Now, it was not far from this door that Mr. Bentinck had stood while he read the letters brought by the courier, and it was at this point that Prudence now paused, and stooping, raised from the floor a sheet of thin paper, twice folded, which it soon appeared she had from her cover observed that gentleman to let fall. Holding this behind her back, she addressed M. de Rondiniacque.
"'T is a mighty fine business, Master Foreigner," she said. "See how you have embroiled everything with this love of kissing! It is like enough you have by this means cost an honest man his life."
"'T is all true that you say," replied he; "yet I cannot tell how you should know it, if you have not wilfully listened since ever your mistress sent you from this place."
"I came between that door and its curtain," she replied, "in the same moment that Sir Michael did ask the Prince the reason of his churlishness. So it was not long before I heard good Mr. Royston tell how he did use the sword for Sir Michael's daughter. And I were a ninnyhammer indeed, if I could not from that tell the rest of the tale. Therefore, I say again, that 't is all your fault, ill man that you are!"
"It is mine, indeed," said De Rondiniacque sadly.
Then did Prudence pull a very long and solemn face.
"Do you repent of your sins?" she asked.
"Most heartily I do," he answered.
"And would you atone?" she continued.
"Most gladly—but how?" he asked.
"Will you leave kissing forever," she demanded with great severity, "if I do put you in the way to make amends?"
"Ay, that, and more!" he cried, in reckless penitence, "do but show me the way."
"Nay, softly," she answered. "'T will take three at least, and one of them a woman of a very pretty wit, even if I be not mistaken, to undo the mischief one witless man can work with this same foolish kissing."
"Have done with your gibes!" said De Rondiniacque angrily. "I would not kiss you again if you asked it." For which discourtesy Mistress Prue deferred her revenge, thinking, as she has told me, that it was but his sorrow and zeal of penitence made the gentleman speak so unmannerly.
"Hark then to me," she said. "As I stood there by the door, where I could hear all and see not a little, after that the Prince had said they would walk a turn in the garden, and while they were taking away poor Mr. Royston a prisoner, the sour-faced man in black drew the Prince aside so that they almost touched the curtain that hid me. And there for a little space they stood, talking soft and low. What is he—the surly one, I mean, that had the papers?"
"That is Mr. Bentinck," replied De Rondiniacque, with some impatience. "Well, what said they?"
"The Prince was minded that Sir Michael spoke truth, but the man in black that they must use all means to lay hands on the priest; he said, too, that in his letter was a paper with every mark of this priest's person, so as it might be his very portrait cunningly painted; and he said that he cared not a groat for Sir Michael, nor for poor Mr. Royston, so he might come at the priest. They are mightily in love with this priest, Mr. Mar-all, and I do think——"
"Did you hear his description?" interrupted De Rondiniacque. "Did Bentinck read it to the Prince?"
"They should do that in the air, said the Prince. And as they went I saw how this Mr. Benting, as you call him, did search among the papers in his hands as if he had lost one of them. And 't is little wonder," added she, "that he could not find it, for His Highness's great boot had it fast under heel the while they talked; and to that heel it stuck for three good strides of their passage to the other door. See the mark of his tread." And she showed him the paper she had found, with its impress of a muddy heel. "And I do think," said Prudence, "that it is, perhaps, by the grace of God, that same paper that tells of this priest's person."
"I see little good in it for us, even if it be so," said he; "but let me read." And, leaning over her as she unfolded the paper, he put an arm round her waist. But Prue twisted sinuously from his grasp.
"Nay, Mr. Mar-all," she cried, "I will read it myself. I can read a bold hand o' write near as well as print." And then, after peering closely for a while at the crabbed, slanting, and unfamiliar characters upon the paper, she said dolefully: "Alack-aday! 't is an outlandish thing, and will not be read. I vow 't is French lingo!"
M. de Rondiniacque snatched the paper from her hand.
"I will read it for you, my pretty one," he said.
"I am not that, thank Heaven!" says Prue, bridling, as he hastily scanned the writing.
"What! not pretty?" he asked, toying with her as it were by rote of habit, while eyes and mind were both upon his reading.
"That I hope I am," replied Prue, "but not yours. Your love is unlucky." Then, as she saw that she was like to get little sport while he still would read: "Can you read French, sir?" she asked.
"What else?" he answered. "Do I not speak it since I was weaned?"
"Ay, to speak it," said she; "that I can understand, being natural-like to a poor thing hearing no better from a child. But to read it—'t is wonderful indeed. Come, do it into English for me." Then, hearing a footstep without, she cried: "Have you mastered it? For I think he returns," and as M. de Rondiniacque looked up from reading the last words, she snatched from him the paper and hid it in her bosom.
The next moment Mr. William Bentinck entered the hall, walking slowly and casting his eyes from side to side in anxious search of the floor for the very thing she had hidden. When he perceived that he was not alone, he asked with some eagerness whether by chance Lieutenant de Rondiniacque had seen him drop a paper. That gentleman replying that he had seen no paper fall, and proceeding with great appearance of innocent good nature to peer about in the same search, Mr. Bentinck turned his regard upon Prudence, who was about leaving the room.
