God and the King

GOD AND THE
KING

BY

MARJORIE BOWEN

AUTHOR OF "I WILL MAINTAIN"

'LUCTOR ET EMERGO

MOTTO OF ZEELAND

METHUEN & GO. LTD
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

Published in 1911

DEDICATED
VERY GRATEFULLY
TO
MAJOR-GENERAL F. DE BAS
DIRECTOR OF THE MILITARY HISTORICAL BRANCH
GENERAL STAFF OF THE DUTCH ARMY

CONTENTS

[PART I]
THE REVOLUTION

CHAP.

1. [THE AFTERNOON OF JUNE 30TH, 1688]
2. [THE EVENING OF JUNE 30TH, 1688]
3. [THE NIGHT OF JUNE 30TH, 1688]
4. [THE MESSENGER FROM ENGLAND]
5. [THE PRINCESS OF ORANGE]
6. [THE LETTERS OF MR. HERBERT]
7. [THE SILENT WOOD]
8. [THE POLICY OF THE PRINCE]
9. [FRANCE MOVES]
10. [THE ENGLISH AMBASSADOR]
11. [THREE PAWNS]
12. [FRANCE MOVES AGAIN]
13. [THE GREAT ENTERPRISE]
14. [STORMS]
15. [THE SECOND SAILING]
16. [NEWS FROM ENGLAND]
17. [FAREWELL TO HOLLAND]
18. [BY THE GRACE OF GOD]

[PART II]
THE QUEEN

1. [A DARK DAWNING]
2. [THE KING AT BAY]
3. [THE BEST OF LIFE]
4. [THE SECRET ANGUISH]
5. [A WOMAN'S STRENGTH]
6. [GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!]
7. [THE SHADOW]
8. [FEAR]
9. [CHRISTMAS EVE]
10. [THE QUEEN]
11. [THE BITTER PARTING]

[PART III]
THE KING

1. [*VITA SINE AMOR MORS EST*]
2. [THE KING IS NEEDED]
3. [ATTAINMENT]
4. [A MAN'S STRENGTH]
5. [A LEADER OF NATIONS]
6. [THE KING'S AGENT]
7. [THE BANK OF ENGLAND]
8. [THE BREAKING FRIENDSHIP]
9. [PEACE]
10. [THE BROKEN FRIENDSHIP]
11. [THE KING'S HUMILIATION]
12. [APATHY]
13. [FRANCE CHALLENGES]
14. [THE VANGUARD OF THE WORLD]
15. [THE EVE OF WAR]
16. [GOD AND THE KING]

PART I

THE REVOLUTION

"Un prince profond dans ses vues; habile à former des ligues et à reunir les esprits; plus heureux à exciter les guerres qu'à combattre; plus à craindre encore dans le secret du cabinet, qu'à la tête des armées; un ennemi que la haine du nom Français avoit rendu capable d'imaginer de grandes chose et de les exécuter; un de ces génies qui semblent être nes pour mouvoir à leur gré les peuples et les souverains—un grand homme...."—MASSILLON, Oraison Funèbre de M. le Dauthin.

CHAPTER I

THE AFTERNOON OF JUNE 30th, 1688

"There is no managing an unreasonable people. By Heaven, my lord, they do not deserve my care."

The speaker was standing by an open window that looked on to one of the courts of Whitehall Palace, listening to the unusual and tumultuous noises that filled the sweet summer air—noises of bells, of shouting, the crack of fireworks, and the report of joyous mock artillery.

It was late afternoon, and the small apartment was already left by the departing daylight and obscured with a dusky shade, but no candles were lit.

There was one other person in the room, a gentleman seated opposite the window at a tall black cabinet decorated with gold lacquer Chinese figures, that showed vivid even in the twilight. He was watching his companion with a gentle expression of judgment, and twirling in his slim fingers a half-blown white rose.

An over-richness of furniture, hangings, and appointments distinguished the chamber, which was little more than a cabinet. The flush of rich hues in the Mortlake tapestries, the gold on the China bureau, the marble, gilt, and carving about the mantel, two fine and worldly Italian paintings and crystal sconces, set in silver, combined to give the place an overpowering air of lavishness; noticeable in one corner was a large ebony and enamel crucifix.

The persons of these two gentlemen were in keeping with this air of wealth, both being dressed in an opulent style, but in themselves they differed entirely from each other.

Neither was young, and both would have been conspicuous in any company for extreme handsomeness, but there was no further likeness.

He at the window was by many years the older, and past the prime of life, but the magnificence of his appearance created no impression of age.

Unusually tall, finely made and graceful, he carried himself with great dignity; his countenance, which had been of the purest type of aristocratic beauty, was now lined and marred—not so much by years, as by a certain gloom and sourness that had become his permanent expression; his eyes were large, grey, and commanding, his mouth noble, but disfigured by a sneer, his complexion blond and pale, his nose delicately formed and straight; a fair peruke shaded his face and hung on to his shoulders; he was dressed, splendidly but carelessly, in deep blue satins, a quantity of heavy Venice lace, and a great sword belt of embroidered leather.

The other gentleman was still in the prime of life, being under fifty, and looking less than his age.

Slight in build, above the medium height, and justly proportioned, handsome and refined in feature, dressed with great richness in the utmost extreme of fashion, he appeared the very type of a noble idle courtier, but in his long, straight, heavy-lidded eyes, thin sensitive mouth, and the deeply cut curve of his nostril was an expression of power and intelligence above that of a mere favourite of courts.

He wore his own fair hair frizzed and curled out on to his shoulders and brought very low on to his forehead; under his chin was a knot of black satin that accentuated the pale delicacy of his complexion; every detail of his attire showed the same regard to his appearance and the mode. Had it not been for that unconscious look of mastery in the calm face he would have seemed no more than a wealthy man of fashion. In his beautifully formed and white hands he held, as well as the rose, a handkerchief that he now and then pressed to his lips; in great contrast to the other man, who appeared self-absorbed and natural, his movements and his pose were extremely affected.

A pause of silence wore out; the man at the window beat his fingers impatiently on the high walnut back of the chair beside him, then suddenly turned a frowning face towards the darkening room.

"My lord, what doth this presage?"

He asked the question heavily and as if he had much confidence and trust in the man to whom he spoke.

My lord answered instantly, in a voice as artificial as the fastidious appointments of his dress.

"Nothing that Your Majesty's wisdom and the devotion of your servants cannot control and dispel."

James Stewart turned his eyes again to the open casement.

"Do you take it so lightly, my lord?" he asked uneasily. "All London shouting for these disloyal prelates—the city against me?"

Lord Sunderland replied, his peculiarly soothing tones lowered to a kind of caressing gentleness, while he kept his eyes fixed on the King.

"Not the city, sir. Your Majesty heareth but the mobile—the handful that will always rejoice at a set given to authority. The people love Your Majesty and applaud your measures."

"But I am not popular as my brother was," said the King, but half satisfied, and with an angry look towards London.

The Earl was ready with his softly worded reassurances.

"His late Majesty never put his popularity to the test—I think he could not have done what you have, sir—is not the true Faith"—here my lord crossed himself—"predominant in England—hath Your Majesty any Protestant left in office—have you not an Ambassador at the Vatican, is not a holy Jesuit father on the Council board, Mass heard publicly in Whitehall—the papal Nuncio openly received?—and hath not Your Majesty done these great things in three short years?"

A glow overspread the King's sombre face; he muttered a few words of a Latin prayer, and bent his head.

"I have done a little," he said—"a little——"

Sunderland lowered his eyes.

"Seeing this is a Protestant nation, Your Majesty hath done a deal."

The King was silent a moment, then spoke, gloomy again.

"But, save yourself, my lord, and Dover and Salisbury, no person of consequence hath come into the pale of the Church—and how hath my Declaration of Indulgence been received? Discontent, disobedience from the clergy, insolence from the Bishops, and now this,—near to rebellion!" His eyes darkened. "Could you have heard the army on Hounslow Heath, my lord—they shouted as one man to hear these traitors had been acquitted."

He began to stride up and down the room, talking sternly, half to himself, half to Sunderland, the speech of an angry, obstinate man.

"But I'll not give way. Who is this Jack Somers who defended them? Make a note of him—some Whig cur! The Dissenters too, what is the Anglican Church to them that they must stand by her? Do I not offer them also freedom of conscience? Do not they also benefit by the repeal of the Test Act?"

Sunderland made no remark; he sat with his hand over the lower part of his face. By the expression of his eyes it might seem that he was smiling; but the light was fading, and James did not look at his minister.

"I'll break the Colleges too. Let them look to it. I'll go on. Am I not strong enough? They are rebels at Oxford—I'll take no rebellion—that was my father's fault; he was not strong enough at first—it must be put down now—now, eh, my Lord Sunderland?"

He stopped abruptly before the Earl, who rose with an air of humility.

"It is my poor opinion, oft repeated, that Your Majesty must stop for nothing, but take these grumblers with a firm hand and crush them."

This counsel, though not new, seemed to please the King.

"You have ever given me good advice, my lord." He paused, then added, "Father Petre is always speaking against you, but I do not listen—no, I do not listen."

"It is my misfortune to be unpopular with the Catholics, though I have done what might be for their service."

"I do not listen," repeated the King hastily; he seated himself in the carved chair beside the bureau. "But I must tell you one thing," he added, after an instant. "M. Barillon thinketh I go too far."

Sunderland remained standing.

"He hath told me so," he answered quietly.

"What doth he mean?" asked James eagerly, and with the air of depending entirely on the other's interpretation.

"This," replied the Earl suavely—"that, good friend as His Christian Majesty is to you, it doth not suit his pride that you, sir, should grow great without his help—he would rather have Your Majesty the slave than the master of the people, rather have you dependent on him than a free ally."

"I'll not be dictated to," said the King. "My brother was too much the creature of Louis, but I will not have him meddle in my affairs."

"M. Barillon doth his duty to his master," answered the Earl. "Your Majesty need pay no attention to his warnings——"

"Warnings!" echoed the King, with sullen fire. "I take no warnings from an Ambassador of France." Then he sat forward and added in a quick, half-baffled fashion, "Yet there are dangers——"

"What dangers, sire?"

"The people are so stubborn——"

"They complain but they bow, sire; and soon they will not even complain."

"Then M. Barillon mentioned——" The King paused abruptly.

"What, sire?"

"My nephew, William."

As he spoke James glanced quickly at Sunderland, who returned the gaze calmly and mildly.

"My nephew, William—what is he plotting?"

"Plotting, Your Majesty?"

"He hath never been friendly to me," broke out the King fiercely. "Why did he refuse his consent to the Indulgence?—he who hath always stood for toleration?"

"As the head of the Protestant interest in Europe he could do no less, sire."

"He hath suborned my daughter," continued the King, in the same tone. "Seduced her from her duty—but now"—he crossed himself—"God be thanked, I have an heir. I do not need to so consider these Calvinists"—he gave the word an accent of bitter dislike—"yet I doubt he meaneth mischief——"

"I do not think so, sire. His hands are so full in keeping his own country afloat he can scarce have the time to meddle——"

The King interrupted.

"He doth meddle—his design is to drag me into a war with France—I doubt he hath more intrigues afoot in England than we wot of, my lord. Did M. de Zuylestein come wholly to congratulate us on the birth of the Prince? He is over often closeted with the Whig lords—and so was Dyckfelt—a knowing man."

Sunderland answered frankly.

"His Highness must have an interest in the kingdom of which his wife was till so lately the heiress, and I doubt not that he would try to foster discontents among the opposition, since he can hardly like the present policy of Your Majesty, having all his life been under the endeavour of persuading England to join his coalition against France—but he hath not the power (nor, I think, the will) to disturb Your Majesty."

James smiled reflectively.

"I believe he hath his hands full," he admitted. "He is not so steady in the states." His smile deepened as he thought on the critical situation of his son-in-law, then vexation conquered, and he added sharply, "M. Barillon said he but waited a chance to openly interfere—he would not send the English regiments back, which looked ill, and he is very friendly with Mr. Sidney——"

The King paused.

"Mr. Sidney is your uncle, my lord," he added, after a little, "and a close friend of the Prince of Orange—I was warned of that."

"By M. de Barillon?" asked Sunderland gently.

"Yes, my lord. But I took no heed of it—yet is it true that my Lady Sunderland wrote often to Mr. Sidney when he was at The Hague, and that you were privy to it?"

"There was some little exchange of gallantries, sire, no more. My lady is close friends with Mr. Sidney, and would commission him for horses, plants, candles, and such things as can be bought with advantage at The Hague."

"And did she write to the Lady Mary?"

Sunderland smiled.

"She had that honour once—the subject was a recipe for treacle water."

"Well, well," said the King, in a relieved tone of half apology, "I am so hedged about I begin to distrust my best servants. I must be short with M. Barillon; he maketh too much of my friendship with His Majesty."

"That is the jealousy of France, sire, that ever desireth a hand in your affairs."

James answered testily.

"Let them take care. M. Barillon said my envoys abroad had sent me warning of what my nephew designed—that is not true, my lord?"

"I have received no such letters, sire, and Your Majesty's foreign correspondence toucheth no hands but mine."

The King rose and struck the bell on the black lacquer cabinet; his exceedingly ill-humour was beginning, as always, to be softened by the influence of Lord Sunderland, who had more command over him than even the Jesuit, Father Petre, who was commonly supposed to be his most intimate counsellor.

When the summons was answered the King called for candles, and went over to the window again.

The dusk was stained with the glow of a hundred bonfires, lit by good Protestants in honour of the acquittal of the seven bishops charged with treason for offering His Majesty a petition against the reading of the Declaration of Indulgence from the pulpits of the Anglican churches; the verdict and the demonstration were alike hateful to the King, and he could scarce restrain his furious chagrin as he saw the triumphant rockets leap into the deep azure sky.

He thought bitterly of the murmuring army on Hounslow Heath; had they been steadfastly loyal he would hardly have restrained from setting them on to the defiant capital which they had been gathered together to overawe.

The candles were brought, and lit the rich little chamber with a ruddy light that showed the glitter of glass and gilt, lacquer and silver, the moody face of the King, and the calm countenance of his minister.

"My nephew would never dare," muttered His Majesty at last, "nor would Mary be so forgetful of her duty——" He turned into the room again. "I think you are right, my lord; he hath too much to do at home. But I am glad I did recall Mr. Sidney—a Republican at heart—who is like his brother."

"Of what designs doth Your Majesty suspect the Prince?" asked Sunderland quietly.

The King answered hastily.

"Nothing—nothing."

"Doth M. de Barillon," asked the Earl, "think His Highness might do what Monmouth did?"

At this mention of that other unhappy nephew of his who had paid for his brief rebellion on Tower Hill, the King's face cleared of its look of doubt.

"If he tried," he answered sombrely, "he would meet with the same reception—by Heaven, he would! No gentleman joined Monmouth, none would join the Prince."

"'Tis certain," said Sunderland. "But what causeth Your Majesty to imagine His Highness would attempt so wild a design as an armed descent on England?"

"He buildeth a great navy," remarked James.

"To protect the States against France. Reason showeth that the suggestion of His Highness' conduct that M. de Barillon hath made is folly. The Prince is the servant of the States; even if he wished, he could not use their forces to further his private ends, and is not the Princess daughter to Your Majesty, and would she help in an act of rebellion against you?"

"No," replied the King, "no—I do not think it. If the Dutch do choose to build a few ships am I to be stopped? My Lord Halifax," he added, with eagerness, "advised the giving back of the city charters and the reinstatement of the Fellows of Magdalen—but I will not—I'll break 'em, all the disloyal lot of 'em."

A slight smile curved my lord's fine lips.

"Halifax is ever for timorous counsels."

"A moderate man!" cried James. "I dislike your moderate men—they've damned many a cause and never made one. I'll have none of their sober politics."

"The best Your Majesty can do," said Sunderland, "is to gain the Dissenters, call a packed parliament of them and the Catholics in the autumn, pass the repeal of the Test Act, treat French interference firmly, strengthen the army, and bring the Irish to overawe London. There will be no murmurs against your authority this time a year hence."

James gave my lord a pleased glance.

"Your views suit with mine," he replied. "I'll officer the army with Catholics—and look to those two judges who favoured these bishops. We will remove them from the bench."

He was still alternating between ill-humour at the open display of feeling on the occasion of the public cross he had received in the matter of the bishops and the satisfaction my lord's wholly congenial counsel gave his obstinate self-confidence. A certain faith in himself and in the office he held, a still greater trust in the religion to which he was so blindly devoted, a tyrannical belief in firm measures and in the innate loyalty of church and people made this son of Charles I, sitting in the very palace from which his father had stepped on to the scaffold at the command of a plain gentleman from Hampshire, revolve schemes for the subjugation of England more daring than Plantagenet, Tudor, and Stewart had ventured on yet; he desired openly and violently to put England into the somewhat reluctant hands of the Pope, and beside this desire every other consideration was as nothing to His Majesty.

