But the picture which these words suggested to my lord's mind was too much for his equanimity. To know for certain that the King, who had extended indulgence to him once, was in possession of this new accusation, and perhaps believed it, that was bad enough. But to hear that Portland also was in the secret, and grim, faithful Dutchman as he was, might presently, in support of the low opinion of English fidelity which he held, quote him, the first Minister of England, was too much! In a hoarse voice he cut the Duke short, asking to be set down before they quarrelled; and his Grace, hastening with a hurried word of sympathy to comply, my lord stepped out, and looking neither to right nor left, passed into the house, and to the library, where, locking the door, he shut himself in with his trouble.
[CHAPTER XLII]
I have commonly reckoned it among my lord's greatest misfortunes that in a crisis of his affairs which demanded all the assistance that friendship, the closest and most intimate could afford, he had neither wife nor child to whom he could turn, and from whom, without loss of dignity, he might receive comfort and support. He was a solitary man; separated from such near relations as he had, by differences as well religious as political, and from the world at large by the grandeur of a position which imposed burdens as onerous as the privileges it conferred were rare.
To a melancholy habit, which some attributed to the sad circumstances attendant on his father's death, and others to the change of faith, which he had been induced to make on reaching manhood, he added a natural shyness and reserve, qualities which, ordinarily veiled from observation by manners and an address the most charming and easy in the world, were none the less obstacles, where friendship was in question. Not that of friendship there was much among the political men of that day, the perils and uncertainties of the time inculcated a distrust, which was only overcome where blood or marriage cemented the tie--as in the case of Lords Sunderland, Godolphin, and Marlborough, and again of the Russells and Cavendishes. But, be that as it may, my lord stood outside these bonds, and enjoyed and rued a splendid isolation. As if already selected by fortune for that strange combination of great posts with personal loneliness, which was to be more strikingly exhibited in the death-chamber of her late Majesty Queen Anne, he lived, whether in his grand house in St. James's Square, or at Eyford among the Gloucestershire Wolds, as much apart as any man in London or in England.
Withal, I know, men called him the King of Hearts. But the popularity, of which that title seemed the sign and seal, was factitious and unreal; born, while they talked with him, of his spontaneous kindness and boundless address; doomed to perish an hour later, of spite and envy, or of sheer inanition. Since the Duke was sensitive, over-proud for intimacy, flattered no man, and gave no man confidences.
Such an one bade fair, when in trouble, to eat out his heart. Prone to fancy all men's hands against him, he doubled the shame and outdid the most scandalous. So far, indeed, was he from deriving comfort from things that would have restored such men as my Lord Marlborough to perfect self-respect and composure, that I believe, and in fine had it from himself, that the letter which the King wrote to him from Loo (and which came to his hands through Lord Portland's, three days after the interview with his Grace of Devonshire) pained him more sensibly than all that had gone before.
"You may judge of my astonishment," His Majesty wrote, "at his effrontery in accusing you. You are, I trust, too fully convinced of the entire confidence which I place in you to think that such stories can make any impression on me. You will observe this honest man's sincerity, who only accuses those in my service, and not one of his own party."
It will be understood that that in His Majesty's letter which touched my lord home was less the magnanimity displayed in it than the remembrance that once before the Sovereign had dealt with the subject in the same spirit, and that now the world must know this. Of the immediate accusation, with all its details of time and circumstance, he thought little, believing, not only that the truth must quickly sweep it away, but that in the meantime few would be found so credulous as to put faith in it. But he saw with painful clearness that the charge would rub the old sore and gall the old raw; and he winced, seated alone in his library in the silence of the house, as if the iron already seared the living flesh. With throes of shame he foresaw what staunch Whigs, such as Somers and Wharton, would say of him; what the Postboy and the Courant would print of him; what the rank and file of the party--exposed to no danger in the event of a Restoration, and consequently to few temptations to make their peace abroad--would think of their trusted leader, when they learned the truth.
On Marlborough and Russell, Godolphin and Sunderland, the breath of suspicion had blown: on him never, and he had held his head high. How could he meet them now? How could he face them? Nay, if that were all, how, he asked himself, could he face the honest Nonjuror? Or the honest Jacobite? Or the honest Tory? He, who had taken the oaths to the new government and broken them, who had set up the new government and deceived it, who had dubbed himself patriot--cui bono? Presently brooding over it, he came to think that there was but one man in England, turpissimus; that it would be better in the day of reckoning for the meanest carted pickpocket, whose sentence came before him for revision, than for the King's Secretary in his garter and robes!
Nor, if he had known all that was passing, and all that was being said, among those with whom his fancy painfully busied itself, would he have been the happier. For Sir John's statement got abroad with marvellous quickness. Before Lord Portland arrived from Holland the details were whispered in every tavern and coffee-house within the Bills. The Tories and Jacobites, aiming above everything at finding a counterblast to the Assassination Plot, the discovery of which had so completely sapped their credit with the nation, pounced on the scandal with ghoulish avidity, and repeated and exaggerated it on every occasion. Every Jacobite house of call, from the notorious Dog in Drury Lane, the haunt of mumpers and foot-pads, to the Chocolate House in St. James's rang with it. For Sir John, all (they said among themselves) that they had expected of him was surpassed by this. He was extolled to the skies alike for what he had done and for what he had not done; and as much for the wit that had confounded his enemies as for the courage that had protected his friends. For what Jacobite, seeing the enemy hoist with his own petard could avoid a snigger? Or hear the word Informer without swearing that Sir John was the most honest man who ever signed his name to a deposition.