CHAPTER II ALBEMARLE’S ANTECHAMBER
Through the noisy bustle of Paul’s Yard the Colonel took his way, his ears deafened by the “What d’ye lack?” of the bawling prentices standing before The Flower of Luce, The White Greyhound, The Green Dragon, The Crown, The Red Bull, and all the other signs that distinguished the shops in that long array, among which the booksellers were predominant. He moved with a certain arrogant, swaggering assurance, despite his shabby finery. His Flemish beaver worn at a damn-me cock, his long sword thrust up behind by the hand that rested upon the pummel, his useless spurs—which a pot-boy at the Paul’s Head had scoured to a silvery brightness—providing martial music to his progress. A certain grimness that invested him made the wayfarers careful not to jostle him. In that throng of busy, peaceful citizens he was like a wolf loping across a field of sheep; and those whom he met made haste to give him the wall, though it should entail thrusting themselves or their fellows into the filth of the kennel.
Below Ludgate, in that evil valley watered by the Fleet Ditch, there were hackney-coaches in plenty, and, considering the distance which he must go and the desirability of coming to his destination cleanly shod, Colonel Holles was momentarily tempted. He resisted, however; and this was an achievement in one who had never sufficiently studied that most essential of the arts of living. He bethought him—and sighed wearily over the reflection—of the alarming lightness of his purse and the alarming heaviness of his score at the Paul’s Head, where he had so culpably lacked the strength of mind to deny himself any of those luxuries with which in the past month he had been lavished, and for which, should Albemarle fail him in the end, he knew not how to pay. This reflection contained an exaggeration of his penury. There was that ruby in his ear, a jewel that being converted into gold should keep a man in ease for the best part of a twelvemonth. For fifteen years and through many a stress of fortune it had hung and glowed there amid his clustering gold-brown hair. Often had hunger itself urged him to sell the thing that he might fill his belly. Yet ever had reluctance conquered him. He attached to that bright gem a sentimental value that had become a superstition. There had grown up in his mind the absolute conviction that this jewel, the gift of an unknown whose life he had arrested on the black threshold of eternity, was a talisman and something more—that, as it had played a part in the fortunes of another, so should it yet play a part in the fortunes of himself and of that other jointly. There abode with him the unconquerable feeling that this ruby was a bond between himself and that unknown, a lodestone that should draw each to the other ultimately across a whole world of obstacles and that the meeting should be mutually fateful.
There were times when, reviewing the thing more soberly, he laughed at his crazy belief. Yet, oddly enough, those were never the times in which dire necessity drove him to contemplate its sale. So surely as he came to consider that, so surely did the old superstition, begotten of and steadily nourished by his fancy, seize upon him to bid him hold his hand and suffer all but death before thus purchasing redemption.
Therefore was it that, as he took his way now up Fleet Hill, he left that jewel out of his calculations in his assessment of his utterly inadequate means.
Westward through the mire of the Strand he moved, with his swinging soldierly stride, and so, by Charing Cross, at last into Whitehall itself. Down this he passed towards the chequered embattled Cockpit Gate that linked one side of the palace with the other.
It was close upon noon, and that curial thoroughfare was more than ordinarily thronged, the war with Holland—now an accomplished fact—being responsible for the anxious, feverish bustle hereabouts. Adown its middle moved a succession of coaches to join the cluster gathered about the Palace Gate and almost blocking the street from one row of bourne posts to the other.
Opposite the Horse Guards the Colonel came to a momentary halt on the skirts of a knot of idlers, standing at gaze to observe the workmen on the palace roof who were engaged in erecting there a weather-vane. A gentleman whom he questioned informed him that this was for the convenience of the Lord High Admiral, the Duke of York, so that his grace might observe from his windows how the wind served the plaguey Dutch fleet which was expected now to leave the Texel at any hour. The Lord Admiral, it was clear, desired to waste no unnecessary time upon the quarter-deck.