"Let 'em shout," he said. "I can afford it." And he thought of his young heir, whose birth secured the Romish succession in England; an event that took the sting even from the acquittal of the stubborn bishops.

"Your Majesty is indeed a great and happy Prince," remarked my lord, with that softness that gave his compliments the value of sincere meaning.

The King went up to him, smiled at him in his heavy way, and touched him affectionately on the shoulder.

"Well, well," he answered, "you give good advice, and I thank you, my lord."

He fell into silence again, and the Earl took graceful leave, left the cabinet gently, and gently closed the door.

When outside in the corridor he paused like one considering, then went lightly down the wide stairs.

In the gallery to which he came at the end of the first flight was a group of splendid gentlemen talking together; my lord would have passed them, but one came forward and stopped him; he raised his eyes; it was M. Barillon.

"You have come from His Majesty?"

"Yes, sir," answered the Earl.

"I do hope you did impress on him the need for a great caution," said M. Barillon quickly, and in a lowered voice, "The temper of the people hath been very clearly shown to-day."

"I did my utmost," said my lord ardently. "Advised him to make concessions, warned him that the Prince was dangerous, but his obstinate temper would have none of it——"

1. Barillon frowned.

"I hope you were earnest with him, my lord; there is no man hath your influence——"

My lord's long eyes looked steadily into the Frenchman's face.

"Sir," he said, "you must be aware that I have every reason to urge His Majesty caution, since there is none as deep in his most disliked measures than myself, and if the Whigs were to get the upper hand"—he shrugged gracefully—"you know that there would be no mercy for me."

The French Ambassador answered hastily—

"Not for an instant do I doubt your lordship. Faith, I know His Christian Majesty hath no such friend as yourself in England—but I would impress on you the danger—things reach a crisis, my lord."

He bowed and returned to his companions, while the Earl passed through the galleries of Whitehall, filled with courtiers, newsmongers, place seekers, and politicians, and came out into the courtyard where his chair waited.

While his servant was fetching the sedan my lord put on his laced hat and lingered on the step.

A tall soldier was keeping the guard; my lord regarded him, smiled, and spoke.

"Fellow, who is your master?"

The man flushed, saluted, and stared awkwardly.

"Come," smiled the Earl whimsically. "Whom do you serve?"

The startled soldier answered stupidly—

"God and the King, your honour."

"Ah, very well," answered the Earl slowly; he descended the steps and took a pinch of snuff. "So do we all—it is merely a question of which God and which King."

CHAPTER II

THE EVENING OF JUNE 30th, 1688

Before entering his sedan, Lord Sunderland gently bade the chairman carry him round the back ways; that strange quantity, the People, that every statesman must use, fear, and obey, was abroad, roused and dangerous to-night, and my lord's diplomacy moved delicately among high places but never came into the street to handle the crowd; he could lead, control, cajole kings and courtiers, deal with continents on paper, but he was powerless before the people, who hated him, and whom he did not trouble to understand; he was aristocrat of aristocrat.

He was now the most powerful man in the three kingdoms, and, next to Lord Jefferies, the most detested; he was the only considerable noble (the other converts, Dover and Salisbury, being mean men) who had sacrificed his religion to the bigotry of the King; many courtiers to whom all faiths were alike had rejected open apostasy, but my lord had calmly turned renegade and calmly accepted the scorn and comment cast upon his action; but he did not care to risk recognition by the People bent on celebrating a Protestant triumph.

A little before he had gone down to Westminster Hall to give that technical evidence against the bishops, without which they could not have been tried (for he was the only man who had seen Sancroft pass in to the King with the petition, and therefore the only man who could prove "publication in the county of Middlesex"), and it had taken some courage to face the storm that had greeted the King's witness.

My lord did not wish for another such reception, and as he proceeded down the quiet dark streets he looked continuously from the window of his chair in anticipation of some noisy band of Londoners who would challenge his appearance.

And that pale gentleman who peered out on to the bonfire-lit night had soon been dragged from the shadow of the satin-lined sedan and flung down into the gutter and trampled on and murdered, as was Archbishop Sharp by the Covenanters, had he been seen and recognized by some of the bands of youths and men who marched the streets with straw Popes and cardboard devils to cast to the flames.

My lord remarked that in every window, even of the poorest houses, seven candles burned, the tallest in the centre for the Archbishop, the other six for his colleagues; my lord remarked the rockets that leapt above the houses and broke in stars against the deep blue; my lord heard, even as he passed through the quietest alleys, the continuous murmur of the People rejoicing, as one may in a backwater hear the muffled but unsubdued voice of the sea.

When he reached his own great mansion and stepped from the chair, he saw that his house also was illuminated, as was every window in the great square.

He went upstairs to a little room at the back, panelled in walnut and finely furnished, where a lady sat alone.

She was of the same type as my lord—blonde, graceful, worn, and beautiful—younger than he, but looking no less.

She was writing letters at a side table, and when he entered rose up instantly, with a little sigh of relief.

"'Tis so wild abroad to-night," she said.

The Earl laid down on the mantelshelf the overblown white rose he had brought from Whitehall, and looked at his wife.

"I see we also rejoice that the bishops are acquitted," he remarked.

"The candles, you mean? It had to be—all the windows had been broken else. They needed to call the soldiers out to protect the Chapel in Sardinia Street."

He seated himself at the centre table and pulled from his pocket several opened letters that he scattered before him; his wife came and stood opposite, and they looked at each other intently across the candles.

"What doth it mean?" she asked.

"That the King walketh blindly on to ruin," he answered concisely, with a wicked flashing glance over the correspondence before him.

"The People will not take much more?"

"No."

"Well," said Lady Sunderland restlessly, "we are safe enough."

He was turning over the papers, and now lowered his eyes to them.

"Some of your letters to my Uncle Sidney have been opened," he remarked. "This is M. Barillon his work—the King taxed me to-day with being privy to the intrigue."

"I have thought lately that we were suspected," she answered quickly. "Is this—serious?"

"No; I can do anything with the King, and he is bigot, blind, and credulous to a monstrous degree."

"Even after to-day!" exclaimed my lady.

"He believeth the nation will never turn against him," said the Earl quietly. "He thinketh himself secure in his heir—and in the Tories."

"Not half the people will allow the child is the Queen's, though," she answered. "Even the Princess Anne maketh a jest of it with her women, and saith His Highness was smuggled into Whitehall in a warming-pan by a Jesuit father——"

"So you have also heard that news?"

"Who could help it? 'Tis common talk that 'tis but a device of the King to close the succession to the Princess Mary. And though you and I, my lord, know differently, this tale is as good as another to lead the mobile."

The Earl was slowly burning the letters before him by holding them in the flame of the wax-light of a taper-holder, and when they were curled away casting them on the floor and putting his red heel on them.

"What are these?" asked the Countess, watching him.

"Part of His Majesty's foreign correspondence, my dear, warning him to have an eye to His Highness the Stadtholder."

She laughed, half nervously.

"It seemeth as if you cut away the ladder on which you stood," she said. "If the King should suspect too soon—or the Prince fail you——"

"I take the risks," said Sunderland. "I have been taking risks all my life."

"But never one so large as this, my lord."

He had burnt the last letter and extinguished the taper; he raised his face, and for all his fine dressing and careful curls he looked haggard and anxious; the gravity of his expression overcame the impression of foppery in his appearance; it was a serious man, and a man with everything at stake on a doubtful issue, who held out his hand to his wife.

She put her fingers into his palm and stood leaning against the tall back of his chair, looking down on him with those languishing eyes that had been so praised at the court of the late King, now a little marred and worn, but still brightly tender, and to my lord as lovely as when Lely had painted her beautiful among the beautiful.

"You must help me," he said, his court drawl gone, his voice sincere.

"Robert," smiled my lady, "I have been helping you ever since I met you."

"'Tis admitted," he answered; "but, sweetheart, you must help me again."

She touched lightly his thin, powdered cheek with her free hand; her smile was lovely in its tenderness.

"What is your difficulty?"

Subtle, intricate and oblique as his politics always were, crafty and cunning as were his character and his actions, with this one person whom he trusted Sunderland was succinct and direct.

"The difficulty is the Princess Mary," he answered.

"Explain," she smiled.

He raised his hand and let it fall.

"You understand already. Saying this child, this Prince of Wales, will never reign—the Princess is the heiress, and not her husband, and after her is the Princess Anne. Now it is not my design to put a woman on the throne, nor the design of England—we want the Prince, and he is third in succession——"

"But he can act for his wife——"

"His wife—there is the point. Will she, when she understandeth clearly what is afoot, support her husband, her father, or herself?"

The Countess was silent a little, then said—

"She hath no reason to love her father; he hath never sent her as much as a present since she went to The Hague, nor shown any manner of love for her."

"Yet he counteth on her loyalty as a positive thing—and hath she any cause to love her husband either?"

Lady Sunderland's smile deepened.

"Ladies will love their husbands whether they have cause or no."

The Earl looked gently cynical.

"She was a child when she was married, and the match was known to be hateful to her; she is still very young, and a Stewart. Do you not think she is like to be ambitious?"

"How can I tell? Doth it make so much difference?"

He answered earnestly—

"A great difference. If there is a schism between her and the Prince his hands are hopelessly weakened, for there would be a larger party for her pretensions than for his——"

"What do you want me to do, dear heart?"

"I want a woman to manage a woman," smiled the Earl. "The Princess is seldom in touch with diplomats, and when she is—either by design or simplicity—she is very reserved."

"She is no confidante of mine," answered the Countess. "I only remember her as a lively child who wept two days to leave England, and that was ten years ago."

"Still," urged my lord, "you can find some engine to do me this great service—to discover the mind of the Princess."

Lady Sunderland paused thoughtfully.

"Do you remember Basilea Gage?" she asked at length.

"One of the maids of honour to Her Majesty when she was Duchess?"

"Yes; since married to a Frenchman who died, and now in Amsterdam—she and the Princess Royal were children together—I knew her too. Should I set her on this business?"

"Would she be apt and willing?"

"She is idle, clever, and serious—but, my dear lord, a Romanist."

The Earl laughed at his wife, who laughed back.

"Very well," he said. "I think she will be a proper person for this matter."

He put the long tips of his fingers together and reflected; he loved, of all things, oblique and crooked methods of working his difficult and secret intrigues.

When he spoke it was with clearness and decision.

"Tell this lady (what she must know already) that the King's measures in England have forced many malcontents to look abroad to the Princess Royal, the next heir, and her husband to deliver them from an odious rule; say that His Majesty, however, is confident that his daughter would never forget her obedience, and that, if it came to a crisis between her father and her husband, she would hinder the latter from any design on England and refuse her sanction to any attempt on his part to disturb His Majesty—say this requireth confirmation, and that for the ease and peace of the government (alarmed by the late refusal of Her Highness to concur in the Declaration of Indulgence) and the reassurance of the mind of the King, it would be well that we should have private knowledge of the disposition of Her Highness, which, you must say, you trust will be for the advantage of the King and his just measures."

The Countess listened attentively; she was seated now close to her husband, a pretty-looking figure in white and lavender, half concealed in the purple satin cushions of the large chair.

"I will write by the next packet," she answered simply.

"So," smiled the Earl, "we will use the zeal of a Romanist to discover the knowledge we need for Protestant ends——"

As he spoke they were interrupted by a servant in the gorgeous liveries that bore witness, like everything else in the noble mansion, both to my lord's extravagance and my lady's good management.

"Mr. Sidney was below—would his Lordship see him?"

"Go you down to him," said the Earl, looking at his wife. "You can make my excuses."

He dismissed the servant; my lady rose.

"What am I to say?" she asked, like one waiting for a lesson to be imparted.

He patted the slim white hand that rested on the polished table near his.

"Find out all you can, Anne, but be cautious—speak of our great respect for His Highness, but make no definite promises—discover how deep they go in their commerce with him."

Again they exchanged that look of perfect understanding that was more eloquent of the feeling between them than endearments or soft speeches, and the Countess went down to the lavish withdrawing-room, as fine as the chambers in Whitehall, where Mr. Sidney, uncle of my lord (but no older) waited.

They met as long friends, and with that air of gracious compliment and pleasure in each other's company which the fact of one being a beautiful woman and the other a man of famous gallantry had always given to their intercourse; if every jot of my lady's being had not been absorbed in her husband she might have been in love with Mr. Sidney, and if Mr. Sidney had not followed a fresh face every day of the year he might have found leisure to fall in love with my lady; as it was, he was very constant to her friendship, but had not, for that, forgotten the lovely creature she was, and she knew it and was pleased; in their hearts each laughed a little at the other and the situation; but my lady had the more cause to laugh, because while Mr. Sidney always dealt ingenuously with her, she was all the while using him to further her husband's policies, and there was not a pleasant word she gave him that was not paid for in information that she turned to good account.

To-day she found him less the composed gallant than usual; he seemed roused, disturbed, excited.

"The town to-day!" he exclaimed, after their first greetings. "Here is the temper of the people plainly declared at last!"

The Countess seated herself with her back to the candles on the gilt side-table and her face towards Mr. Sidney; he took his place on the wand-bottomed stool by the empty hearth, where the great brass dogs stood glimmering.

The windows were open, admitting the pleasant, intangible sense of summer and the distant changing shouts and clamour of the crowd.

With a kindly smile Lady Sunderland surveyed Henry Sidney, who without her advantage of the softening shadows showed a countenance finely lined under the thick powder he wore; man of fashion, of pleasure, attractive, mediocre in talents, supreme in manners and tact, owning no deep feelings save hatred to the King, whose intrigues had brought his brother to the block in the last reign, and a certain private loyalty to the laws and faith of England, Henry Sidney betrayed his character in every turn of his handsome face and figure. A man good-humoured, sweet-tempered but lazy, yet sometimes, as now, to be roused to the energy and daring of better men. In person he was noticeable among a court remarkable for handsome men; he had been in youth the most famous beau of his time, and still in middle age maintained that reputation.

His political achievements had not been distinguished. Sent as envoy to the States, he had so managed to ingratiate himself with the Prince of Orange as, in spite of the opposition of the English court, to be appointed commander of the English Regiment in the Dutch service, and the mouthpiece of His Highness to the English Whigs.

James, who had always disliked him, had recalled him from The Hague despite the protests of the Stadtholder, and he had found himself so out of favour with Whitehall as to deem it wiser to travel in Italy for a year, though he had never relaxed his correspondence either with the Prince or the great Protestant nobles who had been thrown into the opposition by the imprudent actions of the King.

He was in London now at some risk, as Lady Sunderland knew, and she waited rather curiously to hear what urgency had brought him back to the centre of intrigue.

His acceptance of her graceful excuses for the Earl was as formal as her offering of them; so long ago had it been understood that she was always the intermediary between her astute lord and the powerful Whig opposition of which Mr. Sidney was secretly so active a member.

"You and your friends will be glad of this," she said.

He looked at her a hesitating half second, then replied with an unusual sincerity in the tones generally so smooth and expressionless.

"Every Catholic who showeth his face is insulted, and a beadle hath been killed for endeavouring to defend a Romist chapel—the people are up at last."

"I know," she answered calmly. "I feared that my lord would not be safe returning from Whitehall."

"If they had seen him, by Heaven, he would not have been!" said Mr. Sidney. He spoke as if he understood the people's point of view. Lax and careless as he was himself, Sunderland's open and shameless apostasy roused in his mind some faint shadow of the universal hatred and scorn that all England poured on the renegade.

My lady read him perfectly; she smiled.

"How are you going to use this temper in the people?" she asked. "Is it to die out with the flames that consume the straw Popes, or is it to swell to something that may change the face of Europe?"

Mr. Sidney rose as if his restless mood could not endure his body to sit still.

"It may change the dynasty of England," he said.

My lady kept her great eyes fixed on him.

"You think so?" she responded softly.

His blonde face was strengthened into a look of resolve and triumph.

"The King hath gone too far." He spoke in an abrupt manner new to him. "No bribed electorate or packed parliament could force these measures—as we have seen to-day." There was, as he continued, an expression in his eyes that reminded the Countess of his brother Algernon, republican and patriot. "Is it not strange that he hath forgotten his father so soon, and his own early exile?" he said.

"His over-confidence playeth into your hands," she answered.

He gave a soft laugh, approached her, and said, in his old caressing tones—

"Frankly, my lady—how far will the Earl go?"

