate's house, whom the Bishop can trust, and whose wife is so ugly as to be beyond all danger; we will decamp into those new quarters, and I leave you, thanking you for a hundred kindnesses here. Where is my hostess, that I may bid her farewell; to welcome her in a house of my own, soon, I trust, where my friends shall have no cause to quarrel with me.”
Lady Castlewood arrived presently, blus.h.i.+ng with great grace, and tears filling her eyes as the Prince graciously saluted her. She looked so charming and young, that the doctor, in his bantering way, could not help speaking of her beauty to the Prince; whose compliment made her blush, and look more charming still.
CHAPTER XII.
A GREAT SCHEME, AND WHO BALKED IT.
As characters written with a secret ink come out with the application of fire, and disappear again and leave the paper white, as soon as it is cool; a hundred names of men, high in repute and favoring the Prince's cause, that were writ in our private lists, would have been visible enough on the great roll of the conspiracy, had it ever been laid open under the sun. What crowds would have pressed forward, and subscribed their names and protested their loyalty, when the danger was over! What a number of Whigs, now high in place and creatures of the all-powerful Minister, scorned Mr. Walpole then! If ever a match was gained by the manliness and decision of a few at a moment of danger; if ever one was lost by the treachery and imbecility of those that had the cards in their hands, and might have played them, it was in that momentous game which was enacted in the next three days, and of which the n.o.blest crown in the world was the stake.
From the conduct of my Lord Bolingbroke, those who were interested in the scheme we had in hand, saw pretty well that he was not to be trusted. Should the Prince prevail, it was his lords.h.i.+p's gracious intention to declare for him: should the Hanoverian party bring in their sovereign, who more ready to go on his knee, and cry, ”G.o.d Save King George?” And he betrayed the one Prince and the other; but exactly at the wrong time. When he should have struck for King James, he faltered and coquetted with the Whigs; and having committed himself by the most monstrous professions of devotion, which the Elector rightly scorned, he proved the justness of their contempt for him by flying and taking renegade service with St. Germains, just when he should have kept aloof: and that Court despised him, as the manly and resolute men who established the Elector in England had before done. He signed his own name to every accusation of insincerity his enemies made against him; and the King and the Pretender alike could show proofs of St. John's treachery under his own hand and seal.
Our friends kept a pretty close watch upon his motions, as on those of the brave and hearty Whig party, that made little concealment of theirs.