And so I found my way to the one chamber in the house that I knew; madam's withdrawing-room, to wit, which I had twice entered when Ned had taken me, a little maid, to see his mother; a large room, whose casement, broad, low, and heavily mullioned, looked out with a very noble aspect across copse and meadow, where the land fell away to the southward beyond the stream whose rocky channel had been one of the defences of the house in former days. And, as I stood idly gazing from the window, and drumming upon the panes with idle fingers, and wondering when Farmer Kidd would return, I remembered how in the old days Ned had told me of some wondrous means of escape that there was from that old house, which he would one day, if I should grow wise enough, reveal to me. And I wished that I had learned it then, that I might use it now, and so be quit at once of Prince, breeches, and a false position.
The landscape fading into the early darkness of late autumn, I stretched myself, half sitting and half lying, on the settle near the fire that burned fitfully on the great hearth of the chamber; and here soon forgot the passing of time in a doze induced, as I suppose, by the warmth of the fire, and the fatigue of my ride and the subsequent excitements. From this slumber I was aroused, how long after my falling into it I know not, by the entrance of a trooper, doing duty as servant, and bearing two heavy and branched silver candlesticks, filled with lighted candles. I was yet rubbing my eyes to clear my head of sleep and dreams, and striving to sit upright, when I caught my right spur on my left boot, and straightway remembered who I was, and how little like it I appeared. And then, close on the heels of the soldier with the candles, comes to me M. de Rondiniacque.
"Aha, my toy soldier!" he cried, as his eye lighted on me, "so 't is here you have been hiding. And sleeping, I see. Well, you may sleep on, if you will, for His Highness bids me bring you his most urgent request that you will here stay the night, in order to accompany him in the morning on his intended visit to your kinsman, Sir Michael—something——"
"Sir Michael Drayton," I replied. "I do suppose, sir," I went on, "that the Prince's urgent request differs little from a command?"
"Faith, you suppose well, young gentleman," said M. de Rondiniacque. "And therefore I made bold to send your man, when he returned from fulfilling your order, back to the place you named. Captain Royston has already much ado to feed and bed us all."
"And did Kidd obey your orders against mine?" I asked, rather that, saying something, I might cover my dismay than in any anxiety of discipline.
"Having seen us together, I think he made little distinction, my little bashaw," said M. de Rondiniacque, laughing. "I threatened him, moreover, with your displeasure, if he delayed. And now I must to His Highness."
And with that he left me, thinking very sadly I had enough of being a man. Had there been a woman in the house, I had gone to her, and told her my story. But to none of all these men did I dare to breathe my true name and state; unless, indeed, it had been to Captain Royston. And I murmured over to myself that title, which did ring so strange, and yet so proudly, in my ear. It went stiffly, too, upon the tongue that was once used to say: "Hither, Ned; not so, Ned; nay, Ned; but I will have it so." Well, Ned, I thought, was ever tender with me, and I might, indeed, at a pinch, make shift to tell him my name and troubles; but—and then in my mind there lifted up his head a little devil of mischief, and I vowed I would not so tell him till I should be enforced; but, having taken a vagary to be a man, I would hold fast to my purpose, that I might from behind this mask see more of the man and to what he was grown from the boy that had been my playmate and childhood's lover. I was fain not a little, moreover, certainly, to discover with what complexion of memory he retained the thought of little Philippa Drayton. And I thought it was mightily in favor of my plan that, although on that great night of his escape from Kirke's men, we had spoken together and our hands had met, yet since I was a little maid he had never looked upon my countenance.
At last I heard his step in the gallery without, and, for all its weight and its jingle of sabre and spur, I had known that footfall among many, even had I not known him in the house.
Captain Royston came into the chamber, followed by him that had but now fetched candles, but bearing this time an armful of wood and a blazing pine-knot. To draw my old friend's gaze, I heaved a great sigh, and gazed sadly in the fire, and knew, though I scarce saw, his eyes to turn on me. He crossed the room to the further corner, where I could well mark him without any show of particular regard, and threw wide a small door disclosing the foot of a narrow and winding stair.