"With whom?" she smiled.

"With us—the Prince of Orange and the Whigs, ay—and the honest Tories too."

She played with the tassels of the stiff cushion behind her.

"My lord hath the greatest affection and duty for His Highness, the greatest admiration for him, the greatest hopes in him——"

"Come, Madam," he responded, "we are old friends—I want to know my lord his real mind."

"I have told it you," she said, lifting candid eyes, "as far as even I know it——"

"You must know that His Highness hath in his desk letters from almost every lord in England, assuring him of admiration and respect—what was M. Dyckfelt over here for—and M. Zuylestein?—we want to know what the Earl will do."

"What are the others—doing?" asked the Countess lightly.

He saw the snare, and laughed.

"My hand is always for you to read, but there are others seated at this game, and I may not disclose the cards."

My lady lent forward.

"You cannot," she said, in the same almost flippant tone, "expect my lord to declare himself openly a Whig?"

"He might, though, declare himself secretly our friend."

"Perhaps," she admitted, then was silent.

Intimate as he was with the Countess, Mr. Sidney was not close with her lord, and felt more than a little puzzled by that statesman's attitude. Sunderland, he knew, was in receipt of a pension, probably a handsome pension, from France; he was loathed by the Whigs and caressed by the King; as Lord President and First Secretary he held the highest position in the Kingdom; the emoluments of his offices, with what he made by selling places, titles, pardons, and dignities, were known to be enormous; his conversion to the Church of Rome had given him almost unlimited influence over James; and his great experience, real talents, and insinuating manners made him as secure in his honours as any man could hope to be; yet through his wife he had dallied with the Whigs, written, as Sidney knew, to the Prince of Orange, and held out very distinct hopes that he would, at a crisis, help the Protestants.

Certainly he had not gone far, and it was important, almost vital, to the opposition that he should go farther, for he had it in his power to render services which no other man could; he only had the ear of James, the control of the foreign correspondence, the entire confidence of M. Barillon, and he alone was fitted to mislead the King and the Ambassador as to the schemes of their enemies, as he alone would be able to open their eyes to the full extent of the ramifications of the Protestant plots.

It was the Countess who broke the silence, and her words were what she might have chosen could she have read Mr. Sidney's thoughts.

"My lord, who is the greatest man in the kingdom, hath more to stake and lose than you Whigs who are already in disgrace with His Majesty."

"I know that very well," he answered; "but if the government fell, remember there are some who would fall with it beyond the hope of ever climbing again. One is my Lord Jefferies, another my Lord Sunderland."

She looked at him calmly.

"They are both well hated by the people," she said. "I do admit it." She leant forward in her chair. "Do you think it would be worth while for my lord to stake the great post he holdeth for the chance of safety if..."

She hesitated, and he supplied the words.

—"if there was a revolution," he said.

"Do you talk of revolutions!" she exclaimed.

His fair face flushed.

"Listen," he answered briefly.

My lady turned her delicate head towards the window. Beyond her brocade curtains lay the dark shape of London, overhung with a glow of red that stained the summer sky. She sat silent. Mr. Sidney stood close to her, and she could hear his quick breathing; he, as she, was listening to the bells, the shouting, the crack of fireworks, now louder, now fainter, but a continuous volume of sound.

"The people——" said Mr. Sidney.

"Do they make revolutions?" she asked.

"If there is a man to guide them they do——"

"Well?"

"Before, there was Cromwell."

"And now——"

"Now there is William of Orange."

My lady rose.

"His Highness," she said quietly but firmly, "may be assured that he hath a friend, a secret friend in my lord."

Mr. Sidney looked anxiously into her eyes.

"May I rely on that?"

She smiled rather sadly.

"You, at least, can trust me."

Mr. Sidney bowed over her slender hand.

"You are a sweet friend and a clever woman, but——"

Lady Sunderland interrupted him.

"I am sincere to-night. We see our dangers. You shall hear from me at The Hague."

CHAPTER III

THE NIGHT OF JUNE 30th, 1688

Some hours after his parting with Lady Sunderland, Mr. Sidney left a modest house in Greg Street, Soho Fields, in company with a common tarpaulin, whose rough clothes were in strong contrast to the rich appointments of the notable beau he accompanied.

It was a fine night, but cloudy. The two men proceeded in silence towards Gerrard Street, the sailor with his hands in his pockets and Mr. Sidney swinging his cane.

Every house they passed had the seven candles in the windows, and the sound of bells and shouting was as persistent as it had been in the drawing-room of Sunderland House; the street was empty save for a few wandering link-boys and beggars.

As they, walking rapidly and steadily, approached St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the feeble rays of the oil-lamps over every tenth door, that only served to illuminate the signs and cast great shadows from the passers-by, were absorbed in a red glare that touched the brick fronts of the precise houses with a deep glow.

"A bonfire," remarked Mr. Sidney.

The tarpaulin answered in the accents of a gentleman.

"A pope-burning—had we not best take another way?"

As Mr. Sidney hesitated the other added, with a laugh—

"After all, is it not a good omen? Let us see this martyrdom," and he pressed into the confines of the crowd gathered round an enormous bonfire, which blazed in front of the church steps.

Mr. Sidney followed, and the two found themselves absorbed into the multitude of apprentices, shopkeepers, clerks, and citizens of all descriptions, who were engaged in celebrating the acquittal of the bishops by burning His Holiness in effigy.

For awhile they were unnoticed in the general excitement, then Mr. Sidney's appearance was remarked. His plumed hat, his sword, his curling peruke, and the rich velvet mantle that concealed his person instantly told them that he was not of their class. Suspicion was roused that he was a spy of the Court, and they began to rudely jostle him; but the sailor, who kept closely beside him, laughed good-humouredly, and cried—

"Gently, my friends. We are good Protestants come to see the burning of the Devil and the Pope."

"Sure," came a quick answer, "if you were popish dogs you would scarce be here to-night!"

Sidney smiled at the eager young man who spoke.

"No," he said. "Long live the King, the Church, and the Laws—eh, my friend?"

"I do not know so much about the first—but all my heart the second and third!"

The sailor looked sharply at the speaker, who was a youth of two- or three-and-twenty, very plainly dressed, almost shabby, with a keen, dark face, intelligent, ardent eyes, and a quantity of untidy curly hair. He seemed to be a student or clerk, and was obviously the leading spirit of a band of youths of his own age, who were making most of the noise and clamour.

He in his turn closely scrutinized the sailor, then said, in abrupt tones of friendliness—

"I'll get you through. You and the gentleman get behind me, and I'll make 'em give away——"

With the quick energy that seemed his characteristic he shouldered his way through the press and forced a passage for Mr. Sidney and the sailor, bringing them to the steps of the church, where they had a good view over the crowd, and stood directly behind the bonfire.

He paused, a little breathless with fighting through the throng, and with blows given and taken, and asked Mr. Sidney, whose splendour seemed to somewhat overawe him, if he had ever seen a pope-burning before.

"Never," smiled that gentleman; but the sailor added instantly—

"I have, many a time; 'tis the finest fun in the world."

The young man looked at him with the sharp suspicious curiosity of youth. He was quick to notice the difference between speech and dress, and his instant's glance further confused him. The strong light of the bonfire showed a resolute-looking man, dressed in the coarse worn clothes of a common sailor, but unmistakeably a gentleman. He seemed amused and interested. A pleasant smile lit his face, and his grey eyes were bright and self-contained.

"You were like to be clapt up if the watch caught you at this," he said.

The youth was gloriously scornful.

"The watch! Do you think we would disperse for a regiment?"

"Look out for the regiments then," smiled the sailor. "There are sixteen thousand men on Hounslow Heath."

"How many of 'em would take arms against the city?" was the instant retort. "They too are good Protestants."

"I perceive that you are something of a Politic," said Mr. Sidney; and then all further remark was cut short by the arrival of the procession carrying the Pope, at sight of which an almost solemn hush fell on the crowd, who stopped supplying the bonfire with squibs, oil, and tar, and drew back in close ranks before the steps of the church.

The Pope was a huge figure of straw with a wax face, carried in a chair on the shoulders of four men. He was clothed in an expensive scarlet silk robe, and wore on his head a tiara of painted pasteboard, decorated with sparkling glass; his scornful and saturnine face, which, if meant for the reigning pontiff, was a cruel libel on the most honourable and simple of men, was turned a little to one side in the action of listening to a huge black-horned Devil who was busily whispering in his ear, one stiff hand was raised with two fingers lifted in blessing, and the other (both formed of white gloves stuffed, with glass beads on the backs) hung limply by his side.

The young man who had befriended Mr. Sidney and his friend gave some kind of a whistling signal, upon which the greater number of the crowd broke into verses of a doggerel song against popery and the bishops. As each sang different words and tune the result was a mere lusty din, in which not a syllable was distinguishable; nevertheless the hundred voices of hate, derision, scorn, and triumph addressing the dumb grotesque image of a loathed religion had an impressive significance and contained a deep warning.

For these were not isolated nor feeble voices—the will and purpose of a great nation echoed in them—nor were they the voices of mere fanaticism, but the cries of protest raised by a jealous people whose liberties had been struck at and broken.

In the faces the leaping flames brought into relief against the surrounding darkness might be traced that fearless English spirit that would not for long own a master; in the coarse jeers, hoots, and hisses might be discerned that devotion to the reformed faith that had united Anglican and Dissenter (despite the high bid the King had made for the favour of the latter), in stern and unyielding opposition to the Romanist worship that was in vain being forced on them.

Mr. Sidney wondered if James could see these faces and hear these voices it would give him pause; if even his hard bigotry would not learn something of the temper of a strong people roused. It seemed incredible that if the King could see these people now that he could forget Cromwell and his own exiled youth.

The dummy Pope was lowered from his seat of mock triumph and pitched forward into the centre of the flames, the Devil clinging to him, at which a savage roar rose as if real flesh and blood had been sacrificed to appease fierce passions.

Mr. Sidney a little drew back against the flame-flushed pillars behind him. As the spreading fire scorched his face so the temper of the crowd put a kind of awe into his heart.

"Who is to manage these?" he murmured. He was no statesman. Then he pulled his companion by the sleeve. "There was a man killed to-day—let us get on——"

But the sailor, with his arms folded across his breast, was watching the bonfire, in the heart of which the Pope appeared to be writhing as he shrivelled, while his wax face ran into one great tear, his tiara shrunk and disappeared, and the Devil, a black patch in the redness, emitted horrid fumes of sulphur as he was consumed.

"'Tis a pretty show," he said briefly.

"But one not pleasing to the King's Majesty, do you think?" flashed the dark youth who had been their guide.

"No," smiled the other. "I think it would grieve His Majesty even more than the acquittal of the holy fathers——"

The young man laughed; he seemed very excited.

"See you, sir, if you wait awhile you will see a warming-pan burnt—with the pretended Prince of Wales, that Popish brat, within!"

Mr. Sidney interrupted.

"We have a boat to catch at Gravesend, if you could make a passage for us, my friend——"

More than a little flattered at being thus addressed by so fine a gentleman, the youth, by various shouted commands to his companions, elbowings and blows administered in a lively manner, steered Mr. Sidney and the sailor out of the crowd with the same dexterity that he had guided them to the church steps.

On the confines of the press, Mr. Sidney, rather breathless, shook out his mantle and adjusted his hat. The glow from the bonfire cast their shadows long and leaping over the grass. In the distance towards the archery fields and the Mall were other crowds and processions to be seen passing in and out of the trees, and another bonfire was burning in front of the mansion of the Protestant Northumberlands. The air was full of the harsh colour of artificial light, the smell of powder and tar, of burning rag and oil, belching smoke and the crack of squib, rocket and bomb, mingled with noisy shouting of anti-Popish songs and hoarse cheers for the bishops, the Dissenters, and the Protestant succession.

"This must be pleasant music at Whitehall," remarked the sailor, with good-humoured indifference. He was standing now full in the light of the lantern at the corner of the church, and the young man, who had been looking at him with great eagerness, exclaimed softly—

"It is Admiral Herbert!"

He turned instantly.

"My name is not for public hearing to-night," he said quickly. "And, God of Heaven, boy, how did you know me?"

The young man flushed.

"You used to come to the 'Rose' in Charing Cross—near here, you remember? My uncle kept it——"

Arthur Herbert smiled.

"Yes—I remember; and who are you?"

"A scholar at St. John's now," answered the youth, in the same eager, excited way; "that is thanks to my Lord Dorset——"

"Why, I recall," said Mr. Sidney; "'tis my lord's last genius, sure—he who wrote a satire against the court last year with one Charley Montague—a parody on Mr. Dryden's bombast, which sorely vexed him——"

"The same, sir," answered the young man, flushing deeper with pleasure. "Lord Dorset is the Mæcenas of the age, as I have truly found——"

"Well," said the Admiral, "you seem a likely spark—stick to your Pope-burning and you'll find yourself at Court yet—that is good advice. What is your name? I don't read poetry."

"I don't write it, sir," retorted the other, with an engaging touch of impudence. "Only verses—a little satire and a little truth."

Arthur Herbert laughed.

"Well, what is your name?"

"Prior, sir—Matthew Prior."

"Good evening, Mr. Prior, and remember that you did not see me to-night—silence, mind, even to your friends the Whigs."

"I know enough for that, sir," responded the student simply. He took off a battered hat with a courtly air of respect, and discreetly turned away and slipped back into the crowd.

The two gentlemen continued their way.

"We run some risk, you observe," smiled Mr. Sidney. "Who would have reckoned on that chance?"

"None but good Protestants are abroad to-night," answered the Admiral; "but I doubt if you will be safe in London much longer——"

"I will come to The Hague as soon as I dare—tell His Highness so much; but I would not have my going prejudice those who must remain at their posts—it would give a colour to rumours if I was to return to The Hague——"

"My Lord Sunderland manageth the rumours," smiled Herbert.

"My Lord Sunderland," repeated Mr. Sidney reflectively, "is difficult stuff to handle. I tell you plainly that I do not know how far he will go."

"But he will not betray us?"

"No—I can go warrant for that."

They turned down the Strand and walked along the river, which was lively with water-men and boats of music and great barges.

"M. Zuylestein will be sending Edward Russell with further news," said Mr. Sidney. "Look out for him, I pray you, at The Hague."

"Edward Russell must be weary of running to and fro England and Holland," remarked Herbert. "And how long will the King allow M. Zuylestein to drill parties against him?"

Mr. Sidney answered shortly.

"Mr. Russell hath my reason of hatred to the house of Stewart, and as for M. Zuylestein he is too clever to give His Majesty a chance to interfere."

They paused at one of the landing stages, and Herbert shouted to an idle pair of oars that was looking for custom.

"Now, farewell," he said, "lest you shame my appearance—I shall be at Gravesend to-night and, given fair wind, at Maaslandsluys in a day." He pressed Mr. Sidney's hand, smiled, and hastened down the steps.

With a sobbing swish of water the boat drew up; the oars clanked in the rowlocks. Mr. Sidney watched the tall figure in the red breeches of the sailor step in, look back and wave his hand; then the boat joined the others that covered the dark river, and was soon lost to sight in the cross glimmers of lanterns and half-seen shapes.

Mr. Sidney remained gazing down the Thames—behind him the great capital rejoicing with their bells and rockets and bonfires, their shouting and singing, behind him the luxurious palace where the King must be enduring a sharp humiliation. Mr. Sidney smiled; he thought with a keenness rare in his soft nature of his brother who had laid down his life on Tower Hill through the intrigues of the Duke of York, now King. It astonished himself how much the memory of that injury rankled. He had not loved his brother to half the measure that he hated the man who had brought him to death. Indolent in mind and temper, he loathed cruelty, and the blood of Algernon Sidney was not the only witness to the cruelty of James Stewart. Mr. Sidney had seen the look on the fair face of Lord Monmouth when he landed at the Tower stairs; he had seen well-born men and women, implicated only indirectly in the late rebellion, shipped off to Virginia as slaves, while the Italian Queen and her women quarrelled over the price of them; he had seen, in this short reign, many acts of an extraordinary tyranny and cruelty, and his thoughts dealt triumphantly on Mr. Herbert, slipping down the river out of the tumult and excitement to the quiet of Gravesend with an important little paper in his seaman's coat pocket.

CHAPTER IV

THE MESSENGER FROM ENGLAND

Madame de Marsac, one time Miss Basilea Gage and maid of honour to the Queen of England, sat in the window-place of an inn in The Hague and looked down into the street. There was an expression of indifference on her face and of listlessness in her attitude, though a man in black velvet was standing near to her and speaking with an appearance of great energy, and he was M. D'Avaux, minister of King Louis XIV to the States General.

