Shrewsbury: A Romance

by Stanley John Weyman

"Necessarily."

"Nevertheless, and craving your pardon," the Earl answered slowly, "I think that there is something in it. If he has not been induced to go, I fancy from what I hear that he is hesitating."

"Then he must be looked to."

"Yet! were he to go, you see--it would make all the difference--to Sir John," the Earl said. "There would be only Porter; and the Act requires two witnesses."

My lord lifted his eyebrows; that two witnesses were required in a case of treason was too trite a statement to call for comment. Then seeing the other's drift, he smiled. "That were to lick the platter, my lord, in order to keep the fingers clean," he said.

Lord Marlborough laughed airily. "Well put," he said, not a whit abashed. "So it would. You are right, Duke, as you always are. But I have detained you too long." With which, and another word of apology, he took his leave a second time.

That he left an unhappy man behind him, none can doubt, who knew the Duke's sensitive nature, and respect for his high position and dignity. To find that the weakness, venial and casual, of which he had been guilty years before in stooping to listen to Lord Middleton's solicitations--a fault which he had fancied known only to the King and by him forgiven--to find that this was the property of the public, was burden enough; but to learn that on this was to be founded a fresh charge, for the proper refutation of which the past must be raked up, was torture intolerable. In a fine sense of the ridiculous, my lord excelled any man of his time; he could feather therefore out of his own breast the shafts of evil that would be aimed at the man, who, one of the seven to bring over William in '88, had stooped in '89 to listen to the Exile! He could see more clearly than any all the inconsistency, all the folly, all the weakness of the course, to which he had, not so much committed himself, as been tempted to commit himself. The Minister unfaithful, the patriot importuned, were parts in which he saw himself exposed to the town, to the sallies of Tom Brown, and the impertinences of Ned Ward; nay, in proportion as he appreciated the grandeur of honest rebellion, of treason, open and declared, he felt shame for the pettiness of the part he had himself played, a waverer when trusted, and a palterer when in power.

Such reflections weighed on him so heavily that though one of the proudest and therefore to those below him one of the most courteous and considerate of men, he could scarcely bring himself to face his subordinates, when the hour came for him to attend the office. Sir John Trumball still deferred to him, Mr. Vernon still bowed until the curls of his wig hid his stout red cheeks, the clerks where he came still rose, pale, smug, and submissive, in his honour. But he fancied--quite falsely--something ironical in this respect; he pictured nods and heard words behind his back; and suspecting the talk, which hushed at his entrance rose high on his departure, to be at his expense, he underwent a score of martyrdoms before he returned to St. James's Square.

Meanwhile the absence of the King aggravated his position; firstly, by depriving him of the only confidant his pride permitted him; secondly, by adding to his troubles the jealousies which invariably attend government by a Council. Popularly considered, he was first Minister of the Crown, and deepest in the King's confidence. But the knowledge that one of his colleagues withheld a matter from him, and was in private communication with William in respect to it, was not rendered less irksome by the suspicion, amounting almost to a certainty, that his own concern in the business was that of a culprit. This it was which first and most intimately touched his dignity; and this it was which at the end of a fortnight of suspense drove him to a desperate resolution. He would broach the matter to the Duke of Devonshire; and learn the best and the worst of it.

Desiring to do this in a manner the least formal he took occasion to dismiss his coach at the next Council meeting, and telling the Duke that he wished to mention a matter to him, he begged a seat in his equipage. But whether the Lord Steward foresaw what was coming and parried the subject discreetly, or my lord's heart failed him, they reached the Square, and nothing said, except on general topics. There, my lord's people coming out to receive them, it seemed natural to ask the Duke of Devonshire to enter; but my lord, instead, begged the Duke to drive him round and round a while; and when they were again started, "I have not been well lately," he said--which was true, more than one having commented on it at the Council Table--"and I wished to tell you, that I fear I shall find it necessary to go into the country for a time."