Seeking, then, for some means of evasion, I laid my hand, on our being come near to the house, upon the arm of M. de Rondiniacque, thinking his frank and laughing countenance to offer sure promise of a kindly nature. On his then pausing to observe me, I did draw him a little to one side, asking if it were possible and convenient to him to make my excuse to His Highness, seeing I was much set on returning immediately home.
He clapped a hand upon my shoulder, and looking down upon me very kindly, with yet a comical glitter of mirth in his eye,—"Why, my brave boy," said he, "I would very willingly do you a service, whether for your brave deed or your pretty manners. But, if you will take an old soldier's counsel," and at this word he twirled his small and very black mustachios mighty fiercely, "you will not risk offending so great a man as William, Prince of Orange-Nassau, in so strongly rising a tide of your fortune. Mon Dieu!" he cried, laughing and looking in my face too close and keenly for my comfort, "if the lad is not shy and timorous as any girl!" And with that he thrust his arm through mine, and, "If you will ever bear that commission His Highness named," he said, "you must learn to sit at meat with soldiers without blushing. Come, let us go in and contrive that we sit together. I doubt not that and a bumper or two will give you courage!"
After which I dared say no more, but, as he would have haled me by force into the dining-hall, I begged him stay a moment while I spoke with Christopher Kidd, to whom calling as he hung forlorn and hesitating on our rear, I begged him to ride out and pick up as many as might be of our straggling troop, and to send them one and all back to Drayton with news that all was well. Some signs of mirth appearing upon Christopher's face, which in that predicament of mine I found very foolish and inconvenient, I continued in harder tones and with words of command in place of forms of request: "Though you are but a soldier of a day, Kidd, I believe you know very well under whose command Sir Michael Drayton's small body of horse left home. Find of them such as you may within the space of two hours, and see that they carry out my orders. At the end of that time you will report here to the officer of the guard, and await my further pleasure to escort me on my return. I dine with His Highness."
Though little used to command, I was not unaccustomed to be obeyed, and Christopher, closing his mouth on his foolish grin with a jerk, saluted and marched off to the orchard and his horse with promptitude worthy of a veteran.
"Well spoken, little soldier!" cried M. de Rondiniacque. "These raw levies are the devil, and thrive on a diet of brimstone. 'T is true they need curses for the most part, but, mort de ma vie! we have not all such eyes as you to flash lightning on our recruits."
"He did begin his drill no earlier than this morning," said I, with assumption of much carelessness; for the anger that had, I believe, stayed Kidd from calling me madam, had left me so trembling that I feared M. de Rondiniacque holding me by the arm should perceive it. He but said, however, I should make an officer one day, whatever became of Kidd, and hurried me into the dining-hall. As we entered, the Prince was about taking his seat, and in the slight bustle of the rest following his example, M. de Rondiniacque and I slipped into two vacant seats at the lower end of the table.
On His Highness's right was seated "Captain Jennings," on his left Count Schomberg. Captain Royston also and Mr. Bentinck were at that end of the table, while I found myself, to my great discomfort, surrounded by junior officers of various nations, and, for the most part, younger even than my friend, M. de Rondiniacque. With at first great intent of courtesy, they hurried me from one embarrassment to another. Now they would have me drink deep; then, by way, I do suppose, of enlivening my spirits, they plied me with polyglottic histories of amorous adventure, growing by steady degrees ever less pleasing; till at length, finding me grow shorter in reply and shrinking closer, as it were, into my shell, they abandoned the attempt to include me in their talk, and chattered among themselves as I wish, rather than believe, was not their custom. Much, I thank Heaven, from the babel of the many tongues, I missed; yet did I perforce hear more than enough.
After sitting no great while at meat, His Highness, to my great satisfaction, retired, requesting the attendance of "Captain Jennings" alone, and making Captain Royston, as their host, occupy at the head of the table the seat he was leaving.