Basilea was Romanist, of a family who had held that faith since the days of Queen Mary Tudor; her husband, two years dead, an officer in the French Army, had left her with a small fortune and no regrets, since she was yet undecided as to whether she had liked him or no; though too clever to be unhappy she was miserably idle, and had drifted from Paris back to London, and from London to Amsterdam, where her late lord's people were prominent among the powerful French faction, and still without finding any interest in life.

It was M. D'Avaux, with whom she had some former acquaintance, who had urgently requested her to come to The Hague, and she was here, listening to him, but without enthusiasm, being more engaged in watching the great number of well-dressed people who passed up and down the wide, clean street.

M. D'Avaux perhaps noticed her inattention, for he broke his discourse with an abrupt question.

"Would you care to see a revolution in your country—'49 over again with the Prince of Orange in place of Cromwell?"

She turned quickly, obviously startled. Though so indifferent to actual happenings, she was tenacious of tradition, and she felt a vast, though passive, admiration for the action of King James in re-establishing in his kingdoms the ancient faith that was hers.

"Why—you mean——" she began, and paused, searching his face with puzzled dark eyes.

"I mean, Madame," said M. D'Avaux strongly, "that your King is cutting away the supports that prop his throne—you must know something of the feeling in England."

"Yes," she assented; "the trouble with the colleges, the declaration of Indulgence, and some rare malicious talk of the Prince of Wales—but nothing like—a revolution!"

The Frenchman smiled.

"Let me tell you some facts. When Henry Sidney was Envoy here he was in reality the channel of communication between the Opposition in England and His Highness—even since his recall he hath served the same turn—and these last months Edward Russell hath been coming and going with messages between the Prince and those great Protestants whom the King hath put out of office."

"If this is known," cried Basilea, "surely it can be prevented—it is treason!"

"What is treason in England, Madame, is loyalty at The Hague—and do you imagine that I have any influence with the States, who are entirely under the rule of the Prince?"

"I have noticed," answered Basilea, "a monstrous number of English and French Protestants at The Hague, but thought they came here for a mere refuge."

"They come here," said M. D'Avaux drily, "for revenge—since the Edict of Nantes was revoked all the Huguenots look to the Prince, and since he refused his assent to the declaration of Indulgence every Englishman who is not a Romanist looketh to him also."

Basilea rose; the sunshine was over her curls and blue dress, and shook a red light from the garnets at her wrist; her eyes narrowed; she was interested by this clear talk of important events.

"What could the Prince do?" she asked quietly.

1. D'Avaux replied with some passion.

"This is the tenth year of the uneasy peace forced on His Highness by His Majesty and the late King Charles, and not a month of that time that he hath not been working to be avenged on us for the terms we obtained then—he hath combined powers in secret leagues against us, he hath vexed and defied us at every turn, and he hath never, for one moment, ceased to intrigue for the help of England against us—in some final issue."

"But England," said Basilea quickly, "is entirely bound to France——"

"Yes; and because of that, and because the Prince of Orange knoweth it, King James is in a desperate strait——"

"Why?"

"Madame, I know the Prince tolerably well—he never relinquishes any idea that hath a firm hold on his mind, and what he cannot accomplish by diplomacy he will assay by force."

"By force!" echoed Basilea, staring at the Ambassador.

He came a little nearer to her and lowered his voice.

"What is the business that keepeth Edward Russell on messenger duty to and fro The Hague and London? What is the business that keepeth the Prince for ever riding from his villa to the States? Why are all the harness makers of the Provinces making bridles, bits, and spurs? Why is the Prince, if there is not some great design afoot, buying up load after load of hay—why are new ships being built, fresh troops being raised?"

"Surely," answered Basilea, "I have heard it said that the States were making ready in case the dispute between King Louis and the Pope anent Cologne should involve attack on their frontiers."

"I do not believe it," said M. D'Avaux. "But King James and Lord Sunderland take your view—they will not be roused, they will not see, and daily they further rouse that loyalty which is their sole support. I am well informed from England that not one man in ten believeth the Prince of Wales to be the King's son, and that they regard the producing of him as a mere fraud to cheat the Princesses of their birthright."

"What do you mean, what do you think?" asked Basilea. "It is not possible that the Prince should claim his wife's inheritance by force of arms?"

"You put it very succinctly," said M. D'Avaux. "That is exactly what I think he will do."

Basilea was silent. The, to her, amazing aspect of international politics disclosed in M. D'Avaux's brief and troubled summary filled her with dismay and anger. The domestic government of England did not concern her, since she did not live under it, and her family, being Romanist, were more prosperous under King James than they had ever been. She had not given much thought to the justice or wisdom of the means the King had taken to convert his kingdom, but she approved of the principle. She had no admiration for the Prince of Orange, and no sympathy for the cause he upheld.

"He would never," she remarked, continuing her thoughts aloud, "dare the scandal of an open rupture betwixt himself and His Majesty, who is both his uncle and his wife's father——"

"There is nothing but dislike between them since the King recalled Sidney and the Prince refused his assent to the repeal of the Test Act——"

"But the Princess," interrupted Basilea. "Why, I used to know her, and I dare assure you she is not one to forget her duty——"

"Her duty!" repeated M. D'Avaux.

He looked at her intently.

"You have touched the reason why I asked you to come to The Hague," he said. "I want you to wait on the Princess and obtain from her some assurance that she would never countenance any menace to her father——"

"I am sure she would not," answered Basilea at once.

"I do hope it, for if she will not support her husband his design is as good as hopeless, since it is her claim, not his own, he must put forward."

Basilea smiled.

"She is a Stewart, must be a little ambitious, if nothing else, and hers was not a love-match that she should sacrifice everything to her husband."

She glanced quickly at M. D'Avaux, and added—

"But you still look doubtful——"

"Madame," he replied earnestly, "the Princess is a very ardent Protestant——"

"She was not at Whitehall."

"—She hath," he continued, "lived ten years with the Prince——"

"They say in England that he doth not treat her kindly——"

"His Majesty hath done his best to put discord between them—when Her Highness discovered that her Chaplain and one of her women, Anne Trelawney, were working on His Majesty's orders to make mischief betwixt the Prince and herself, she dismissed them. I thought that looked ill for us."

Basilea shook her head, still smiling.

"An English princess will not be so soon subdued—I'll undertake to get assurances from Her Highness that she is ignorant of these tales of the designs of the Prince, and that she would never support them if she knew of them."

Basilea spoke with some animation; she felt sure of what she said, and was not ill pleased to be of service to her own and her adopted country in this, as she thought it, pleasant fashion.

She remembered Mary Stewart as a lively, laughing girl, who had detested and opposed her marriage with much spirit, and she had no fear that she would find that wilful gay Princess difficult to manage.

1. D'Avaux was not so confident.

"You do not know the Prince," he remarked, and Basilea laughed.

"He is not so redoubtable where women are concerned, I think," she answered; "at least allow me to try."

"I ask it of you," he said gravely; "for more hangs on this than I dare think."

"Sure, you need not fear the Prince," she returned, "if he had the most wicked will in the world—the difficulties in his way are unsurmountable."

"France," he replied, "must make them so."

On that he took his leave, and left Basilea with more busy thoughts than had been hers for some while since.

She returned to the window-seat, propped her chin on her palm, and looked down the street. She was a pretty seeming woman, slender, dusky brown in the hair and eyes, of a just height and proportion, and her person was shown to advantage by the plain French style of her gown and ringlets, which had a graceful simplicity wholly wanting in the stiff fashions prevailing in England and the Low Countries.

Her window looked upon an end of the Buitenhof, one of the two great squares that formed the centre of The Hague so admired by strangers; it was planted with lime trees, now past their flowering time, but still fragrant and softly green in the gentle air of July.

A great number of people of both sexes, finely dressed, were passing up and down, on foot, on horseback, and in little open chariots and sedans. Basilea noticed many unmistakeably English, Scotch, and French of varying degrees of qualities—soldiers, divines, gentlemen, and women mingling with the crowd, hastening past with intent faces or lounging with idle glances at each other in hopes to detect a friend or patron.

She opened the window and leaned out so that she could see the Buitenhof with the straight lines and arches of the government buildings of the States, the trees that shaded the great fish-pond called the Vyver, and the open square where the carriages passed on their way to the fashionable promenade of the Voorhout and Toorviveld.

Among all the varying figures that caught her glance was that of a tall man in the garb of an English seaman—red breeches, a tarred coat, a cocked hat with his captain's colours, and a heavy sword.

She noticed him first because he stopped to ask directions of two passers-by, English also, and because he was, even among so many, of a fine and showy appearance.

He turned at first towards the arches that led through to the Binnenhof and the Hall of the Knights, then hesitated, turned back, and retraced his steps until he was just under Basilea's window.

Here he paused again, and accosted a stout gentleman in the dress of an Anglican priest, who was dashing through the press with a great air of importance and hurry.

On seeing the tarpaulin he greeted him with noisy surprise and pleasure, and drew him a little out of the crowd, and proceeded to converse eagerly with the unction of the inveterate talker.

Basilea laughed to herself as she observed the seaman's efforts to escape, and to obtain some answer to a question first.

At last he seemed to accomplish both, for he wrenched himself from the powerful presence of the priest, and hastened towards the Stadhuis, while the other called after him in a voice meant to be subdued, but still so resonant that Basilea could hear every word: "The Prince will be back to-morrow evening!"

The seaman waved his hat, nodded, and hastened on.

Basilea wondered why a common sailor should be concerned as to when His Highness returned to The Hague, and concluded, rather angrily, that here was evidence of one of the manifold intrigues which the Whigs, M. D'Avaux had assured her, carried on almost openly in Holland.

CHAPTER V

THE PRINCESS OF ORANGE

Basilea de Marsac waited on Her Highness the day after her interview with M. D'Avaux; a curious coincidence had strengthened her desire to see the Princess, and piqued her curiosity as to the sentiments of that lady. One of the fast packets that were constantly plying between the States and England had brought her a letter from Lady Sunderland, who was, to Basilea, a person who of all others must find it her interest and duty to be intensely loyal. My lady wrote a long and involved letter, but the sum of it seemed to be what M. D'Avaux had put much more plainly, namely, that the King's party (among whom was, of course, Lord Sunderland) had become alarmed at the crisis the actions of His Majesty had brought upon the country in attempting to push forward his own religion, and that they feared an active interference on the part of the Prince of Orange, now his wife's claims were indefinitely postponed by the birth of the Prince of Wales, and his hopes of an English alliance against the French for ever shattered by the policy of King James.

Lady Sunderland concluded by asking of Basilea what M. D'Avaux had asked—that she should discover the mind of the Princess, and draw some promise from her for the satisfaction of Royalist and Romanist, to the effect that Her Highness would never let her title to the English throne be a handle for her husband's political designs.

Basilea was half roused, half amused by the double errand. She was not very well informed about politics, but she felt in her heart an absolute doubt of any revolution in England. All her life there had been talk of it, but it had always ended in a few executions or fights in Scotland, or some such vague conclusions in which she had never been very interested; but she could understand that Lady Sunderland did not feel lukewarm in the matter. Ever since the May of last year, when the Earl had been converted to the Church of Rome (a step which none other of the King's ministers had taken), he had been as detested in England as it was possible for a man to be. The King alone protected him, and if he fell, there was little doubt that his fall also would be swift and terrible.

Basilea liked the Countess; she was better pleased to serve her than to serve M. D'Avaux, and she anticipated, with pleasure, being able to write in answer that the Princess was still a Stewart, despite ten years' residence in Holland.

It was late afternoon when Basilea had her audience (accorded without difficulty) at the Prince's villa beyond The Hague, called the 'huis ten bosch' by reason of the beautiful wood and deer park in which it stood. This house had been built by the Prince's grandmother, Amalia of Solms, and contained the famous hall which she had decorated in honour of her husband, the Stadtholder Frederick Henry. There was no splendour, however, in the apartments Basilea saw; the appointments were neat and comfortable, but neither lavish nor rich, and she had known English ladies better served as to the quantity and appearance of servants than was the Princess Royal of England.

In a room at the back, that overlooked a formal garden filled with roses and box hedges, Basilea found the mistress of the quiet house and the lady whose mind two great kingdoms were anxious to know.

It was a chamber panelled in walnut, and furnished by chairs with worked seats and stools with fringed covers, several fine pieces of Eastern furniture, and many shelves on which stood curious and vivid china monsters and vases, and low pots filled with roses.

Basilea did not know which of the two young ladies seated by the window was the Princess, so utterly had ten years worked their change.

She hesitated after her courtsey, and the taller of the two ladies came forward and took her hand warmly.

"Are you Basilea Gage with whom I used to play at Twickenham?" she asked. "Why did you not come to see me sooner?"

She smiled half wistfully, and turned to her companion.

"This is Mademoiselle Dyckfelt, and this is Madame de Marsac, Anne, whom I told you was coming to-day."

She had a timid way of speaking, as if she was shy, and, to Basilea, something of the formal in her manner, as if she was preoccupied.

The Dutch lady was like most of her countrywomen whom Basilea had observed, very fair and pretty, with that glow and robust brightness that gave the women of Holland their reputation for handsomeness. She was plainly dressed in grey branched with silver, and was engaged in working a chair-cover in cross stitch. The vivid green and blue of the wools she used showed off her small, plump white hands—a common beauty among her nation.

The Princess began talking of England and the people she remembered there; while Basilea answered she observed Mary, who seemed to her disappointingly strange and indifferent.

Still little more than a girl, she was extremely beautiful, uniting her father's aristocratic grace and her mother's soft charm; though dignified and above the common height, she bore herself humbly and with a deprecating sweetness.

Basilea was not the only one who at first sight had been impressed with the air of simple purity which heightened and glorified Mary's beauty, for it was impossible to find a fault in her person or manner: she was unconscious of herself, tactful, without affectations or vanities, watchful for others, and charming in address, though with that pretty reserve that Basilea called formality.

Her features were not unlike those of her ancestress—another Mary Stewart, Queen of Scotland—soft and lovely, childlike in profile, with the gentle curve of contour; but grave and rather sad in the full look, and with the expression of a woman, and a woman who has observed, grieved, and pitied.

Her brown eyes were very large, misty, and continually narrowed from weak sight, her hair, of the Stewart red-brown, hung in thick natural curls from a simple knot in her neck.

She gained no advantage from her dress, which would not have offended a Puritan: the straight, boned bodice and stiff falling stuff of a dull pink colour held no line of grace, and the prim ruffles to wrist and throat were more decorous than becoming. At the English court her attire would have been considered ugly, if not ridiculous, and Basilea did not find it pleasing. She was not herself of a type that can afford to forego the advantages of adornment, and she reflected that with the Princess's beauty and her own taste she could have made a sumptuous appearance.

While thus inwardly admired and criticized, Mary was speaking of England and all her one-time friends there, and Mademoiselle Dyckfelt making comments in pretty broken English, accompanied with a little gasping laugh which Basilea had noticed in many Dutch people.

Through all her amiable converse Mary betrayed some slight inner agitation and expectation, as if she feared the visit might have another meaning than mere courtesy; and Basilea guessed that she, whose position was one of such importance in Europe, must be used to oblique attempts to sound her views.

With a half-faint amusement she made her own essay—

"Highness, I was in good hopes that you would not seem such a stranger to me, because I am instructed to make the venture to speak with you——"

Mary looked at her quickly, and interrupted—

"By whom instructed?"

"Lady Sunderland, Madame, for whom your Highness was wont to have some kindness."

The Princess flushed, and Basilea wondered why, as her sole answer was—

"I think Lady Sunderland a good woman."

Basilea smiled.

"She is also, as Your Highness knoweth, a great politic, which I never was nor could be, and hath set me to ask Your Highness some questions bearing on great affairs."

"Great affairs," said Mary under her breath. She rose gravely. "I think we must not plague Mademoiselle Dyckfelt with this talk. Will you, Madame, come into the garden?"

The Dutch maiden rose and unlatched the long window, then returned placidly to her sewing.

Mary and Basilea descended a few steps into the formal garden, mainly composed of box hedges and clipt rose bushes, with a square pond in the centre bordered with little yellow yew trees in wooden tubs and precise beds of pinks and herbs.

The tall and beautiful trees of the deer park in which the villa stood rose up, with the elegant air of loftiness peculiar to the trees of a perfectly flat country where they are the highest things the eye has within range; the air also was characteristic, being of that strangely exhilarating quality of salt freshness that in every part of the United Provinces served as a perpetual reminder of the sea. It was warm to-day, and the sun was golden in the foliage, and lay in scattered flecks of light among the flowers, and on the pond where two waterlilies were slowly closing to the evening.

