“Well,” said the King, “broduce him before us.”
“Why,” said the Marquis feebly, “that is the odd thing. Sir Charles is nowhere to be found.”
The three Dutch mynheers uttered guttural sounds in their throats, and looked at one another and at the King significantly.
His Majesty’s brows knotted.
“Dat is very vonny,” he said. “Not to be vound, mein vrent?”
“It has been ascertained, your Majesty,” said Lord Denby wearily—he was a picked white bone of a man, with no stomach and yet a perpetual stomach-ache, which naturally aggrieved him—“that Sir Charles rode, immediately after the ceremony, to the ‘Cock’ hostelry in Tothill Street, whence, having disencumbered himself of his panoply, he continued his way to the riding-school of one Dobney, near Islington, where he delivered up his horse and disappeared. Since when he has neither returned to his inn nor vouchsafed the least token of his existence.”
The King considered the matter very glumpily within himself. It appeared a trifle; yet trifles might easily be underestimated in the existing state of things. The incident was something or nothing—a mere meaningless frolic, or a challenge to his title bearing a certain significance. The land swarmed with Jacobites of more or less power and prominence. What if one of them were to meet and defeat his Champion? How, in that event, would his claim stand? What was the procedure? It was an odd contingency, and he put it rather acridly to my Lord Privy Seal.
“He drow de gage; anodder agcept it; dey vight; my man vall. Vat is to vollow?” he demanded.
“Ja! Dat is vat strike idself into me bom-bom,” said Schomberg the warrior.
Lord Halifax smiled rather sheepishly. He was a large, tolerant soul of sixty, repudiating all sentiment and subject to much. He had been called the “Trimmer”; but, then, no man of humour can ever be a man of convictions. Kind, witty, and cynical, he was yet so fond of Reason that he could make a fool of himself with her. He was even worked upon to do so in the present case.