More than once before the Prince's withdrawing, I had found Ned's eyes fixed upon me, with the gaze of one that in vain pursues a memory intangible. Now, although it had mightily pleased me to bewilder the man in baffling his pursuit had we been alone together, I yet, in that company I was in, found his enquiring regard not a little disconcerting; and, soon perceiving that his changed position at the table increased the frequency of the attack, I made shift to summon sufficient courage to ask his permission, on some plea of fatigue and indisposition, to retire. Which request he very courteously granted, begging, however, that I would not leave Royston before he should find time and opportunity to speak with me.
And so I found my way to the one chamber in the house that I knew; madam's withdrawing-room, to wit, which I had twice entered when Ned had taken me, a little maid, to see his mother; a large room, whose casement, broad, low, and heavily mullioned, looked out with a very noble aspect across copse and meadow, where the land fell away to the southward beyond the stream whose rocky channel had been one of the defences of the house in former days. And, as I stood idly gazing from the window, and drumming upon the panes with idle fingers, and wondering when Farmer Kidd would return, I remembered how in the old days Ned had told me of some wondrous means of escape that there was from that old house, which he would one day, if I should grow wise enough, reveal to me. And I wished that I had learned it then, that I might use it now, and so be quit at once of Prince, breeches, and a false position.
The landscape fading into the early darkness of late autumn, I stretched myself, half sitting and half lying, on the settle near the fire that burned fitfully on the great hearth of the chamber; and here soon forgot the passing of time in a doze induced, as I suppose, by the warmth of the fire, and the fatigue of my ride and the subsequent excitements. From this slumber I was aroused, how long after my falling into it I know not, by the entrance of a trooper, doing duty as servant, and bearing two heavy and branched silver candlesticks, filled with lighted candles. I was yet rubbing my eyes to clear my head of sleep and dreams, and striving to sit upright, when I caught my right spur on my left boot, and straightway remembered who I was, and how little like it I appeared. And then, close on the heels of the soldier with the candles, comes to me M. de Rondiniacque.
"Aha, my toy soldier!" he cried, as his eye lighted on me, "so 't is here you have been hiding. And sleeping, I see. Well, you may sleep on, if you will, for His Highness bids me bring you his most urgent request that you will here stay the night, in order to accompany him in the morning on his intended visit to your kinsman, Sir Michael—something——"
"Sir Michael Drayton," I replied. "I do suppose, sir," I went on, "that the Prince's urgent request differs little from a command?"
"Faith, you suppose well, young gentleman," said M. de Rondiniacque. "And therefore I made bold to send your man, when he returned from fulfilling your order, back to the place you named. Captain Royston has already much ado to feed and bed us all."
"And did Kidd obey your orders against mine?" I asked, rather that, saying something, I might cover my dismay than in any anxiety of discipline.
"Having seen us together, I think he made little distinction, my little bashaw," said M. de Rondiniacque, laughing. "I threatened him, moreover, with your displeasure, if he delayed. And now I must to His Highness."
And with that he left me, thinking very sadly I had enough of being a man. Had there been a woman in the house, I had gone to her, and told her my story. But to none of all these men did I dare to breathe my true name and state; unless, indeed, it had been to Captain Royston. And I murmured over to myself that title, which did ring so strange, and yet so proudly, in my ear. It went stiffly, too, upon the tongue that was once used to say: "Hither, Ned; not so, Ned; nay, Ned; but I will have it so." Well, Ned, I thought, was ever tender with me, and I might, indeed, at a pinch, make shift to tell him my name and troubles; but—and then in my mind there lifted up his head a little devil of mischief, and I vowed I would not so tell him till I should be enforced; but, having taken a vagary to be a man, I would hold fast to my purpose, that I might from behind this mask see more of the man and to what he was grown from the boy that had been my playmate and childhood's lover. I was fain not a little, moreover, certainly, to discover with what complexion of memory he retained the thought of little Philippa Drayton. And I thought it was mightily in favor of my plan that, although on that great night of his escape from Kirke's men, we had spoken together and our hands had met, yet since I was a little maid he had never looked upon my countenance.
