Oddsfish!, Robert Hugh Benson [best books to read for women .txt] 📗

I was very glad to hear of.

Other matters too had passed; but I think I have said enough to shew how affairs stood in the month of July when I came back to England--with the exception of what I shall relate presently as of my own experience.

* * * * *


The evening was as bright and fair as that on which I had come back to London near two years and a half ago, with so heavy a heart, to find Dolly at Court; but this time the heaviness was all gone. I had had letters from her continually, and all those I carried with me. She told me that her father seemed a little moody, now and again; but I did not care very greatly about that. He could be as moody as he liked, if he but let her and me alone. It was less than a year now from my twenty-eighth birthday, which was the period that had been fixed.

Now a piece of news had reached me at Dover that made me pretty content; and that was that His Majesty desired me to have lodgings now in Whitehall. These were very hard to come by, except a man had great influence; and I was happy to think that such as I had was from the King himself. So I did not return northwards this time from the Strand, but held on, and so to the gate of Whitehall. Here I was stopped and asked my name.

I gave it; and the officer saluted me very civilly.

"Your lodgings are ready, sir," said he. "Mr. Chiffinch was very urgent about them. And he bade me tell you you would find visitors there, if you came before eight o'clock."

It was now scarcely gone seven; but I thought very little of my visitors, supposing they might perhaps be Mr. Chiffinch himself and a friend: so I inquired very, leisurely where the lodgings were situate.

"They are my Lord Peterborough's old lodgings, sir," said the man. "He hath moved elsewhere. They look out upon the Privy Garden and the bowling-green; or, to be more close, on the trees between them."

This was a fine piece of news indeed; for these lodgings were among the best. I was indeed become a person of importance.

There were two entrances to these lodgings--one from the Stone Gallery, and the other from the garden; but that into the garden was only a little door, whose use was not greatly encouraged, because of the personages that walked there; so I went up the Stone Gallery, between all the books and the cabinets, and so to my own door; with my James behind me. My other men I bade follow when they had bestowed the horses and found their own quarters.

It was a fine entrance, with a new shield over the door; lately scraped white, for the reception of my own arms. I knocked upon it, and a fellow opened; and when I had told him my name, he let me through; and I went upstairs to the parlour that looked over the garden; and there, to my happiness were my visitors. For they were none other than my dear love herself and her maid.

I cannot tell what that was to me, to find her there.... The maid was sent into the little writing-room, next door, into which my visitors would usually be shewn; and we two sat down on the window-seat. Dolly looked not a day older: she was in a fine dress.

"See," she said, "you have caught me again at Court? Will you send me away again this time?"

She told me presently that she and her father were come up to town for a few days; but must be gone again directly. They had written to Mr. Chiffinch demanding news of me, and when should I be at liberty to come to Hare Street; and he had told them that at anyrate not yet for a while, and that they had best come and see me in my new lodgings. I was sorry that he had said I could not go to Hare Street for the present--though I had expected no less; but I soon forgot it again in her dear presence.

"You are a great man, now, I suppose," she said presently, "too great to see to the pigs any longer. We have no such rooms as this at Hare Street."

They were indeed fine; and we went through them together. They were all furnished from roof to floor; there were some good tapestries and pictures; and the windows, as the officer had said, looked out for the most part upon the trees beneath which so long ago I had watched ladies walking. But I told her that I loved my panelled chamber at Hare Street, and the little parlour, with the poor Knights of the Grail, who rode there for ever and never attained their quest, more than all Whitehall. Then I kissed her again, for perhaps the thirtieth time; and, as I was doing so Cousin Tom came in.

"Ah!" said he, "I have caught you then!" But he said it without much merriment.

If Dolly was no older, her father was. There were grey hairs in his eyebrows, for that was all that I could see of his hair, since he wore a periwig; and his face appeared a little blotchy.

I met him however with cordiality, and congratulated him on his looks. He sat down, and presently, to my astonishment, he too opened out upon my prospects, though in a very different manner from Dolly.