"You may speak quite frankly now," said Mary, as they proceeded slowly down the gravel path. "Have you a message from Lady Sunderland?"

"No, Madame," said Basilea, surprised that the Princess should seem to expect it. "Only—it is difficult to express, Highness—but there are monstrous tales abroad in France, England, and even here——"

The Princess looked at her silently.

"They do say," continued Basilea, "that His Highness meddleth in the affairs of England, and these rumours give disquietude to His Majesty——"

Mary broke in, rather breathless—

"I know nothing of business—my husband heareth so much of it abroad that he is glad to talk of other matters at home. What doth Lady Sunderland want of me?"

Basilea answered directness with directness.

"She wisheth to know—that the Earl may put it privately before His Majesty—your mind on the matter between His Highness and the King."

"What matter is that?" asked Mary.

Basilea was at a loss.

"Your Highness must know better than I: as for these horrible rumours——"

Mary paused by a rose bush and asked steadily—

"What rumours?"

"I think it would be unseemly to name them!"

"I will hold you excused," said the Princess, still gravely.

"Then, Madame, 'tis said that His Highness is so exasperate with the policy of His Majesty and postponement of your claim by the birth of the Prince, that he might attempt to do what my Lord Monmouth did——"

Mary's fine fingers pulled delicately at the rose leaves.

"My husband and that poor unhappy gentleman are such different characters and in such different situations," she said, "that there can be no comparison. I think the Prince would never do as the Duke did."

Basilea looked at her keenly.

"'Tis asserted, Lady Sunderland saith, that the Prince is in league with all the discontents of England, that he sheltereth many at The Hague——"

"This country," answered the Princess quietly, "hath always been a refuge for the unfortunate, and it is reasonable that the near connection of my husband to the throne should give him an interest in English business."

Basilea was older than the Princess, whose air of extreme gentleness further emboldened her to take, half unconsciously, a masterful tone.

"I can assure Lady Sunderland that His Highness is innocent of the designs imputed to him."

Mary glanced up from the rose bush; she smiled very slightly.

"Why, you must go to the Prince for that assurance; I know nothing about it."

Basilea stirred the gravel with her square-toed red shoe.

"You must know, Madame," she said slowly, "whether you would hinder or further the Prince his projects?"

Mary flushed, and the full brown eyes narrowed.

"Neither you nor I," she answered, "can discuss His Highness his projects, which ever have been and will be for the good of Europe."

Basilea looked at her curiously.

"I fear Your Highness will think me impertinent, but," she thought of the grave words of M. D'Avaux, and the memory urged her not to be put off by the evasiveness of the Princess—"but there are strange things said in Paris and London——"

"Madame de Marsac," interrupted Mary gently, "if my father hath cause to complain of me, he must send a direct messenger."

Basilea felt herself rebuked.

"I do not carry His Majesty's complaints, Highness," she answered humbly. "I am but the poor engine of the fears of my Lady Sunderland, who saith that in London the Prince his name is on the lips of all the discontents, and it is feared that they might set him up as a pretender; and since that could not be if you refused your consent, it would be a great comfort to His Majesty and his faithful ministers if you would give that assurance."

The Princess took a step forward, then stopped as if by an effort of self-control.

"I cannot deal with these secret and underground counsels," she said firmly; "and my poor brains are not fit for business."

"This is not business, Highness," urged Basilea.

"Whatever you call it," demanded the Princess, "why did you undertake it?"

"Because M. D'Avaux——" began Basilea, then stopped vexed; she had not meant to mention that name.

"M. D'Avaux," repeated Mary, with a heightened colour; "so he hath a mind to know what I shall do if a certain crisis cometh?"

Both the tone and the words seemed to betray more interest and knowledge than she had yet disclosed, and Basilea was encouraged.

"M. D'Avaux is an acquaintance of mine," she said frankly.

"Ah yes," replied Mary; "you are a Papist, and your husband was a Frenchman. I think that meaneth," she added courteously, "that we cannot see things the same."

"Your Highness doth not desire to behold Europe embroiled in another war!"

Mary answered earnestly—

"There is nothing further from my wishes, and no ambition of mine," she added half wistfully, "would disturb anybody's peace. I bless my God that I know the life I am suited to, and I thank Him that He hath given me the grace to know when I am happy."

She put her hand gently on Basilea's sleeve.

"It is getting too dark to remain here, and you have not even looked at my roses!"

Basilea admitted herself defeated. She was a little chagrined at the thought of the lame report she would have to give M. D'Avaux, but she could press no more, especially as she had an uneasy feeling that the Princess thought the less of her for the errand she had come upon.

She left talk of politics, and Mary accompanied her with easy courtesy to the front of the villa, where her hired chariot waited with her maid yawning herself to death over an old-fashioned romance by Mademoiselle de Scudery, which she had found in the inn parlour.

The sky was paling and flushing behind the great avenue of trees rich in their full leafage, and the rooks were noisy in the branches.

"This is a pretty spot, Highness," said Basilea, on the impulse of the moment.

Mary smiled.

Two men were mounting the few wide entrance steps. Basilea noticed them, because one was the red-breeched sailor whom she had seen yesterday beneath her window, the other was a slight gentleman in a circular mantle turned up over one shoulder, wearing riding boats and carrying a whip; Basilea saw his horse being led off by a bareheaded groom.

She could not restrain her curiosity at seeing the seaman entering the Prince's villa.

"Doth Your Highness know that man?" she asked.

Mary glanced at the two as she closed the gate in the garden wall.

"Which?" she asked, smiling.

"The English sailor——"

"No; but he hath good credentials, for that is the Prince with him," said Mary quietly.

Basilea was further surprised; she endeavoured to gain a closer view of the Stadtholder and his companion, but they had entered the house; she was satisfied, however, that she had something to tell M. D'Avaux.

"You must not marvel at the companion of His Highness," continued the Princess; "there are many come here who are glad to wear disguises, owing to the rancour of the persecution of the Protestants in France."

Basilea courtsied her leave. She was quite convinced that the seaman was not French nor on any message from France, and she was beginning to be convinced, too, that the Princess was marvellously changed and different, and that it would be well for neither Lady Sunderland nor M. D'Avaux to be too sure of her compliance.

Mary allowed her to depart without that demonstration of kindness with which she had received her, and Basilea stepped into her chariot feeling disappointed and dissatisfied.

Mary, still standing by the garden wall at the side of the house, watched the little coach swing out of sight down the long darkening drive, and when it was lost in the shadows ran lightly up the steps and in through the tall doors: there, in the light painted vestibule, she found the Prince and the English seaman conversing.

She paused, flushed, and breathing in pants. The Prince took off his hat, and said—

"This is the Princess, sir."

The sailor turned quickly, and gave her a sharp look as he bowed.

"This is Admiral Herbert, Madame," continued the Prince, "who is new come from England."

The colour receded from Mary's face. She glanced in a half frightened way at her husband.

"Oh," she murmured, "I wished to speak to you—but it can wait—for I suppose Admiral Herbert his business is ... important."

There was a tenseness of containment among the three of them, as if they were all aware of great events and would not speak of them.

"If the Princess is informed——" began Arthur Herbert.

The Stadtholder interrupted.

"The Princess knoweth everything, Mr. Herbert."

Arthur Herbert betrayed the slightest surprise, covered instantly by a ready turn of speech.

"Her Highness will understand, then, the importance of my business."

He bowed again, very courteous, to Mary, who answered instantly—

"I will not hinder you, Mr. Herbert, not for an instant."

The Prince looked at her.

"Send for me when I am free, Madame."

With that they both saluted her, and turned into the room at the right of the vestibule.

Mary stood motionless in the twilight, staring at the spot where the English messenger had stood, peered at the closed door that concealed him, then went softly and, it seemed, fearfully away.

CHAPTER VI

THE LETTERS OF MR. HERBERT

When Admiral Herbert found himself closeted with William of Orange, he had some eagerness in observing that Prince whose name was so much in the mouths of men, and who had grown to be a kind of lodestar to Protestant England.

The first thing that impressed a courtier of the Stewarts, used to a lavish and extravagant habit of living, was that there was no splendour in the plain dark room, the stern furnishing of which seemed almost parsimony in a royal Prince, nor any manner of display about the Stadtholder himself, who, with his own hands, shifted the candles in the brass sticks from the mantelshelf to the table, and set open the window on the summer woods.

Arthur Herbert looked keenly at him; he had dropped his hat and mantle on to a chair, and his person was fully revealed in the steady red candle glow.

He was at this time in his thirty-seventh year, at the height of his reputation: the most respected statesman, one of the most feared generals and powerful rulers in Europe, the head of the nation which was supreme in trade and maritime dominion, the foremost champion of the reformed religion, first Prince of the blood in England, the close ally and councillor of the Empire, of Spain, the Northern States, Germany, and, as it was whispered, of the Pope, the leader of the English opposition, and husband to the heiress of that country, the rallying point for the discontents and indignations of all those whom the King of France had injured or the King of England put out of humour.

This combination of circumstance and quality that had given him the unique position he held, made him the most discussed and famous figure at present before the eyes of men. Even where he was abused and decried he was never forgotten, and shared in the minds of the French almost as much attention as their own exalted King.

Added to his present fame was the glamour of past heroism, the history of his splendid house, the great deeds of his ancestors, his own breaking from unhappy childhood and desolate youth to power in one day of chaos and ruin, blood and despair, his almost miraculous deliverance of his country, constant devotion to it, and his firm adherence to the persecuted religion were unique in the history of princes, and lived in the minds of men.

The man who was of this estimation in Europe, who possessed so many extraordinary qualities, and had had so strange a history, appeared to the Englishman as a gentleman of no particular appearance of energy, rather below than above the middle height, and of a frail physique and slenderness of proportion rare in a man of action, and which reminded Herbert of my Lord Shaftesbury, whose impetuous and fiery manners had counteracted the effect of his feeble person.

The Stadtholder differed there, being entirely composed and stately, and holding himself with a certain stiff control, as one trained to maintain dignity and the foremost place in the sight of men.

His countenance was manly, grave, and remarkable, chiefly by reason of his large brilliant eyes of a lively hazel, sparkling and expressive, and his thick dark brown hair, which he wore falling on to his collar like an old-fashioned cavalier; his high aquiline nose, full mouth very firmly set, slightly cleft chin and hollowed cheeks, clear and tanned complexion, conveyed a subtle sense of youth and simplicity, despite his rather severe and austere expression, as if at heart he was still as ardent as when he wrested the three conquered provinces from the French; his face, though thin and worn, was unlined.

He wore a violet riding coat of a heavy fashion, and a cravat of thick Bruges lace and a plain sword. Herbert would never have taken him for a soldier. He wondered if he would ever please the English as he had done the Dutch, or courts as he did people, and was conscious of an unreasonable feeling of incongruity in this being the man looked to as the saviour of England, indeed of half Europe.

The Prince pulled off his gloves slowly, the while looking on the floor. He was seated the other side of the table to Herbert, who thought he had found some reluctance or difficulty in speaking, perhaps because he was using English, with which language he was tolerably familiar, but spoke with no kind of grace, but rather a distaste.

"You are sent by Mr. Sidney?" he asked at last.

He had a short, strong way of speaking; his manner was stately to coldness. Arthur Herbert looked in vain for any trace of emotion or curiosity as to the momentous errand he must know that he, Herbert, had come upon, or even, as he reflected rather vexedly, any welcome for himself.

"By Mr. Sidney and some others, sir," he answered.

The Prince put his gloves on the table, and raised his eyes.

"You have, Mr. Herbert, brought some answer to my late request that some powerful English families should give me a written invitation to this expedition to which the Protestant lords have so constantly, and, of late, so insistently urged me."

Admiral Herbert put his hand into the breast of his common coat, and pulled out a sealed packet, which he handed to the Prince.

"This association, Your Highness, of which you have had advices from my Lord Shrewsbury and Mr. Sydney, is at length signed by seven of our great men, and I pray Your Highness to take it as full warrant for interfering in the present miserable estate of England."

After having delivered this speech, Admiral Herbert looked straightly at the Prince, who was slowly breaking the seals. He felt more enthusiasm for the cause than for His Highness, and more warmly for both when he was not in the actual presence of the Prince, whose personal coldness had an ill effect on the Englishman's impatient nature.

"This is Mr. Sidney his hand," remarked the Prince.

Arthur Herbert laid another letter on the dark, shining table.

"There is also a personal letter from that gentleman."

William looked rapidly over the contents of the packet, and his thin cheek flushed.

"This is definite," he said.

"Your Highness asked that it might be."

The Prince took up the other letter, and read it over with great quickness.

"Mr. Sidney saith my Lord Nottingham would not sign," he remarked; "is that timidity?"

"Some manner of prudence, I suppose, sir; but he will not betray our design. He gave us leave to take his life if we thought him capable of it; but I believe he can go to Court and not discover any sign of the concern he is under, so close a man he is."

"Oh, he is honest," said William dryly. He took up the first letter again; it was signed at the bottom by seven numbers, thus: 25, 24, 27, 29, 31, 35, 33; the Prince did not require the code sent him by Henry Sidney to discover the names these numbers stood for; he had the cipher by heart, and knew that the seven who had signed were Lord Shrewsbury, Lord Devonshire, Lord Danby, Lord Lumley, the suspended Compton, Bishop of London, Admiral Russell, and Mr. Sydney himself. They represented a body of opinion that was weighty; if they were not many, they were powerful, and the Prince himself had said that he did not need many names if they were those of great families. Lord Halifax, who had been one of his warmest supporters, had shrunk from the first hint of anything so violent as a revolution, and the Prince had forbidden the design to be opened to him; for the scruples of Lord Nottingham he had also been prepared; therefore the signatures were the utmost that he could have hoped for; but he gave no sign of excitement or satisfaction, but sat thoughtfully looking at the two papers in his hand.

"Mr. Sidney saith that you are well instructed in these affairs, Mr. Herbert," he said at last, raising his great eyes. "This paper is well composed and comprehensive, but it saith nothing of how far the King is suspicious of these gentlemen and their correspondence with me. And that is an important matter."

Admiral Herbert answered instantly.

"The King is kept amused by my Lord Sunderland, sir, who hath his entire confidence."

"My Lord Sunderland hath not openly joined you?"

"No, sir; and in truth his conduct is a mystery, but Mr. Sidney hath a pledge from the Countess that he will not betray us."

"I am tolerably sure of my lord," answered the Prince. "He hath control of the foreign correspondence, hath he not?"

"Yes, Your Highness. We have felt some fears for M. D'Albeville, the King his envoy here, it being generally believed that he is in the pay of M. Barillon."

"He receiveth some kind of pension from him," said the Prince calmly, "and maketh him all manner of promises. But he is better fee'd by me, and I do know that he sendeth beguiling letters home."

"Then I think there is no one likely to open the King his eyes. It all resteth now on the resolution of Your Highness."

The Prince very faintly smiled.

"They suggest any attempt, if any be made, this year, do they not?" he said, instantly grave again.

"At once, sir, is what we should wish."

The Prince rose and crossed to the hearth.

"This winter would be the soonest," he answered quietly. "Tell me more of England—it is the King his purpose to call a packed parliament in the autumn?"

Arthur Herbert replied with a kind of angry energy that betrayed the force that had involved him in these intrigues.

"The charters being taken from the towns, the franchise is in the King his hands, and is only to be granted to those who will swear to return His Majesty his candidate, the Protestant Lord-Lieutenants have been displaced by Catholic, and they have orders to let no one into office who will not consent to the repeal of the Test Act—so we are all officered by Papists, and to be a Protestant is to starve."

"My uncle," said the Prince, with an accent of cold contempt, "would never make a good tyrant; when liberty is conquered 'tis by more subtle ways than this."

Arthur Herbert's eyes sparkled.

"I tell you, sir, that in one place where the electorate hath been reduced to fifteen, even these are so little to be relied upon, the King was told his man had no chance."

"Why, surely," answered William, "the English are not of a spirit to endure this monstrous breakage of the laws."

Arthur Herbert looked at him again with that half admiration, half dislike; in truth there was nothing in common between the two men but enthusiasm for the same cause—in the one transient, impulsive, based on personal interest; in the other strong, unchanging, deep as life itself.

Some weeks ago the Englishman had received a letter from the Prince offering him his protection, and Arthur Herbert could not recognise in the quiet Stadtholder the writer of that warm, firm, courteous, well turned letter, but none too quick as his perceptions were, they perceived that there must be something in this man that he had missed; the fire and ardour might escape him, but it must be there. Meanwhile, gratitude was still his cue; warming with a real sense of the grievous hurts done to the liberties of England, he proceeded to enlarge on the text of the letter, to paint the distracted, exasperated condition of the public mind in England, the common hopes of the Prince, the ardent desire among the most prudent and knowing men of affairs for his active interference before the packed parliament was called to force the repeal of the Test Act, the disbelief in the young heir being a child of the Queen's, and the small chance that either the army or the navy would be loyal to James.