At last I heard his step in the gallery without, and, for all its weight and its jingle of sabre and spur, I had known that footfall among many, even had I not known him in the house.
Captain Royston came into the chamber, followed by him that had but now fetched candles, but bearing this time an armful of wood and a blazing pine-knot. To draw my old friend's gaze, I heaved a great sigh, and gazed sadly in the fire, and knew, though I scarce saw, his eyes to turn on me. He crossed the room to the further corner, where I could well mark him without any show of particular regard, and threw wide a small door disclosing the foot of a narrow and winding stair.
"Go up," said he to the soldier, "to the room above; kindle a good fire upon the hearth; light the candles, and when the fire is well burning, return hither and stand sentry over this door till His Highness come."
And as the man ascended the stair, Captain Royston closed the door behind him, and turned to me, who kept my gaze fast on the fire.
"'T was a heavy sigh you heaved as I entered, young friend," he said, in a most gentle voice.
"Yes, faith," I answered, "it was heavy." And again I sighed.
He then asked me what it was did make me sad, and I replied I did not use to be from home, and was mighty lonesome.
"Nay, lad," he cried cheerily, laying a hand of comfort on my shoulder, "'t is but till the morrow. You have to-day borne yourself like a man; be not now homesick like a very maid. There is company enough. Why didst leave the table?"
"I was near falling with fatigue, sir," I answered; "and—and—and, in truth, I liked not the talk at the table where I sat."
"Poor lad!" said he, gently patting the shoulder where his hand did lie, and thereafter drawing the hand away; "poor lad! Would you grow to be a man? Harden your ears—your ears, mark me, not your heart." And I said nothing to him, but to myself that I feared both would need it ere long.
And then there came to us M. de Rondiniacque in search of Captain Royston, crying jovially: "Aha! have I found you, truant Master Host? His Highness did but now ask for you, and wonders somewhat, I think, at your long absence."
To which Royston replied: "I warrant His Highness knows that a host without hostess or servants is no little put to it to house, feed, and bed so many guests. I will go to him, and make my excuse." He then turned to me, saying: "Prithee, gentle friend, be of better comfort. It is not to His Highness alone that your great service has been rendered, and I would not have you cheerless. Godemar, hold the lad in talk a while. All this is strange to him, and he is overborne with fatigue." He then took some steps toward the door, but again turned to my side, and—"Speak your best English, Godemar," said he, "and your modest jests, if you have them. None of your ribald tales,—'t is a home-bred youth." Upon which, with a kindly nod to me, and a slap on the shoulder of a weight more suited to my garments than my sex, Captain Royston left the room.
M. de Rondiniacque looked upon me with a merry twinkle in his eye.
"Ma foi!" he said, "M. le Capitaine lays heavy commands upon me. Must I even do as he says?"
"It were best," I answered, with some severity, and never turning my eyes from the fire.
"I see not wherefore," said he; "I would gladly cheer you, lad, and he would take all the merriment from our jesting."
"Indeed," I replied, "I had rather never laugh again than hear more such talk as did pass for wit around us at dinner."
He flung himself with a movement of much petulance into a chair on the other side of the hearth, and—"My faith!" he cried, "'t is even as they did tell me: a sorry land and a sad! A country, mort de ma vie! where one must shift with beer for wine, mists for sunshine, and hags and hoydens for women."
"Alack!" I cried, being vastly amused; "have the women also displeased your lordship?"
"Gadso!" answered M. de Rondiniacque, "they have, and mightily. Mon Dieu! in all the days since we set foot ashore I have not seen one I would stand to observe a second time. I begin to see it is easy to be a Puritan in such a land."
