CHAPTER VII
Snared
Hope Deferred—Motes in the Sunbeam—Mynheer makes an Offer—Sherebiah on Guard—New Quarters—Tumblers—Solvitur Ambulando—Doubling—Sick at Heart—Too Late—A Debit Balance—Gloom—Cold Streets—Three Sailors—Muffled
Several days passed—days of unfailing happiness for Harry. Though he spent hours in roaming the town, there was always something fresh to see, something novel to capture his interest. He saw the state entrance of the new Venetian ambassador. He visited the Tower, the Abbey, and St. Paul's, saw Winstanley's water-works in Piccadilly near Hyde Park, and witnessed a football match at Covent Garden. He accompanied Fanshawe several times to the theatre, and somewhat offended that sparkish young gentleman by constantly refusing to join him in card-parties and night escapades in the streets. He saw a back-sword match at the Bear Garden in Hockley in the Hole, and a billiard match at the Greyhound Coffee-house near Monmouth Street. Apart from these public sights, he found endless diversion in the ordinary street scenes: the markets, the itinerant vendors, the acrobats, or posture-masters as they were then called, who performed their dancing and tumbling in squares remote from the traffic. It amused Harry that Sherebiah never tired of these mountebank tricks, but would stand and watch them with unflagging interest by the hour, applauding every neatly executed feat, and criticising with unsparing severity every instance of clumsiness or bungling. Soldiers, on the other hand, apparently did not interest Sherebiah. Harry liked to watch them drilling on the Horse Guards' parade or in Hyde Park; but on these occasions Sherebiah always strolled away, waiting with impatience until his young master had satisfied his curiosity.
"They won't kill you, Sherry," said Harry once, laughing as the man sheered off. "Their muskets are not loaded."
"True. But 'tis no pleasure to me to see such men o' war. Feyther o' mine were a trooper; he be always talken on it; I be a man o' peace, I be."
Every day when he came down to breakfast, and when he returned in the evening, Harry eagerly looked for a message from Lord Marlborough. But the days passed; a week flew by; and still no message came. After the second day he made no reference to the matter; Sherebiah and Grootz considerately forbore to allude to it. But they watched him with shrewd eyes, and saw, through all the curiosity and pleasure he took in his new life, a growing sense of disappointment and anxiety. He had built high hopes upon the interview at Godolphin's; as boys will, he had allowed his fancy to outstrip his judgment, and had added a good deal of embroidery to the simple facts. Already in imagination he saw himself carrying the Queen's colours, performing heroic deeds in the field, winning golden opinions from the general, coming home laden with honour and substantial rewards, perhaps to gain, as the acme of bliss, an approving smile from the Queen herself. And he would wake from these day-dreams to the sober reality—-that the desired message from Marlborough had not come, and meanwhile time was fleeting by, and every day saw his little stock of money diminished.
He had resisted Fanshawe's recommendation to change his lodging. Charges were higher, Sherebiah informed him, in the more fashionable parts, and he knew that he could not afford to run risks. At first he had not been parsimonious; he was not extravagant by nature, but he had not hesitated to buy a trifle that pleased him, to give largesse to the ballad-singers and street musicians, to pay his eighteenpence for a seat in the pit at Drury Lane or Lincoln's Inn Fields. But he gave all this up, and thought twice about spending a penny. He bought only the strictest necessaries, and for his amusement depended on the sights of the streets, the parks, and the river, and such entertainment as could be had at the coffee-houses, where for a penny he could obtain a dish of coffee, read the Daily Courant with its manuscript supplement, or Dawks's News Letter, and hear all the news of the day discussed with more heat than information by arm-chair politicians.
One day the Courant announced that the Queen had been pleased to confer the dignity of a dukedom upon the Earl of Marlborough, and that the House of Commons would be asked to grant him an annual pension to match his new rank. Harry remembered what he had heard pass between Marlborough and Godolphin, and when the coffee-house gossips supplemented the official intimation with the rumour that the Countess Sarah had been violently opposed to her husband's elevation in the peerage, he understood the meaning of the peculiar tone in which Marlborough had spoken of acquainting her ladyship. The new duchess was the theme of much conversation and many jests in these free-spoken assemblies. Marlborough was a very great general; everybody was agreed on that; but it was doubted whether he was master in his own house; some said he was henpecked; one plain blunt fellow declared in Harry's hearing that the duke was as much afraid of his missis as any Thames bargee. Harry was not interested in Marlborough's domestic affairs, but his heart sank when he reflected on his own insignificance beside the great man whom the Queen was delighting to honour. After all, how could he expect a man of such eminence, immersed in state affairs, with all the responsibility for conducting a great campaign, to remember a country youth whom he had seen once, and who had made, perhaps, as deep an impression on him as a fly might make on a lion.
That night Harry was eating his supper, somewhat moodily, when Mynheer Grootz, sitting opposite, made him a sudden proposition.