The Prince listened with attention but no sign of feeling; when Mr. Herbert finished William crossed to the window and closed it, the draught was setting the candles guttering.

"M. Zuylestein hath been successful?" he asked, and coughed a little.

"He seemeth a most able man, sir; at his secret house in Greg Street all this hath been considered and performed. We did desire him to remain in England until we had an answer from Your Highness, and, to give a careless air to his staying, he hath gone into the country."

"It is well," answered the Prince, approaching the table. "Mr. Herbert, you shall have your answer very soon. I shall to-night consult with M. Fagel and M. Dyckfelt, who, as you know, were aware of these affairs from the first inception of them; to-morrow I will advise with you again. Meanwhile I will ask you to take your entertainment at my house."

He paused to draw breath, as he always did after any save those very brief sentences he usually employed. The asthma he had had for years was obvious in these painful gasping breaths and constant coughs.

"You have done me a great service," he continued. "I am very much obliged to you; you are a man of spirit."

Admiral Herbert rose.

"I am greatly indebted to the generosity of Your Highness; but there are spies at The Hague, and it might give a colour to reports already too persistent were I discovered to be lodging with Your Highness. Among the fugitives from England in the town I am easily hid."

Again William gave his faint, instantly checked smile.

"I am glad that you are not forgetful of prudence, Mr. Herbert. We cannot be too careful."

Mr. Herbert hesitated, eyed the Prince, then said, with more boldness than he felt—

"I must tell Your Highness that there is one matter, too delicate to commit to writing, that hath been in debate among your friends in London——"

"Ah?" questioned the Prince.

"—'tis the attitude of the Princess, sir."

William seemed to slightly stiffen and straighten.

"What should her attitude be but the same as mine?" he asked.

Mr. Herbert coloured.

"Forgive me, sir, she is King James his daughter——"

The Prince interrupted—

"Also my wife," he said quietly, but with extraordinary force and, it seemed, pride. "You shall hear the lady for yourself, sir."

He touched a heavy bell on the table and a servant instantly appeared.

"Request the presence of Her Highness," he said, then spoke again to Herbert when the man had gone.

"It is only just that in this great issue in which she is so intimately concerned that you should hear her mind from her own lips."

"No one doubteth the loyalty of the Lady Mary to yourself, sir," answered Mr. Herbert, lying cheerfully, for he had been one of the most cynical in discussing this same loyalty in London.

William coughed again, and seated himself by the table with his Frisian lace handkerchief pressed to his lips. Mr. Herbert was suddenly impressed by the fact that he looked not only ill but in pain.

A little pause of silence, and the Princess entered. She had changed her gown, and wore a dress of the same stiff pattern in white brocade, with tinsel and a ribbon of pearls in her hair.

William rose and gave her one look as she closed the door, then lowered his eyes as he spoke.

"Madame, Mr. Herbert cometh from England with an invitation to me from my friends there to go there with a force to protect the laws and the religion——"

"Ah!" exclaimed Mary; she came straight to the table and dazzled in the candlelight. Mr. Herbert looked at her, and noticed only her comeliness; he was not a man to distinguish types or degrees in beauty. If a woman were pretty, to him she was nothing more, and the prettier she was the less he credited her with sense or strength. The Princess's air of dignity and spiritual look did not save her from this judgment; he dismissed her as a pleasing young creature, useful for nothing save to smile and work fantastic finery when she was not saying her prayers. He smiled, therefore, at the Prince's grave way of speaking to her; she seemed, he noticed, much moved, her body quivered, and she fixed her eyes on her husband with a painful intensity.

"You know," he continued, with a certain simplicity that had a curious effect, taken with his great seriousness, "the project that was first suggested to me by Lord Mordaunt a year gone; this hath been repeated by weightier men, and the times are riper——"

He paused rather abruptly.

"Will you tell Mr. Herbert that you would approve of this undertaking?" he finished, and with a palpable effort.

Mary withdrew her eyes to fix them on Mr. Herbert.

"Surely," she said, "you do not require that assurance from me?"

She gave a little weak laugh, and clasped her hands tightly and unclasped them.

"I do not know what words to choose to convince you how utterly I am in the hands of my husband, nor how foolish I am in matters of business." She drew a deep breath, and added, with a blushing earnestness, "If circumstances permit my husband to make this attempt, my will is one with his in the design, which I consider holy as well as just——"

Mr. Herbert bowed, and the bright young beauty added with the gravity that was her manner—

"—but if my husband his design was not just, I fear I should still support him in it!"

Mr. Herbert could do nothing but bow to this outspoken statement; if the words were spontaneous or learnt, lesson fashion, from the Prince, was no matter to him. They set at rest the doubts some of the seven, particularly Lord Danby, had raised concerning her attitude.

He took his leave of the Princess, and she seemed like one amazed, as if she neither saw nor heard him. The Prince went with him into the antechamber, and the last look Herbert had of Mary was the sight of her standing quite still, with her face as pale as the little braid of pearls in her dark hair, and the fingers of her right hand pressed to the tinsel bows on her stiff bodice.

In a few moments the Prince returned, and then she moved abruptly and took the tall-backed walnut chair Mr. Herbert had occupied, pushed it from the table, and gazed up at her husband.

He had still the two letters in his hand. He looked at Mary. With the departure of the Englishman his manner had entirely changed; this was very noticeable, though he said nothing.

"You are fatigued," said Mary in a shaking voice, "so fatigued—I know——"

He cast the letters down between them.

"Oh, silly!" he answered, "that must be always thinking of my fatigues!"

He put his thin hand over hers, that rested on the edge of the table, and gave an excited little laugh.

"Thou hast heard this man, Mary.... I think I am pledged to an extraordinary task."

CHAPTER VII

THE SILENT WOOD

Mary answered simply, but with a dreadful force of emotion—

"You will go?"

He replied to her tone more than to her words.

"Nay, I must." He pressed the fingers lying cold under his. "Do thou forgive me, but I must."

"Oh, God pity me!" cried Mary.

The Prince flushed.

"There is no other way to preserve Christendom," he said; "if I do not take this step there is a life's work wasted, and we are no better than we were in '72."

"I know," she answered hastily. "I know—but—oh, that our duty had lain another way! Yet I will not be weak; if I cannot help I will not hinder."

She bit her lip to keep back tears, it seemed, and smiled valiantly.

"Tell me all that Mr. Herbert said," she asked.

He broke out at that.

"These foreigners! That black-avised stalwart thinketh of nothing but his own interest. He cometh here, in his feeble disguise, like a boy playing at a game, and, by Heaven, 'tis the manner they all take it in——"

"You must not call them foreigners," said Mary, in a quick distress; "your mother's people and mine——"

The Prince lifted his hand from hers, and let it fall impatiently.

"Foreigners to me! Once I may have felt that tie, but now I dislike them when they flatter and when they sneer." He changed abruptly to a tenderer tone. "What had you to say to me?"

"Nothing," she answered, "of importance beside this news; only that an old schoolfellow of mine—a meddling Papist—(God forgive me, but I liked her not) sought to sound me to-day, set on by M. D'Avaux, who must guess something—but what is that beside this?"

She pointed piteously to the letters.

"They have committed themselves now, these gentlemen," remarked William, with a certain grim satisfaction. "They can scarcely go back on their written word, even these weathercocks of Englishmen."

"They want you to go—this year?" She could not keep a certain energy of fear from her tone.

"Before the parliament is called in the autumn," he said concisely.

Mary rose abruptly and crossed to the window. The rustle of her stiff gown made a noticeable sound in the stillness, which was deep and intense—the inner stillness of the house set in the outer stillness of the wood. The glance of the Prince followed her. He stood silent.

"There must be difficulties." She spoke without looking round.

"Difficulties! Ah yes, and these English do not guess one-half of them."

She made no reply. Her head bent and her fingers fumbled at the latch, which she presently undid, and a great breath of cool air, pure, with the perfume of a hundred trees, swept into the room.

The wood was motionless, the boughs dark against a lighter sky; one or two stars pulsed secretively through and above the leafage, for all the summer night they had a cold look, as if they circled in far-off frozen latitudes.

Mary knew and loved the wood so well that she was sensitive to those subtle changes in it which were like moods in a human being; to-night, unseen, shadowed like the thought of coming trouble, it seemed to her sad, mysterious, and lonely, as the image of retreating happiness.

She rested her head against the mullions, and presently put her hands up to her face. Her husband, who had stood without a movement by the table watching her, at this crossed over to her side.

"I would to God," he said with energy, "that this could be helped. I would the scandal of a break with your father could be avoided. But he hath had every chance to be my friend and ally—you must admit, Mary, that he hath had every chance."

The few words conveyed to the Princess his meaning. She knew that he referred to his long uphill struggle, lasting close on twenty years, to induce England to shake off the yoke of France, and, in taking her proper place among nations, restore the balance of power in Europe. Throughout the years of the disgraceful reign of his Uncle Charles, William had never swerved from his policy of endeavouring to detach him from France, for it was very evident that but little headway could be made against Louis while England was in his pay. When James had come to the throne, the Stadtholder, with the utmost patience, had changed his tactics to please the new King, and had, as he said, given him every chance to put himself at the head of the inevitable conflict between France and Europe, which must shortly take place.

Mary knew this; she knew how reluctantly her husband would employ force against so near a kinsman, how unwillingly he would leave Holland, how much long experience had taught him to mistrust the levity of the English, even those most professedly friendly to him, and she was aware that only a tremendous need could force him to this tremendous resolution, which was at once more daring and more necessary than any man could realize save himself.

In her heart she blamed her father most bitterly for forcing on them this hateful expedient; but would not say so, nor open her heart at all on that matter, lest her lips said more than her conscience could approve.

So to this remark that she so perfectly understood she replied nothing, and did not move her hands from her face.

The Prince spoke again rapidly.

"Everything is strained to breaking-point, and he who strikes the first blow will have the advantage. If I go into the fight again without the help of England, I am no better than a man fighting with tied hands——"

He paused, and added with vigour—

"We cannot do it alone. We must have England."

It was what he had said sixteen years ago in '72, and the years had made the need more, not less, imperative. He continued, as if he justified himself to that still figure of his wife, with her hands before her face.

"I am forced to this decision. No consideration of justice, of ambition, nay, even of diplomacy or good sense, can move His Majesty to break off with France; his insults to the liberty of England are incredible. He hath done all he can to thwart, cross, and hamper me. And now is the moment when we must try conclusions."

The Princess's white brocade shivered with her trembling.

"I know," she murmured—"I know."

But she was weeping, and the tears ran down through her fingers.

The Prince was at a loss to know why she was so distressed. She had long been involved with him in the growing rupture with her father, to whom no affection or respect bound her, but the mere name of duty, and lately she had been well aware that the actions of the King were driving the Prince into open opposition.

He looked at her, rather pale, and frowned.

"You think of your father..." he said, ... "your father..."

Mary, who knew that tears vexed him, endeavoured to check her sobbing; but she could not control her voice to speak.

"I am indeed unfortunate," added the Prince rather grimly, "that to do what I must do I am under the necessity of the scandal of a breach in my own family."

She answered faintly, pressing her handkerchief to her eyes—

"God forgive me, I did not think of His Majesty."

"Of what, then?"

There was the slightest pause, and then she answered steadily, still staring out at the dark wood—

"Of—ourselves. Of the great change this will make—success or failure."

The Prince was silent.

"I have been," continued Mary, very low, "so happy here—in the life most suited to me, in this dear country, where every one is so good as to love me a little."

The candlelight glimmered in the little braid of pearls in her hair and flowed in lines of light down her thick satin gown, showed, too, her cheek colourless and glistening with tears.

The Prince, standing close to her, with his back to the window, watched, but neither spoke nor moved.

"It is nigh ten years," she said, "since you went to the war ... and now the peace will be broken again.... And I know not how I can well bear it if you leave me."

The Prince was still silent, and studied her dimly seen face (for her back was to the light) with what was almost a passionate attention.

"I am a poor creature," she added, with a kind of desperate contempt for herself, "to think of my wretched self at such a juncture; what are my own melancholies compared to what you must undergo? Yet, humanly speaking, I have no courage to face this crisis ... that my father should be guilty of such a horrible crime against Church and State, and you bound by your duty to oppose him by force——"

"It had to be," said the Prince sombrely. "This rupture was inevitable from the first, though I tried to deny it to myself. But in my heart I knew, yea, ever since '72, that England would never get herself out of this tangle from within."

"But it is hard," replied Mary; "even though I know the hand of God in it——"

She turned her eyes, tearless now, but moist and misty, on her husband, and added simply—

"If you knew how happy I have been here you would understand how I dread the mere chance of leaving it——"

"I shall return," he answered. "It is not possible nor wishful that I should dethrone the King; but I will get such a handle to English affairs that they will never league with France again; and thou—thou needest not leave The Hague for an hour."

"There is the least of my troubles disposed of," she answered sadly. "For you forget how your poor wife loves you, and how the thoughts of the manifold perils, and your own rash temper that will not regard dangers, will put me into a fright which will come between me and God Himself."

The tears gushed up again, but she checked them, dabbing her eyes with a damp handkerchief, while she exclaimed on the gasp of a trembling laugh—

"If I cry any more I shall be blind for a week!"

The Prince put his hand on her shoulder.

"'Tis a silly to spend tears for me," he said, "who will go into no more dangers than I have ever been used to, and who only taketh the common risk of common men——" He paused a moment, then added abruptly—

"Yet God He knoweth these tears of thine are all I have in the world for my solace, and I was one of Fortune her favourites, child, to have you to my wife."

His hand fell from her white sleeves, and she caught it between hers so that the rings he wore pressed into her palms.

"Only love and pity me a little," she said, "and I can bear anything. For surely I only live to serve you."

A pause fell, more hushed than common silence; they stood side by side looking out on to the wood, now sad and dark, which had surrounded all their united lives.

Mary was in that mood which takes refuge from the real facts in symbol. She did not look back on her life, but on the history of the wood since she had known it; radiant in summer, complaining in the wind, silent in the rain, bare and bright and wonderful amid the snow, flushed with loveliness in the spring. She thought that this pageant had ended for her, that though the wood might bloom and change she would never see it again after these leaves fell; she had been haunted, though not troubled, all her life by the presentiment of an early death, and now this feeling, which she had never imparted to any, became one with the feeling that the wood was passing, ending for her, and that all the thousand little joys and fears associated with the trees, the flowers, the sunshine, and the snow, were fading and perishing to a mere memory.

Her fingers tightened on the Prince's hand.

"'Tis such a beautiful night," she said in a strange voice; "it maketh me feel I must die."

He, who all his life had lived on the verge of death, smiled to hear these words uttered by blooming youth.

"You," he said calmly, "have no need to think of that for many a year. Death and you! Come, you have stared too long into the dark."

Reluctantly she let his hand free, and latched the window with something of a shiver, but smiled too at the same time, in a breathless way.

"What will you do now?" she asked.

The Prince went to the table and snuffed the candles with the shining brass snuffers, and the flames rose up still and pointed.

"I have sent for M. Dyckfelt and M. Fagel," he answered, and seated himself on one of the stiff walnut chairs. His face was bloodless under the tan of his outdoor life. The excitement that had shown when Mr. Herbert left had utterly gone; he was composed, even sombre and melancholy, and his thoughts were not to be guessed by his countenance.

Mary looked at him with an almost terrified longing for him to disclose his mind, to some way speak to her, but he seemed every second to sink deeper into a silence that was beyond her meddling.

She moved about the room softly, picked up her sewing from a cabinet in the corner, and began disentangling the coloured cottons that had been hastily flung together.

The Prince looked round at her suddenly.

"Have you seen Dr. Burnet of late?" he asked.

"Yes—he came yesterday when you were out hunting."

"Well," said William, "not a word of this to him—I would not trust him with anything I would not say before my coachman."

Mary smiled; she shared her husband's dislike to the officious, bustling clergyman who considered himself so indispensable to the Protestant cause, and who was tolerated for the real use he had been to the Prince.

"Can you not trust my discretion?" she asked.

He gave her a brilliant smile.

"Why, I think you are a fair Politic, after all——"

The usher, entering to say that the Grand Pensionary and M. Dyckfelt were without, interrupted him, and the Princess, pale and grave again, said hastily—

"I will go—but I shall be in the withdrawing-room when they have gone——"

She waited till William had dismissed the usher, then added, in a tremble—

"—You will let me know what you have decided? I could not sleep else," she added piteously.