And when I did not answer him, he peered curiously across the flickering twilight into my face. Anon he rose and came to me, with one hand seizing me by the arm, and raising my chin, not over gently, with the other—"Ma foi" he said, laughing, "with laces and furbelows, and those great eyes, wouldst make a better thyself than any lass of them all."
So I began to tremble for my secret, and saw no way out but in anger; knowing, indeed, so little of the ways of men, that I was ignorant of running a greater danger in that attempt to avoid the less.
I straightway sprang to my feet, flinging off his hands, crying to him to let me be, or ill would follow, and laying hand upon and half drawing my sword.
"What, pepper-box!" cried M. de Rondiniacque, "what, will you quarrel for nothing? Nay," he went on, with a great laugh, "do but see it ruffle! Come, boy, take your hand from your sword, or I will take the sword from you."
By this, between his tone of contempt and my own fear that I made but a sorry figure, I was trembling with anger no longer simulated; when, on my making wholly to disengage my sword, the Frenchman did pounce upon me with the swiftness of a hawk, catching my wrists, one in each of his hands, in a grasp that seemed of iron. I would have wrenched them free, but found each struggle to that end did bruise and pinch my poor flesh worse than the last. Being very near the point of tears, while yet in my heart raging with anger, I called aloud on Captain Royston, who, to my good fortune, did enter the room even as I called.
"Heyday!" he cried, "what 's the matter? Do not hurt the boy, Godemar," he went on, when drawing near he saw how I struggled to free my hands.
M. de Rondiniacque laughed again as he let me go. "The little fool hurts himself with striving," he said. "Had I not held him, he had run me through with the pretty sword the Prince did give him. Mon Dieu! he is anxious to flesh it."
"How is this, Master——?" says Captain Royston, mighty sternly, till checked for lack of a name to give me,—"on my life, I know not how you are called."
Now this was a question I had no wish to answer without some previous consideration; so, knowing I could scarce keep out of my voice the sound of tears, the pain of whose coming was now some minutes clutching at my throat, I resolved to use them as cover to my disregarding his enquiry.
"He has hurt my hands," I said, with a little sob, rubbing my wrists the while in the manner of a spoiled and petulant child.
"What, baby!" he cried; "I give you a friend to cheer you with his good heart and ready wit, and you must needs fall a-wrangling with him; and then, because he would curb your childish passion, must you weep like a very boy unbreeched?"
"I do not weep," I said; yet could I not check the next sob and some few tears that fell for the pain I had had.
"No more, lad, no more, for shame!" he answered. "There was a bold spirit in you not many hours ago. Be a man now, for the love of Heaven."
"With all my heart I would," said I, "if I did know the way of it; to the end that I might make him smart," I added, wagging my head in the direction of M. de Rondiniacque.
"Learn to take a jest as 't is meant," said Captain Royston, "and you may some day grow to it."
"I am as God did make me," I replied pettishly.
"It is rank heresy to cast the blame in that quarter," said M. de Rondiniacque.
At which Captain Royston laughed a little, but gently bade him hold his peace, saying: "The boy is in my care, and we cannot make a man of him before the morrow."
And now the entry of the Prince most happily put an end to the discussion of my shortcoming as a man. His Highness was attended by "Captain Jennings," Count Schomberg, and Mr. Bentinck, with a few other gentlemen. And as the doors were flung wide for them the trooper that had been about preparing the chamber above descended the little stair, closed the door behind him, and stood on guard immovable before it, with drawn sword.
The Prince appeared in the best of humors; of which the reason was very soon made plain.
"Captain Royston," said His Highness, coming over to the fire, "we are come to a happy end of our conferring, and 'Captain Jennings,' being pressed for time, must at once take himself again to the road. His escort is provided, and he would bid you farewell. It should indeed be to us all a melancholy parting, for 't is little to be hoped any man here will again encounter Captain Jennings."
