"H'm! I bethink me now, you yourself have an itch for martial life. All boys have, I suppose. Young Lord Churchill was cut to the heart a few months ago because my lady Marlborough would not permit him to follow his father to Flanders. Well, to be frank with you, I see no way of helping you. With twenty guineas you can no more buy a commission than you can enter yourself at a college. To enlist as a common soldier would be a last resource to one of your breeding. There are too many young scions of good stocks for the lesser places at court to go round among them. Yet I would fain do something for you."
He began to saunter up and down the room, his hands clasped behind him, stopping for a moment to listen as the sound of cheers came from the street. Suddenly the door was opened, and the voice of the servant was heard announcing a visitor.
"My lord Marlborough."
Harry looked with eager curiosity as the great soldier entered the room. He saw a tall, singularly handsome man, with short curved upper lip, firm chin, long almond-shaped eyes, and a calm benignity of expression. John Churchill, Earl of Marlborough, was at this time fifty-two years of age. As captain-general of the English forces, in the summer of this year, 1702, he had opened in concert with the Dutch a campaign in Flanders against Louis the Fourteenth of France,—a new campaign in the great war of the Spanish Succession which the policy of William the Third had bequeathed to his sister-in-law. Venloo and other towns had been captured by the confederate armies, Liège had been reduced, and the forces having gone into winter quarters, Marlborough had returned to England to support the Occasional Conformity Bill. He was a close personal friend of Godolphin, and allied to him by the marriage of Francis Godolphin to his daughter Henrietta.
"Welcome, my dear lord!" said Godolphin, starting forward to meet the earl. "I did not know you had arrived."
"I am but just come from waiting on the Queen," said Marlborough. "I arrived late last night."
"You are welcome indeed. All men's mouths are full of your praises."
"Ay," returned Marlborough with a smile; "your Londoners have lusty throats. And I have a piece of news for you." He dropped his voice: the secretary had vanished through a further door: Harry stood in a quandary, the noblemen both seeming to ignore his presence. "The Queen has been pleased to express her wish to make me a duke."
Godolphin laid his hand on his friend's arm, and said cordially: "I congratulate you, Jack, with all my heart. Why, this very morning I have a letter from Churchill at Cambridge; there are shrewd wits there; he says 'tis whispered you are to be raised in the peerage, and the boy, young dog, begs me to tell him what his own title will be then."
"Ah! 'tis over soon to talk of it. I must acquaint my lady first, and methinks she will object."