He held out his hand and drew her up to him.

"Child," he said earnestly, "'tis already decided; 'tis only the means to be discussed—and those thou shalt hear at once."

He patted her hand and let her go. With a kind of wild gaiety she caught up her sewing silks. She was laughing, but it was a laughter more desperate than her gravity. She did not look at the Prince again, but hurried from the room, a gleam of satins in the sombre setting.

The Prince looked after her, then picked up the two letters from England.

CHAPTER VIII

THE POLICY OF THE PRINCE

Gaspard Fagel, Grand Pensionary of Holland, and M. Dyckfelt, entered the little room where the Prince awaited them. They were both statesmen who had been trained under the last Grand Pensionary, John de Witt, whose Parliamentary Republic had kept the Prince twenty years out of his hereditary offices, and both retained something of the simplicity and sternness of their early life, especially M. Dyckfelt, who wore the plain falling band of the Republican era and a suit old-fashioned in primness and sombre colour.

He was a cleverer man than M. Fagel, who was utterly and entirely under the dominion of the Stadtholder, and saw too clearly with his master's eyes even to have an opinion of his own. His manner to the Prince was the more humble, but both addressed him with that deep respect which does not preclude perfect openness.

William looked at them both sharply, then down at the letters in his hand.

"I have received the invitation from England for which I have been waiting," he said.

1. Dyckfelt bowed, and M. Fagel answered—

"May I congratulate Your Highness——"

"Not yet," interrupted William. "Listen first to these letters—they ask almost the impossible."

He made a little gesture to the straight chairs the other side of the table, and the two seated themselves. M. Dyckfelt had flushed with eagerness and excitement, M. Fagel looked tired and ill. They were both considerably older than the Prince, both men of a fine type with honest, shrewd faces.

William drew his chair nearer the table and held the letters under the glow of the flame of the tall wax candles.

"These," he said, looking down at the flowing English writing, "were brought me by Mr. Herbert, whom I suppose you met, M. Dyckfelt, in England, and are written by Mr. Sidney."

He paused with a little cough; neither of the other two men spoke.

"In the preamble," continued William, "they say that they are pleased to learn from M. Zuylestein that I will be of assistance to them, but they fear the difficulties; and though every one is so dissatisfied with the King his government it would not be safe to speak to them beforehand—and though they might venture themselves on my landing they will do nothing now." He smiled unpleasantly, and added, "In brief, they are on the winning side, and I must go with strength enough to defend myself until they can be gotten into some order. For the army, they say the discontent is such that the King could not count on them, and for the navy, they believe not one in ten would do him any service in such a cause."

"Mine own observations confirm this advice," said M. Dyckfelt, with his eyes fixed on the Prince. "And M. Zuylestein hath writ the same."

William made no comment on that.

"Now," he said, "we come to the gist of the business, which is, that these gentlemen fear affairs will be worse next year, both by the officering of the army with Irish Catholics, the calling of a packed Parliament to pass the repeal of the Test Act, and the employment of violent means against the remaining liberties of the Protestants."

He raised his brilliant eyes to the two intent faces opposite.

"Therefore they wish me to undertake this expedition this year."

A soft exclamation broke from Gaspard Fagel.

"Can it be done?"

"If it must be done it can be done," said the Prince firmly; "and I think it is 'nunc aut nunquam,' M. Fagel."

1. Dyckfelt gave a movement of irrepressible excitement.

"Do they not recognise the difficulties of Your Highness?"

William looked again at the letter.

"These are their words, Mynheer: 'If the circumstances stand so with Your Highness, that you believe you can get here time enough, in a condition to give assistance this year sufficient for a relief under these circumstances which have been so represented, we who subscribe this will not fail to attend Your Highness upon your landing, and to do all that lies in our power to prepare others to be in as much readiness as such an action is capable of, where there is so much danger in communicating an affair of such a nature, till it be near the time of its being made public.' Then follow their difficulties: 'We know not what alarm your preparations for this expedition may give, or what notice it will be necessary for you to give the States beforehand, by either of which means their intelligence or suspicions here may be such as may cause us to be secured before your landing——'"

William laid the paper down.

"That is their main trouble—they doubt whether I can be so secret as not to cause them and all like to support me to be clapt up before I sail—and wish to know my opinion on it—further, they mislike my compliment to the King on the birth of the Prince of Wales, which hath, they say, done me injury among the Protestants, of whom not one in a thousand believeth the child to be the Queen's—and for the rest—dare I, will I, adventure on the attempt?"

He drew a deep breath as he finished this speech, and fixed his eyes on the dark, uncurtained square of the window as if he pictured something in his mind too vast, too confined, for the narrow room, and must imagine it filling the silent night without.

1. Fagel spoke, very low.

"Your Highness doth not hesitate?"

"I cannot," answered the Prince simply; "for it is the only way to gain England from France."

In those plain words lay the whole policy of his life—to gain England from France, to weigh the balance of Europe against Louis by throwing into the scale against him a nation so powerful, so wealthy, and anciently so glorious as England; for ten years he had been at the hopeless task of gaining England through her King, now he was going to ignore the King and go straight to the people; but confident as he was in his destiny, the difficulties of the project seemed overwhelming.

He turned again to the letter.

"This is signed by seven great lords," he said, "but I do not know that they are any of them great Politics—Mr. Russell and Mr. Sidney are the most knowing in affairs, and the last sendeth me words of no great encouragement——"

He picked up the other letter.

"There is advice here that I should take M. de Schomberg for the second in command, for he is beloved in England."

"Hath he not been too long in the service of France?" asked M. Fagel.

"Yet he resigned all his posts when the Edict of Nantes was revoked," said M. Dyckfelt. "And being so staunch a Protestant, and so famous a captain, it would be well if Your Highness could borrow him, as Mr. Sidney saith."

"He is very knowing in his profession," said William, without enthusiasm; "but I doubt he will be too dear—apart from his age, and, God forgive me, I do not relish a lieutenant of eighty."

He leant forward with one arm resting on the dark table. Behind him was the shadowed mantelshelf and the dark picture of a storm that occupied the whole width of the chimney shaft, obscured in gloom and touched only vaguely now and then with passing glimmers of candlelight. The Prince's face, which wore an extraordinary expression of concentration and resolve, was thrown out clearly against this darkness, for the lights stood directly before him, and the two men watching him, almost with suspended breath, were (though so familiar with his features) powerfully impressed by this intent look of unconscious strength in the mobile mouth and glowing eyes.

There was the same spirit of enthusiastic energy in his words, though his utterance was laboured and his voice husky from so much speaking.

"Those are the difficulties of the English," he said. "Mine, you know,"—he brought his fine hand down lightly on the table,—"after all they are—as always—summed up in one word—France."

The manner in which he stressed that name was almost startling in its bitterness, hatred, and challenge.

"Is it possible," asked M. Fagel, who was always at first afraid of the daring schemes of the Prince, "for you to deceive the French?"

"M. D'Avaux is a clever man," answered William grimly, "but Albeville and Sunderland will lull King James, and even I think M. Barillon. My Lord Sunderland," he added, with some admiration, "is the finest, most bewitching knave I have ever met——"

"Then," said M. Dyckfelt, "there are a many at the Court whose interest it is to keep the King deceived—namely, those nobles whose letters of service I brought to Your Highness—and from what I observed of His Majesty he was so infatuate with his own conceptions of affairs as to give scant hearing to good advice."

"That may be," answered M. Fagel. "But will France be so easily beguiled? M. D'Avaux at The Hague itself must suspect."

"He doth already," said William, in a kind of flashing shortness; "but he cannot prove his suspicions."

"Your Highness," asked M. Fagel, still anxious, "must take an army and a fleet with you——"

"You do not think," answered the Stadtholder, "that I would go with a handful of adventurers, like my poor Lord Monmouth?"

"Then," urged the Grand Pensionary, "what is to become of the States with all their defences beyond the seas and you absent?"

An expression of pain crossed William's face.

"It must be risked," he said, in his hoarse, tired voice. "Do you not suppose I have counted these risks?" he added half fiercely.

1. Fagel looked at him straightly.

"Will the States permit Your Highness to take these risks?" he asked.

"I must hope to God that the States will trust me as they have done before," answered William, with dignity.

"Your Highness must lay down new ships, raise new companies, and under what pretence?"

"It can be done," said William. "Have not Algerine corsairs shown themselves in the North Sea? There is one excuse."

1. Dyckfelt spoke now.

"I see other difficulties. I do not think that Your Highness need fear the loyalty of the States, but what of your Romanist allies, the Pope himself?"

"The Pope," said William calmly, "is on the verge of war with Louis over the Cologne affair, and as long as I stand against France I am assured of his secret support—and as for England, I have it from a sure hand that His Holiness was so offended by the sending of Lord Castlemaine as envoy that all King James his compliments to his nuncio have had no effect."

He could not forbear a smile, for in truth the sending of a man who owed his very title to an infamous wife to the court of the saintly Pontiff was one of those almost incredible blunders it is difficult to believe even of a stupid man.

"I have good hopes from that incident," continued the Prince. "The King who made that mistake may make others."

"Ah! Highness," said M. Dyckfelt, "the mistakes of King James will not help you so much as your own wisdom."

William glanced at the speaker. In the faith and trust of such lay his surest strength. These men, incorruptible, clever, industrious, devoted, and patriotic, such as the two now facing him, were the bulwark of the position he had held fifteen years, the instruments of all his projects. These thoughts so moved in his mind that he was constrained to speak warmly.

"Mynheer, neither on my own understanding nor on the mistakes of my enemies do I rely, but on the services of such as you and M. Fagel."

Praise was rare from the Prince they served, and at the sound of it the two grave diplomats coloured.

1. Dyckfelt answered.

"Where should Your Highness find perfect loyalty if not in us?"

"God be thanked," said William, with a contained passion, "I have no cause to doubt my own people. But here," he added frankly, "we have to deal with foreigners, and those a nation of all others light and changeable in politics, arrogant and wilful. At present every noble out of office for not attending Mass, and every officer removed to give place to an Irish Papist, is for me; every courtier who thinketh the King insecure is my very good friend, and every country gentleman deprived of his vote raileth against King James—it will take some diplomacy, gentlemen, to combine these into a firm support for my design, and at the same time to conciliate the Catholics."

"There is a great body of fanatics very eager to call Your Highness their champion," said M. Dyckfelt.

"The Hague is full of them," replied the Prince; "but as each man spendeth all his energies in advancing his own grievances and his own schemes there is not much use in them. Methinks the Tories are a surer strength, but they love me not—only use me to save their liberties. The Whigs shout for me, but know me not——"

"They are a corrupt and shallow people," said M. Fagel.

M. Dyckfelt, who had spent several months in England marshalling the discontented factions, and putting them under the leadership of the Prince, answered this statement of the Grand Pensionary.

"There are many able, knowing, and patriotic men among them, though, being out of office, they are not so commonly heard of as the knaves who make the ministry."

William spoke with some impatience.

"Heaven help me, I would never trust an Englishman, unless it were Mr. Sidney; for when they are honest they are lazy, as Lord Halifax and Sir William Temple, and too indifferent to business to be stirred; and when they are dishonest, which I ever found the great majority, they are the most shameless creatures in the world."

"Yet in the present instant Your Highness must trust them."

William smiled grimly.

"Their heads are on their secrecy this time, Mynheer. Besides, I think these men are spirited enough if I can use them before their indignation cools."

There was a second's pause of silence, then M. Fagel spoke.

"Your Highness will require a vast deal of money."

"Yes," said the Prince dryly; "but I believe that it can be raised.'

"In England?" inquired M. Dyckfelt.

"—and among the French refugees here—and from my own fortune, Mynheer, which hath ever exceeded my wants—also, Mynheer, I hope the States will help."

"How great a sum would it be, Highness?"

William, who had the whole project already clear in his head, and had made careful calculations as to the cost, answered at once.

"About three hundred thousand pounds."

M. Fagel was silent. His secret thought was, that to raise this money, overcome all opposition, and complete every preparation by the autumn was impossible.

The Prince was quick to divine his doubt.

"You think I cannot do it?" he asked, with that breathlessness that was a sign of his rare excitement.

"No, Highness. I think of France."

"France!" cried William. "I think of France also."

"If they should attack us while you were absent—or even before you were ready——"

William lifted his hand gravely and let it fall lightly on the smooth surface of the table.

"Ah, if—M. Fagel," he said solemnly; "but that is in God His keeping, where all our destinies be—and we can but fulfil them."

He smiled a little as if he thought of other things, and his bright gaze again sought the window, but instantly he recalled himself.

"I need detain you no more to-night—I shall need to see the States separately and the Amsterdamers—everything must be put in train immediately."

All three rose. The two older men were much moved; before the mind of each were pictures of ten years ago when with the same deliberate courage and heroic fatalism the Prince had pitted himself against France and been forced by the treachery of Charles Stewart into the peace of Nymwegen.

Ten years ago, and ever since William had been working for and planning a renewal of the war he had then been forced to conclude; now it seemed that he had accomplished his desire, and that his re-entry into the combat would be in a manner to take the breath of Europe.

Grave men as these two were, and well used to the spectacle of high policies, they felt that extraordinary thrill which shakes those about to watch the curtain draw up on tremendous events.

They knew that in that quiet little room actions were being resolved and put in train that would stir every court in Europe and make all the pomp of Versailles show hollow if successful; and looking on the Prince, they could not think of failure.

When they had taken their leave, William locked the two letters in a Chinese escritoire. Mr. Sidney had requested that they, being in his known hand, might be destroyed, but the Prince considered his desk as safe as the fire, and was always loath to burn papers of importance.

In that same inner drawer where these letters now lay were offers of services from many famous English names, and that correspondence with Henry Sidney which had prepared the way for the invitation received to-night; also all the letters from King James written since the marriage of Mary, which the Prince had carefully kept.

As he turned the little gold key in the smooth lock he thought of his father-in-law and of the personal aspect of his undertaking. Though he would very willingly have avoided the odium and scandal that he must incur by a break with so near a relation, he had no feelings of affection or even respect for King James. They were antagonistic in religion, character, aims, and policy. James had opposed the Prince's marriage, and ever since he had come to power opposed his every wish and desire. The withdrawal of Sidney from The Hague, the sending of Skelton in his stead, the attempt to recall and place at the disposal of France the English troops in the service of the State, his refusal to interfere with Louis' insulting seizure of Orange, his constant spyings in the household of the Princess, his endeavour to convert her to his own faith, had been all so many widenings of a breach that had never been completely closed; and, on the other hand, the Prince knew that the King had never forgiven him three things—the League of Augsburg (which confederacy of the German Princes against France was known to be his work, though his name did not appear in it), the refusal really his, though nominally the State's, to return the English troops or to put Skelton at the head of them, and his refusal to countenance the Declaration of Indulgence, even when accompanied by the tempting bribe of alliance against France.

They were, and always had been, natural enemies, despite the accident of the double tie of blood and marriage, and even the conventional compliments of their rank had long since been worn thin between them. William was indebted to his uncle for nothing. James did not even give his eldest daughter an allowance, while his youngest received a princely income; but the Prince, faithful to his unchanging policy, would have passed all this, would James have but done what Charles had always been pressed to do by his nephew, namely, join the States in an alliance against France. The Prince had, indeed, with this end in view, endeavoured to please the King on his first accession, and would have worked with him loyally as an ally.

But for the last year he had seen clearly, and with mingled wrath and pity, that James was bent on the old dishonest policy of packed parliaments, French money, and corrupt ministers, added to which was an intolerant, almost insane, bigotry which, discountenanced by the Pope himself and displeasing to all moderate Catholics, was an impossible scheme of government, and in William's eyes, all religious considerations apart, the act of a madman or a fool.

And it did not suit his statecraft to have either on the throne of England. He had waited a long time for this country, which he had seen from boyhood was essential to his schemes for the balance of power and the liberty of Europe, and now was his moment.

As he walked up and down the plain little room he vowed that the difficulties should be conquered, and that even if the Bourbon lilies were flying over Brussels he would lead an armament to England that year.