When the laugh due to the jest of a prince had risen and died away, "Captain Jennings" held out his hand to his host, and said: "'Jennings' owes you much, Captain Royston, though you are like, as His Highness well says, never to meet him again, yet in your ear will I tell you that he has a kinsman that is his very double and his best friend. I have reason for saying that this gentleman will in the happier days to come pass by no occasion of furthering the interest of so stanch a companion, and so generous a host, as Captain Edward Royston."
To which courteous speech honest Ned replied with some words of his duty to His Highness of Orange; and I knew well by a certain stiffness of his manner, which was still clearly marked as he wished him a safe and pleasant journey, that the favor of "Captain Jennings" was not such as he wished to earn.
That gentleman, after some other farewells of much grace and kindness, passed on to me where I stood apart, and with a very gracious smile on his noble countenance thanked me for the service I had done him. On my asking what that might be, he was at some pains to explain, in a voice meant for me alone, that but for my timely warning and protection to His Highness, that plot might well have had a very different and terrible ending; in the blame of which fatal conclusion he himself, from the peculiarity of his position, would almost certainly have become implicated. "I hope, therefore," he said, "that we shall meet again when I have thrown aside this nom de guerre to which I have only a sort of left-handed right by marriage and necessity." And then first I guessed who he was. "But," he went on, "if I do seem to need a fresh introduction, young gentleman, when that day comes, I beg you will attribute my lack of memory to politic reasons."
By which, thinking him little likely to encounter and less to recognize me, I was vastly amused.
"I am ready to wager, my lord," I said, laughing a little, "that the fault will be neither yours nor the nation's, should you pass me by."
He looked at me for a moment with a glance so keen that I found it hard to support; then, bidding me farewell, very shortly took leave of the Prince and departed on his journey to Salisbury.
As the door closed upon him, His Highness crossed the chamber and tapped Captain Royston on the shoulder.
"You act with little wisdom, Captain," he said, with a merry laugh, "in the moment when the Protestant religion has triumphed over all else, to receive with coldness an offer of favor from him that is one day to be the first soldier in Europe."
"I trust, Your Highness," said Royston, with something of pride in his tone, "that I have not yet lost the favor of him that is."
"I see we shall have a courtier in you yet, Captain," said His Highness. "The day has been long, and I must needs ask my good host the way to my chamber. Sleep is a fickle mistress to me, and she must be wooed in season, or she will have none of me."
"Since the terrible danger Your Highness has this day escaped in my house but by the goodness of God and this young gentleman's courage," said Captain Royston, "I am resolved to beg Your Highness's acceptance rather of its most secure than its most luxurious chamber. At the head of this stair," he went on, making the sentry stand aside as he threw open the door, "is a room neither very large nor finely furnished. If Your Highness will, however, deign to make use of it, he will find the bed good and the chamber warm. It has no other approach, and with Your Highness's consent I will myself watch here during the night, while Lieutenant de Rondiniacque takes my place as officer of the watch, which has been doubled, and commands every approach."
"I thank you for your care of my safety, Captain Royston," said the Prince. "If the bed be as good as the supper, we will ask none better between this and London. But I believe you are over-cautious."
On Captain Royston's explaining that the honor of his house was involved in His Highness's safety within it, all his dispositions were very kindly and freely accepted. Not long after which His Highness, with some kind words to me on the service I had done him, and of his purposed visit on the morrow to Drayton, retired to the chamber already mentioned, being lighted by Captain Royston, and attended by Mr. Bentinck for some discussion of matters of state.
Whereafter I very soon found myself again alone, the rest departing in charge of M. de Rondiniacque, commissioned by our host to show each gentleman where he should lie. I say I was alone; for the sentry at the door of the stair to the Prince's chamber counted little as company, which I was fain to seek in the dancing of the flames upon the hearth and in my own thoughts. These were not uneasy, for I knew that Ned must return as he had gone, and that a word to him would be my protection if aught inconvenient should arise; nor were they long, for he soon returned.