She seemed, however, on a sudden to change her purpose, for, turning again into the hall, she approached Mr. Bentinck, and, speaking with a very fine assumption of timidity: "If it please your honor," she said, "was it a very thin paper that you mislaid, and twice folded?"
"Yes," replied Mr. Bentinck very sharply. "Where is it?"
"La, now," cries Prue, "where did I lay it? I did think perhaps it was of import, and know I did put it in safety."
"Then find it," growled he so angrily that poor Prue appeared much frightened.
"Nay, sir," she pleaded very piteously, "do not so frown upon a poor maid."
She looked around a little, as in great puzzlement; then, feeling daintily beneath her stomacher, she produced the paper, crying triumphantly that she had said it was safe, and here it was. Mr. Bentinck was at once upon the paper like a hungry hawk, asking, so soon as it was safe in his hand, whether she had read what was there written. At which Prudence opened wide her blue eyes in an amazement vastly childlike.
"And how does your honor think I should read French?" she asked.
"And how know 't was French," retorted her inquisitor, with bitter keenness, "if you did not read?" But Prue was too strong for the great statesman.
"Mercy on us, sir," she cried, clasping her hands most prayerfully, "do not hang me! I' fecks I did try to read, and making nothing of it, did know it for French."
When Mr. Bentinck, for all reply, had tushed, pshawed, and growled a few words wholly inaudible, he turned sharply upon his heel and left them.
And when he was well away M. de Rondiniacque, forgetful alike of pious vow and petulant threat, seized Prudence in his arms and very heartily embraced her.
"By all my Huguenot ancestors!" he cried, kissing her vigorously to punctuate his oath, "but I do love thee, good wench." And 't is enough proof that she forgave him this breach of decorum that she said never a word of threat nor promise broken.
"Was it not purely done?" she said, pushing him away. "Now tell me what was writ in the paper. Pray Heaven you did read enough."
"All," replied M. de Rondiniacque. "But, though I put much faith in you, I know not yet what is your scheme, nor for what reason, if it be of use to us, you have returned to the Dutchman his lost paper."
"'T is as needful he should know what there is written as we, if it is as I guess," said Prue. "And that I cannot tell until you give me its purport."
"Somewhat in this way it ran, then," rejoined M. de Rondiniacque:
"'Father Francis, otherwise and at present known as "James Marston, of the City of Oxford," fat, short, red periwig, his own hair tonsured——'"
Prue's head had so far nodded to each particular, but at this she checked her pretty chin in mid-air. "Tonsured!" she cried; "and what is that?"
"Shaven so," he replied, describing with his finger a ring upon the top of his head. "There is much more in the paper, however."
"You have told me enough," said Prue, much elated. "Come with me, and I will show you the man."
"But this is not the man that escaped our hands last night," said M. de Rondiniacque, thoughtfully.
"What matter, Mr. Mar-plot? Can you not see it is the man they would have? Come." And she seized him by the hand and ran for the door, almost dragging him after her. But at that turn of the gallery that leads to the stable-yard she paused a moment. "But in truth," she said, "it does hurt me to betray the poor man."
"Betray!" cried M. de Rondiniacque.
"To be sure," answered Prue; "it will be nothing else. Since last evening have I hid him in the barn loft. He told me he was a poor soldier of His Highness that was to be hanged for stealing an old hen. Now 't is a wicked thing indeed to steal a hen, but since the hen was, he says, very tough and bad eating, I think it a worse thing to hang the poor man for it. Moreover, I did once save my grandfather when Kirke's men would have hanged him, and the mere name of a rope would make me pity a very Judas."
"But what made you think him a soldier, and yet know him for a priest?" asked M. de Rondiniacque, not a little puzzled.
"He has a sword and other vile things for killing," replied the tender-hearted little fool, "and also a great cloak like those of the Prince's guard."
"I begin to smoke the man," said the Lieutenant, remembering the escape, after the affair in the orchard at Royston, of one of the conspirators.
"But this morning, when I privily took him food," continued Prudence, "the thing of steel, which is for all the world like those of your men, was no longer upon his head. For he lay sleeping, and before I had him awake I had well marked the little round spot atop of his head, which had not long since certainly been shaven, having now but a very short and stubby growth of hair upon it. And he made me think, too, of a bad man that Farmer Kidd did tell me of. So I thought he was perhaps the priest your Mr. Benting hunts."
"'T is very like," said M. de Rondiniacque. "So lead me where he is, child. In any case, he is a bad man."
"You would not have me betray a man for no reason but his badness," said the girl piteously.
"I would have you spend your pity first upon the good and innocent," replied M. de Rondiniacque, with some sternness; and then added: "Moreover, the man is a Papist."
"A Papist! Ah! I do forget," cried Prue. "He must even make way for better men." And with that she led him at once the same road that the ale and beef had taken. From which it is clear that M. de Rondiniacque's dealings with her kind had at least taught him the dexterous art of matching a bad reason with a worse upon the other side.
Such, then, was my little handmaid's great secret, which nothing, perhaps, but her pique at her mistress's reticence could have induced her so long to maintain.