"My son."
I turned back towards the rector, with a doleful thought that he would revoke his permission. But as I approached him reluctantly enough, I saw something of a smile brighten upon his rigorous face.
"My son," he said, without a trace of his former severity, "you have taken no vows as yet, and will not for eight months to come. Think, and think humbly, during those months! Our Order, thank God, is not so poor in service that we need to reckon obstinacy as devotion."
I stood abashed and shamefaced at his words. "Father," I said, "I have chosen."
"But it is for us to ratify the choice," he answered, with a cast back to his former sternness, "or to annul it as unworthy." With that he dismissed me; but this time, being somewhat stung by his warning, I retired with a more decorous step. Once in the street, however, I made up for the delay. For, in truth, I was at some trouble to account for my kinsman's sudden arrival in France; for, although Walpole had publicly declared his intention of bringing both Bolingbroke and the Earl of Oxford to trial for their work in compassing the Peace of Utrecht, it was common rumour that Bolingbroke and his colleague awaited the impeachment in all confidence as to its issue. This hasty departure, however, bore to my thinking all the appearance of a desperate flight, and I hurried to his lodging in no small anxiety of spirit. My Lord Bolingbroke makes but a slight figure in this story of my picture, compared with that he made upon the wider field of a nation's chronicle; and it is very well for me that this is so. For, indeed, I never understood him; although I held him in a great liking and esteem, and considered him to have confronted more adversity and mischance than commonly falls to any one, I never understood him. He was compacted of so many contradictions, and in all of them was so seemingly sincere that a plain man like Lawrence Clavering was completely at a loss to discover the inward truth of him. But as he was a riddle to my speculations, so was he a cherished object to my affections. For even during those last years of Queen Anne's rule, when his life was at its busiest and his fortunes at their climax, he still found time to show kindness to one whose insignificance was only rivalled by his poverty. He was "Harry St. John" to me as to his equals and my betters, and in spite of the difference of our years; and when I found myself in company with Dr. Swift and Mr. Congreve and Mr. Prior and the little crook-back poet whose "Windsor Castle" had brought him into a sudden reputation, he was ever at pains to distinguish me in his conversation, so that I might suffer no shame from my inferiority. Doubtless it was to the natural courtesy of the man rather than to any special inclination that his behaviour was due, but I was none the less grateful to him on that account.
He had just finished dinner, and was still at the table over his wine, when his footman introduced me into his apartment.
"Ah," said he, "I expected you would come;" and he drew a chair to the table, and filled a second glass, "It is not the welcome you have had from me at Bucklersbury, but philosophers"—and he made a polite flourish of the hand to include me in the phrase—"will ever be content with a makeshift. For my part," he continued, "I do not know but what the makeshift is the better. A few trustworthy friends, a few honest books and leisure wherein to savour their merits—it is what I have chiefly longed for these last five years;" and he threw up his arms with a long breath of relief, as though he had been unexpectedly lightened of some burdensome load. I had heard him talk often enough in this way before, and was disinclined to set great value upon his contentment.
"What brought you in this scurry to Paris?" I asked.
"They meant to pursue me to the scaffold," he returned. "I had sure information of that. No testimony would have helped me or thwarted them. It was my blood they needed—Marlborough told me so—my blood and Oxford's." And he flashed out into a sudden passion. "There's the point. Alone I would have faced them. These whimsical Tories are the frailest of reeds, the Whigs the most factious and vindictive opponents. Still, I would have faced them had I stood alone. But to make common cause with Oxford! No, I abhor him to that degree, I cannot. It were worse than death. However, let's talk no more of it!" and he recovered himself with an effort, and sat for a little, silent, fingering his glass. "Oxford!" he exclaimed again with a bitter laugh of contempt. "Soft words, and never a thing done! To live till to-morrow was the ultimate of policy to him. And jealous, too! The bubble of his own jealousy! Had he cared to act, or had he been dismissed but a few weeks earlier, I tell you, Lawrence, the Tories would now be cemented to such a solidity of power that——" He stopped abruptly, and leaned over to me: "For whom are you?" he asked, "the Hanoverian, or the"—and he paused for the briefest space—"the Chevalier de St. George?"
"I am for King James the Third," I replied promptly.