"You are a great man now," he said, "in these fine lodgings. I wonder His Majesty hath not made you at least a knight."

I was a little angry at his manner. He said it not pleasantly at all; but as if he found fault. I determined I would not meet his ambitions at all.

"My dear Cousin," said I, "indeed I am not a knight; and have no hope of being so. His Majesty hath a thousand men more competent than I."

"Then why hath he given you these lodgings?" said he, with a sharp look.

I shrugged my shoulders.

"I am of some convenience to His Majesty; and the more so if I am near him. I suppose that these lodgings fell vacant in the nick of time."

He looked at me very earnestly. He had, of course, no idea of in what matters I was engaged: I might have been a mere valet for all he knew.

"That is so?" he said.

"I have no reason to think otherwise," I answered him.

* * * * *


Well; it was growing late; and I had not supped, as Dolly presently remembered; it was near eight o'clock, and after that time there would be formalities at the gate as they went out. So they took their leave at last; and I kissed Dolly for the thirty-first time, and went downstairs with them, and watched them down the gallery; they having promised to come again next day.

* * * * *


I had scarcely done supper and looked about me a little, when Mr. Chiffinch's name was brought to me; and I went to see him in the little parlour and bring him through to what would be my private closet--so great was I become! He looked older; and I told him so.

"Well; so I am," said he. "And so are we all. You will be astonished when you see His Majesty."

"Is he so much older?" I asked.

"He has aged five years in one," said he.

We talked presently (after looking through my lodgings again, to see if all were as it should be, and after my thanking Mr. Chiffinch for the pains he had put himself to), first of France and then of Rome. He shewed himself very astute when we spoke of Rome.

"I do not wish to pry," he said, "but I hope to God's sake that the Holy Father hath given you a commission to His Royal Highness, to bid him hold himself more quiet. He will ruin all, if he be not careful."

"Why; how is that?" said I.

"Ah! you ecclesiastics," he cried--"for I count you half an one at least, in spite of your pretty cousin--you are more close than any of us! Well; I will tell you as if you did not know."

He put his fingers together, in his old manner.

"First," said he, "he is Lord High Admiral again. I count that very rash. We are Protestants, we English, you know; and we like not a Papist to be our guard-in-chief."

"You will have to put up with a Papist as a King, some day," said I.

"Why I suppose so--though I would not have been so sure two years ago. But a King is another matter from an High Admiral."

"Well; what else has he done?" I asked.

"He hath been readmitted to the Council, in the very face of the Test Act too. But it is how he bears himself and speaks that is the worst of all. He carries himself and his religion as openly as he can; and does all that is in His power to relieve the Papists of disabilities. That is very courageous, I know; but it is not very shrewd. God knows where he will stop if once he is on the throne. I think he will not be there long."

I said nothing; for indeed my instructions were on those very points; and I knew them all as well as Chiffinch, and, I think, better.

He spoke, presently, of myself.

"As for you, Mr. Mallock, I need not tell you how high you are in favour here. _Si monumentum requiris, circumspice_"; and he waved his hands at the rich rooms.

"His Majesty is very good," I said.

"His Majesty hath a peerage for you, if you want it. He said he had made too many grocers and lickspittles into knights, to make you one."

I cannot deny that to hear that news pleased me. Yet even then I hesitated.

"Mr. Chiffinch," said I at last, "if you mean what you say, I have something to answer to that."

"Well?" said he.

"Let me have one year more of obscurity. I may be able to do much more that way. In one year from now I shall be married, as I told you. Well, when I have a wife she must come to town, and make acquaintances; and so I shall be known in any case. Let me have it then, if I want it--as a wedding gift; so that she shall come as My Lady. And I will do what I can then, in His Majesty's service, more publicly."

"What if His Majesty is dead before that?" said he, regarding me closely.

"Then we will go without," said I.

He nodded; and said no more.