"Are worse," I said gloomily, looking at the paper as Tantalus looked at the water. "And to get word to her is not of the easiest."
[Ill.u.s.tration: SHE WAS MAKING MARKS ON THE TURF WITH A STICK]
"No," the Duke said. "Say you so? Then what do you make of this, faint-heart?" And he pointed through the open window.
I looked, and on the seat--which a moment before had been vacant--the seat under the right-hand yew-hedge where my lord sometimes smoked his pipe--I saw a girl seated with her shoulder and the nape of her neck turned to us. She was making marks on the turf with a stick she held, and poring over them when made, as if the world held nothing else, so that I had not so much as a glimpse of her face. But I knew that it was Mary.
"Come," said my lord, pleasantly. "We will go to her. It may be, she will not have the pardon--after all. Seeing that there is a condition to it."
"A condition?" I cried, a little troubled.
"To be sure, blockhead," he answered, in high good humour. "In whose name is it?"
Then I saw what he meant and laughed, foolishly. But the event came nearer to proving him true than he then expected. For when she saw the paper she stepped back and put her hands behind her, and would not touch or take it; while her small face cried pale mutiny. "But I"ll not tell!" she cried. "I"ll not tell! I"ll not have it. Blood-money does not thrive. If that is the price----"
"My good girl," said my lord, cutting her short, yet without impatience. "That is not the price. This is the Price. And the pardon goes with him."
I believe that I have now told enough to discharge myself of that which I set out to do: I mean the clearing my lord in the eyes of all judicious persons of those imputations which a certain faction have never ceased to heap on him; and this with the greater a.s.siduity and spite, since he by his single conduct at the time of the late Queen"s death was the means under Providence of preserving the Protestant Succession and liberties in these islands.
That during the long interval of seventeen years that separated the memorable meeting at Kensington, which I have ventured to describe, from the still more famous scene in the Queen"s death-chamber, he took no part in public life has seemed to some a crime or the tacit avowal of one. How far these err, and how ill-qualified they are to follow the workings of that n.o.ble mind, will appear in the pages I have written; which show with clearness that the retirement on which so much stress has been laid, was due not to guilt, but to an appreciation of honour so delicate that a spot invisible to the common eye seemed to him a stain _non subito delanda_. After the avowal made before his colleagues--of the communications, I mean, with Lord Middleton--nothing would do but he must leave London at once and seek in the shades and retirement of Eyford that peace of mind and ease of body which had for the moment abandoned him.
He went: and for a time still retained office. Later, notwithstanding the most urgent and flattering instances on the King"s part--which yet exist, honourable alike to the writer and the recipient--he persisted in his resolution to retire; and on the 12th of December, 1698, being at that time in very poor health, the consequence of a fall while hunting, he returned the Seals to the King, In the autumn of the following year he went abroad; but though he found in a private life--so far as the life of a man of his princely station could be called private--a happiness often denied to place men and favourites, he was not to be diverted when the time came from the post of danger.
Were I writing an eulogium merely, I should here enumerate those great posts and offices which he so worthily filled at the time of Queen Anne"s death, when as Lord Treasurer of England, Lord Chamberlain, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland--an aggregation of honours I believe without precedent--he performed services and controlled events on the importance of which his enemies no less than his friends are agreed.
But I forbear: and I leave the task to a worthier hand.
This being so, it remains only to speak of Matthew Smith and his accomplice. Had my lord chosen to move in the matter, there can be no doubt that Smith would have been whipped and pilloried, and in this way would have come by a short road to his deserts. But the Duke held himself too high, and the men who had injured him too low, for revenge; and Smith, after lying some months in prison, gave useful information, and was released without prosecution. He then tried to raise a fresh charge against the Duke, but gained no credence; and rapidly sinking lower and lower, was to be seen two years later skulking in rags in the darkest part of the old Savoy. In London I must have walked in hourly dread of him; at Eyford I was safe; and after the winter of "99, in which year he came to my lord"s house to beg, looking broken and diseased, I never saw him.
I was told that he expected to receive a rich reward in the event of the Duke"s disgrace, and on this account was indifferent to the loss of his situation in my lady"s family. It seems probable, however, that he still hoped to retain his influence in that quarter by means of his wife, and thwarted in this by that evil woman"s dismissal, was no better disposed to her than she was to him. They separated; but before he went the ruffian revenged himself by beating her so severely that she long lay ill in her apartments, was robbed by her landlady, and finally was put to the door penniless, and with no trace of the beauty which had once chained my heart. In this plight, reduced to be the drudge of a tradesman"s wife, and sunk to the very position in which I had found her at Mr. D----"s, she made a last desperate appeal to the Duke for a.s.sistance.
He answered by the grant of a pension, small but sufficient, on which she might have ended her days in a degree of comfort. But, having acquired in her former circ.u.mstances an unfortunate craving for drink, which she had now the power to gratify, she lived but a little while, and that in great squalor and misery, dying, if I remember rightly, in a public-house in Spitalfields in the year 1703.