“Let us rest awhile, please you, Sir Paul. As you see, the tide is still running out. The turn, which is to take us back to Whitehall, is not due until after five o’clock. Let us wait here.”
He doffed his plumed beaver and hung it upon the cane by his side; then turned his pale, dissipated face, with a smile of cynical amusement, toward his companion. Sir Paul Farrant was only one of the many friends who had gathered so assiduously about the young Frenchman—a page in the train of Madame Henriette, sister of the King—since his Majesty had taken so strong and sudden a fancy to him as to retain him in his personal service after her departure for France.
“See how the world wags,” resumed the favourite then; “you, Sir Paul, seek the dens yonder,”—he pointed to the sinister purlieus they had just left behind,—“because of a friend—I, because of an enemy.”
Farrant pricked his ears under his silken, fair curls. It was the first time he had been admitted even so far into the Vidame’s confidence. This Enguerrand, a French boy who in a few months’ time had stepped, it seemed, without the slightest effort into the inner circle of Court favour, upon the outer rim of which the indefatigable Sir Paul had scarce a footing, was an enigma to his associates. He had a handsome sister; but his success depended not on her, for had she not denied the King for the sake of the King’s friend, Lord Rockhurst? It was an open secret in Whitehall. Enough to have damned the chances of any other man, it would seem! Yet here was the lad, with his white, handsome, secret face; with his silent, insolent, easy ways; with his deep moods, his sudden rages, as close to his Majesty, as audacious and as secure of his position as young Monmouth himself. Farrant had witnessed his first introduction—he knew that there was no secret tie, no mystery save in the new page’s own personality. Sir Paul, the failure, would have given all he possessed for the talisman. Yet the talisman was no such occult thing, but an unfailing talent to amuse that most melancholy man, whom the world liked to call the Merry Monarch.
“An enemy, say you, my good Enguerrand?” cried the young baronet, lifting his foolish eyebrows a trifle higher than nature had set them. He had the curiosity of trivial natures and was all agog.
“Aye, perdi,” responded the other, briefly.
The wind was ruffling his dark head, blowing the heavy curls off the forehead; making patent at once the extreme youth and the prematurely worn countenance.
“And you are then a-practising against a rencounter.… O, Master Enguerrand, I pray you that I be your second!”
“Why, you shall so, then.” The words dropped from the other’s lips in careless condescension.
Enguerrand’s eyes were lost in space. Across the river, between the merry, white, flying clouds and the green fields of Surrey, he saw Heaven knows what bloody vision of triumph.