CHAPTER IX

FRANCE MOVES

Midway through September and a beautiful day of pure gold the Prince was riding home through the brown-leaved woods that surrounded his villa. Contrary to his custom, he rode slowly, and constantly checked his fine animal, for he was thinking deeply, and those moments when he rode to and from his house were almost the only time when he was alone and not under the necessity of speaking to some one. He had just come from the last of the private sittings of the States, which had given their formal assent to the gigantic enterprise he meditated. He had now no further difficulty with his own country. The merchants, exasperated by the refusal of King Louis to allow herrings and woven goods from Holland into his country, had stifled opposition to the Prince in Amsterdam. He had always been sure of the rest of the Provinces, who, after the late persecutions of Protestants in France, the refusal to allow the Dutch in that country to retire to Holland, the constant fears they had been under since King James commenced rebuilding his navy and King Louis commenced his aggressions in Cologne, looked to the Prince with that same passionate devotion as they had done in '72, and trusted to him to save them again from dangers little less pressing; for, the last year past, Gaspard Fagel had been encouraging this dread of an armed alliance between France and England which seemed so near consummation and would be fatal to the very existence of the United Provinces.

It was from abroad came the difficulties that, for the last six months, had made the Prince's days almost unbearably anxious; and as the time drew near that anxiety became a lively torture absolutely unguessed at by those who judged the Prince by his calm, almost cold quiet. Certainly the Spartan boy with the ferret under his cloak showed no more heroic fortitude than did the Stadtholder during these weeks of preparation. Of those who surrounded him perhaps only two, his friend William Bentinck and Gaspard Fagel, understood his position, and even these could not share his sufferings, however much they might his disquietude.

From the allies whom, during the last two years, he had been marshalling into a league against Louis, there was little to fear, though it required delicate handling not to offend Catholic potentates such as the Pope and the Emperor; but from France was fearful and pressing danger, and England, where eventually success or failure must lie, was a suspicious quantity to William, who had been tricked and dealt ill with (though never deceived) by English politics all his life.

If the certain news of his expedition reached James and that monarch clapt up the Protestant lords and united with Louis in an attack on the United Provinces, William would have to face another '72 over again, and with but little better chance of success than he had then; if Louis made an attack on the frontiers of Brabant or the Spanish Lowlands before the Prince sailed the States would refuse to allow his departure, and the moment in England would be lost, perhaps for ever; if, most terrible alternative of all, he took all the forces of his country, naval and military, to England, and there met with opposition, delays, even defeat—if James roused and the English bulk were faithful to him and Louis seized the opportunity to pour his troops into defenceless Holland while her ships and men were absent—then the Prince, who loved his country with a deep and intense passion, would have to accuse himself as the author of her ruin.

Certainly he was jeopardizing the utmost any man could—the dearest thing in the world to him, beside which his own life was not even taken into consideration—and yet the only other course was to risk this same beloved liberty of his country, not by violent means, but by inaction and gradual weakening before a stronger power, and this was against all the teaching of his race, all the experience of his life, his own imperious temper, and the settled conviction both of his soul and his intelligence of what was the best, not alone for Holland but for Europe.

As he approached the 'huis ten bosch' he brought his reluctant horse to a slow walk. M. D'Avaux had done what the Prince had long expected, requested a private, informal audience, and William had told him that he should be walking in the garden at the back of his house that afternoon. As the time for this interview approached the Prince felt a weariness unutterable at the thought of meeting his enemy; he knew very well what M. D'Avaux had to say and what his own answers would be, and a smooth passage at arms with the French Ambassador was the last thing suited to his present temper.

Day after day he had to listen to, arbitrate among, encourage, check, guide, and advise the impetuous, arrogant English gathered at The Hague, and lately joined by men of importance such as my Lord Shrewsbury and my Lord Manchester, and this, to one of his reserve, was perhaps the most distasteful side of his task; it left him no leisure even for his one diversion of hunting, since it filled all the little time left from business, and begat in him a fatigue that longed for the relaxation of the unending strain.

He had an almost feverish love of exercise and fresh air, and as he came within sight of the plain front of his house showing at the end of an avenue of magnificent trees he stayed his horse altogether and sat still in the saddle looking about him; three things that he loved dearly, clear sunshine, pure salt air, and intense quiet beguiled him into forgetting for a few seconds his deep anxieties.

The atmosphere had that peculiar mellow quality of soft light found only in the Low Countries; the trees were motionless, and their leaves hung clear cut from the graceful branches in burning hues of crimson, gold, and brown; wreaths and twists of fallen leaves lay in the damp cold grass, and fine brittle twigs scattered over the hard paths where the frost had made little glittering ridges; the sky was blue, but blue hazed in gold; a large piece of water reflected the polished trunks of beeches patched with moss, the twisting red roots of brambles, and the foxy colour of broken ferns; two swans moved slowly along this lake, and the water was in sluggish ripples against their dead white breasts; their feet seemed to stir with difficulty, and they left a clear track behind, which showed that a thin breath of frost had passed over the water, dulling the surface.

The man on the horse noticed this, and it brought him back to what was ever rolling in his thoughts. If this sign of an early and severe winter was made good, he would have the less to fear for the United Provinces, since they were almost impossible to invade in the depth of snow and ice. This was one reason in his choosing this season for his expedition. As he watched the two silent swans and the film of frost they displaced, his whole face changed with the intensity of his thought; he straightened in the saddle and clutched the reins tightly in his thickly gloved hands; before the frosts had ceased and the waters were running free in spring he would deal with France on equal terms or be dead in the endeavour.

Heated by the wave of inner exaltation that shook him he lightly touched his great grey horse and took the avenue at a gallop, drew rein at the villa steps, and blew a little whistle he carried. When the groom came he dismounted, and entering the private garden by the door in the wall to the right of the house walked slowly to the covered alley where he had promised to meet M. D'Avaux.

The garden had the same stillness as the wood; the late chilled roses hung motionless on their stems, the curious agave plants and Italian laurels were stiff against the wall, a deep border of St. Michael's daisies showed a hard colour of purple about the three steps of the sundial and the flat basin where the fat carp shook golden gleams under the curling withering water-lily leaves.

As the Prince turned into the walk at the end of the garden, shaded overhead with ilex trees and edged with a glossy border of box, he saw the Frenchman pacing the sunless path.

William touched his hat and the Ambassador bowed. The Prince's sharp glance detected that he was something out of countenance.

"I wonder, M. D'Avaux, what you can have to say to me."

"Yet Your Highness is well able to guess," de Avaux answered, with the air of a compliment.

William looked at him again; he detested all Frenchmen, and since the day when, a grave child of eleven and a state prisoner, he had sat sternly in his coach in the Voorhout, and refused to yield precedence to M. D'Èstrees, he had especially hated the French envoys to the States, who had always been, in the truest sense, his enemies; the only thing that softened him to M. D'Avaux was that diplomat's cleverness. The Prince, who loved a worthy antagonist, admired him for his real wit and skill in the long and bitter game that had been played between them; nevertheless, there was, in the full bright glance he cast on him, a quality that his antagonist did not mistake.

"I fear," added the Ambassador, "that I do not find Your Highness very well disposed towards me."

"This is matter of business, is it not, Monsieur?" answered the Prince. "When you have opened your subject I will discover my disposition to it."

They were walking up and down the long walk; the thick gold sunshine slipped through the ilex branches and flickered on the Frenchman's black satins and the Prince's heavy fur-edged cloak. M. D'Avaux held his hat in his hand, but the Prince still wore his brown beaver.

"I am very sorry," said the Frenchman, in his quiet, pleasant manner, but with obvious indication of the concern he was under, "that I have had so few opportunities of assuring you in what esteem my master holdeth Your Highness——"

William made no reply.

"These are no idle words," continued M. D'Avaux, fingering the black curls of his peruke on his breast. "Despite all unfortunate differences, His Majesty hath, as all Europe, a great admiration for the courage, wisdom, and address of Your Highness——"

"Is it not rather late for these compliments, M. D'Avaux?"

"There is an object in them, Monseigneur," answered the Ambassador; "for in consequence of the feeling of His Majesty to Your Highness I am speaking to you now instead of to the States."

"Ah," said William. He switched at the box hedge with his short riding-whip. "Do you not, Monsieur, consider myself and the States as one?"

"History, Monseigneur, showeth that the House of Orange and the United Provinces have not always been of the same sentiments and design."

"They are so, however, now, Monsieur," answered the Prince dryly; "and whatever your business, you may put it before myself or the States, whichever you choose."

M. D'Avaux bit his lip; he read in William's curt words a reminder that he was absolute with the States and more confident than ever of his power over them; he was nettled into a colder tone.

"Yet I think that Your Highness would rather hear me than let me take my message to Their High Mightinesses."

William coughed. His cloak was fur-lined, but he constantly shivered; the shade, even of a September day, was hateful to him.

"Come into the sun," he said, and turned out of the alley into the clear-lit garden. They walked slowly towards the sundial and the carp basin, M. D'Avaux prodding the hard gravel with his cane and the Prince with his switch under his arm.

"Well, your business," said William calmly.

"Monseigneur," replied M. D'Avaux, with sincerity and some earnestness, "I think that you are embarked on a dangerous enterprise."

"The French say so," answered the Prince. "I have been told of the most extraordinary reports in your gazettes and pamphlets."

"I do not obtain my information from gazettes and pamphlets, Your Highness," answered the Ambassador firmly, "but from more reliable sources."

William paused by the carp pond and the bed of violet daisies.

"What is your information?" he asked.

"The last which Your Highness would wish in the hands of France."

"You seem to think, Monsieur," said William, with the shadow of a smile, "that I am an enemy of His Majesty."

He was not looking at the Frenchman, but down at the bed of daisies that he stirred gently with his whip as he spoke. M. D'Avaux looked sharply at his haughty aquiline profile, and answered with a quickening of the breath—

"His Majesty cannot forget what you said at your table a year ago, Monseigneur. You said, Your Highness, when you heard that His Majesty had seized and dismantled Orange on the claim of the House of Longueville, that you would teach him what it was to insult a Prince of Orange, and you refused to retract or explain the words."

"His Majesty," replied William, "hath neither retracted nor explained the deed."

"Your Highness has often repeated those words."

The Prince lifted his brilliant eyes.

"I shall repeat them again, Monsieur," he said, in his strained low voice, "and again until I obtain satisfaction."

He saw that M. D'Avaux had made the allusion to humiliate him, and though there was no sign of it in his countenance the shaft had told, for the insulting seizure of his personal princely apanage, for which he had been powerless to avenge himself, had been the hardest to bear of all the insolences of France, and the revenues had been a real loss.

"You see," bowed M. D'Avaux, "that we have some reason to believe Your Highness the enemy of France."

The Prince continued to look at him steadily.

"His Christian Majesty is very interested in my affairs," he said.

"It is the affairs of King James," returned the Frenchman, with some grandeur, "that my master is interested in——"

"How doth that touch the States?"

"It toucheth Your Highness, for we believe that you make preparations to lead an armament against His Britannic Majesty."

William lowered his eyes almost disdainfully.

"I perceive," he said, "that you do get your information from the gazettes after all——"

"No," answered M. D'Avaux softly. "I will tell Your Highness where I get my information. You know of one Verace, of Geneva?"

The Prince's whip still stirred leisurely among the daisies.

"He was steward once to the Princess and dismissed."

"As early as August, Monseigneur, this Verace wrote to M. Skelton giving information of the intrigues of Your Highness, the Princess, and M. Bentinck."

He watched the effect of his shaft, but the Prince was unmoved.

"You might as well quote the gazettes, Monsieur," he said.

"These letters, Your Highness, were sent by M. Skelton to my Lord Sunderland," replied M. D'Avaux, "and he took no heed of them—we have reason to believe that they never reached the King."

William answered dryly—

"None of this is very interesting, Monsieur. You have had the assurances of M. Van Citters in London, of M. Castagnana, King James himself is content, M. D'Albeville is content, and it is not for France to take this part of interfering on the information of cast-off servants."

"I have had other news from Rome," said M. D'Avaux coldly, "of the intrigues of Your Highness with the Vatican. Your Highness, methinks, knoweth something of some letters which went in to the Pope in a basket of wax fruit."

William gave him a quick glance.

"Take these advices to the court of England, which they concern, Monsieur."

"Your Highness is very well aware that all the foreign intelligence that goeth to England is under the control of M. de Sunderland—who is your very good friend."

The Prince faintly smiled.

"I thought M. de Sunderland was believed the very good friend of France."

"He may," said M. D'Avaux, rather hotly, "deceive M. Barillon, but he doth not deceive me."

"It is unfortunate," remarked the Prince, "that you are not Ambassador to London. I think your abilities wasted here, Monsieur."

"I thank Your Highness." He bowed grandly. "Such as my talents are, I find scope for them at The Hague—I only regret that my confrère is no longer M. Skelton."

He said this knowing that Mr. Skelton was detested by the Prince, who had made his residence in Holland unendurable to him. The dislike was returned by the Englishman, who was the close ally of M. D'Avaux in the attempt to expose and ruin the plans of William. William, however, had triumphed in ousting Skelton from The Hague, and his successor, D'Albeville, was, as M. D'Avaux knew to his vexation, a mean creature that no one could long depend on.

"Mr. Skelton," said the Prince, "is no doubt extremely useful in Paris. And I must ask you, Monsieur, to let me know the true object of this audience, which was not, I think, to discuss these puerile rumours."

The Frenchman flushed; he had always found the Prince difficult to come to conclusions with. William had a short, flashing way of scorn, an inscrutable calm, that even now, when, in his certain knowledge of the Prince's intended enterprise, M. D'Avaux felt he had the upper hand, was difficult to face.

M. D'Avaux felt himself, as always, confused and heated; he believed that the Prince was laughing at him and at France, and a wave of anger shook him both against the supine James who would not be roused, and his own government who would not credit half the information he sent home. He tried that dry directness which his opponent employed with such effect.

"Your Highness will scarcely deny that you intend a descent on England?"

"I should," answered William, "be a fool if I did not deny it when asked by you, Monsieur."

M. D'Avaux thrust his cane into the crevices of the stone pedestal of the sundial.

"Whatever Your Highness may say—I know."

"Ah!" answered William, "but can you prove?"

"To the satisfaction of my own intelligence, Monseigneur," said M. D'Avaux vigorously. "You cannot suppose that I have been unobservant as to your measures since the beginning of the year."

William kept his eyes fixed on the carp sluggishly moving round the fountain basin.

"It would interest me, M. D'Avaux," he said, "to hear what you have discovered of these measures of mine."

"You shall hear, Monseigneur." The Frenchman spoke as one spurred and goaded. "For one thing, I know that you obtained four million guilden from the States for repairing the fortifications of Brabant—that this money was to be payable in four years, and you have raised it in one. Your Highness hath the money, and the forts are untouched."

William was silent.

"Another public fund of equal value you have diverted from its proper use; you have farmed out the revenues of the Admiralty, and this, with your own great fortune, maketh Your Highness master of a huge treasure—apart from the money you are constantly raising among the French and English refugees. For what purpose is all this wealth intended?"

"You say you know," replied William, without looking up. "And, my faith, what kind of an answer can you expect from me?"

"Your Highness can give no good reason."

"None of any sort, to you, on any part of my conduct," said the Prince coldly. "You already overstep your province."

Pale, but firm, M. D'Avaux stood his ground.

"I do not overstep my duty to my master if I ask why Your Highness persuaded the States to build forty new ships of war, and secretly added twelve by your own authority—why these ships were sent publicly to remote stations and secretly brought back—why a great army is encamped at Nymwegen—why M. Bentinck is so continually closeted with the Elector and Your Highness with the States, the German Princes, the Landgrave of Hesse and M. Castagnana—why seven thousand Swedish mercenaries have been hired, and a huge number of Dutch soldiers and sailors secretly raised and privately drilled?"

The Prince turned his back to the sundial, so that he faced the Ambassador; his hands, clasped behind him, held his riding-whip; his face was inscrutable.

"Well, what else?" he asked dryly.

"Only this, that Your Highness and your creatures may deceive the King of England into thinking it is against Denmark and the Corsairs that all these preparations are being made, but you cannot so deceive the King of France."

"And yet," returned the Prince, "I thought His Majesty gave but a cold attention to your alarms."

This, accompanied by a pointed smile, told M. D'Avaux that William was quite well aware that it had not been so easy to rouse Louis to a sense of his danger. The Frenchman bit his lip; he had a master-stroke in reserve.

"Your Highness is a very able Prince," he said, on an oblique line of attack, "but my master pays well and is well served. I know who, under so many different names and pretences, purchaseth and hireth transport boats in so many different ports; I know who ordereth the bakers of Amsterdam to make biscuit, the saddlers to make bridles and saddles—why all the artillery is leaving the towns and coming down to the coasts—why magazines of hay are waiting in all the seaports, and why English noblemen are living furtively at The Hague."

He paused and looked narrowly at the Stadtholder, who, he was confident, must be taken aback at this knowledge of his plans; but the Prince was so immovable that the wild thought occurred to M. D'Avaux—is it really Denmark or his own country, as King James contends?