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

me; but I vow to you that what you have said I have remembered. It is not argument that a man needs--at least after the first--but example. That you have given me."

Then I flushed up scarlet; for I was sure he was mocking me.

"Sir," I cried, "you might have spared--"

He lifted his eyes a little.

"I assure you, Mr. Mallock," he said, "that I mean what I say. You have been very faithful; you have ventured your life again and again for me; you have refused rewards, except the very smallest; you have lost even your sweetheart in my service; and now, when all is within your reach again, you fling it back at me. It is not very gracious; but it is very Christian, as I understand Christianity."

I said nothing. What was there to say? I seemed a very poor Christian to myself.

"Come! come, Mr. Mallock," pursued the King very gently and kindly. "Think of it once again. You shall have what you please--your Viscounty or anything else of that sort; and you shall keep your lodgings and remain here as my friend. What do you say to that?"

For a moment again I hesitated; for it is not to everyone that a King offers his friendship. If it had been that alone I think I might have yielded, for I knew that I loved this man in spite of all his wickedness and his treatment of me--for that, and for my "apostleship" as he called it, I might have stayed. But at the word _Viscounty_ all turned to bitterness: I remembered my childish dreams and the sweetness of them, and the sweetness of my dear love who was to have shared them; and all turned to bitterness and vanity.

"No, Sir," said I--and I felt my lips tremble. "No, Sir. I will be ungracious and--and Christian to the end. I am resolved to go; and nothing in this world shall keep me from it."

The King stood up abruptly; and I rose with him. I did not know whether he were angry or not; and I did not greatly care. He stepped away from me, and began to walk up and down. One of his bitch-spaniels whined at him from her basket, lifting her great liquid eyes that were not unlike his own; and he stooped and caressed her for a moment. Then the clocks began to chime, one after the other, for it was eight o'clock, and I heard them at it, too, in the bed-chamber beyond. There would be thirty or forty of them, I daresay, in the two chambers. So for a minute or two he went up and down; and I have but to close my eyes now, to see him again. He was limping a little from the sore on his heel; but he carried himself very kingly, his swarthy face looking straight before him, and his lips pursed. I think that indeed he was a little angry, but that he was resolved not to shew it.

Suddenly he wheeled on me, and held out his hand.

"Well, Mr. Mallock; there is no more to be said; and I must honour you for it whatever else I do. I would that all my servants were as disinterested."

I knelt to kiss his hand. I think I could not have spoken at that moment. As I stood up, he spoke again.

"When do you leave town?" he said.

"On Tuesday, Sir."

"Well, come and see me again before you go. No, not in private: you need not fear for that. Come to-morrow night, to the _levee_ after supper."

"I will do so, Sir," said I.

* * * * *


On the following night then, which was Sunday, I presented myself for the last time, I thought, to His Majesty.

I need not say that half a dozen times since I had left him, my resolution had faltered; though, it had never broken down. I heard mass in Weld Street; and there again I wondered whether I had decided rightly, and again as I burned all my papers after dinner--(for when a man begins afresh he had best make a clean sweep of the past). I went to take the air a little, before sunset, in St. James' Park, and from a good distance saw His Majesty going to feed the ducks, with a dozen spaniels, I daresay going after him, and a couple of gentlemen with him, but no guards at all. The King walked much more slowly that day than was his wont--I suppose because of the sore on his heel. But I did not go near enough for him to see me; for I would trouble him now no further than I need. All this time--or at least now and again--I wondered a little as to whether I was right to go. I will not deny that the prospect of remaining had a little allurement in it; but it was truly not more than a little; and as evening fell and my heart went inwards again, as hearts do when the curtains are drawn, I wondered that it had been any allurement at all: for my life lay buried in the churchyard of Hormead Parva, and I had best bury the rest of me in the place where at least I had a few friends left. After supper, about ten o'clock, I put on my cloak and went across to the Duchess of Portsmouth's lodgings, where the _levee_ was held usually on such evenings. My man James went with me to light me there.

I do not think I have seen a more splendid sight, very often, than that great gallery, when I came into it that night, passing on my way through the closet where I had once talked with Her Grace. It was all alight from end to end with candles in cressets, and on the great round table at the further end where the company was playing basset, stood tall candlesticks amidst all the gold. I had not seen this great gallery before; and it was beyond everything, and far beyond Her Majesty's own great chamber. If I had thought the closet fine, this was a thousand times more. There were great French tapestries on the walls, and between them paintings that had been once Her Majesty's, and those not the worst of them. The quantity of silver in the room astonished me: there were whole tables of it, and braziers and sconces and cressets beyond reckoning; and there were at least five or six chiming clocks that the King had given to Her Grace; and tall Japanese presses and cabinets of lacquer which she loved especially.

There was a fire of Scotch coal burning on the hearth, as in His Majesty's own bedchamber; and on a great silver couch, beside this, covered with silk tapestry, sat the King, smiling to himself, with two or three dogs beside him, and Her Grace of Portsmouth on the same couch. The Duchesses of Cleveland and Mazarin were on chairs very near the couch.

There was a great clamour of voices from the basset-table as I came in and the King looked up; and, as I went across to pay my respects to His Majesty, he said something to the Duchess, very merrily. She too glanced up at me; and indeed she was a splendid sight in her silks and in the jewels she had had from him.

"Why; here is my friend!" said the King, as he put out his hand to me; and once more the dogs yapped at me from his side. He put his left hand out over their heads and pressed them down.

"You must not bark at my friend Mr. Mallock," he said. "He is off to be a holy monk."

For a moment I thought the King was making a mock of me; but it was not so. He was smiling at me very friendly.

* * * * *


He was in wonderful good humour that evening; and I heard more of his public talk than ever before; for he made me draw up a stool presently upon the hearth. Now and again a gentleman came across to be presented to him; and others came and looked in for a while and away again. There were constant comings and goings; and once, as a French boy was singing songs to a spinet, near the door, I saw the serious face of Mr. Evelyn, with two of his friends, look in upon the scene.

I cannot remember one quarter of all the things that were said. Now the King was silent, playing with the ears of his dogs and smiling to himself; now he would say little things that stuck in the memory, God knows why! For example, he said that he had eaten two goose's eggs for supper, which shewed what a strong stomach he had; and he described to us a very fierce duck that had snapped his hand that afternoon in the park. History is not made of these things; and yet sometimes I think that it should be; for those be the matters that interest little folk; and most of us are no more than that. I do not suppose that in all the world there is one person except myself who knows that His Sacred Majesty ate two goose's eggs to his supper on that Sunday night.

He spoke presently of his new palace at Winchester that he was a-building, and that was near finished.

"I shall be very happy this week," said he, "for my building will be all covered in with lead." (He said the same thing again, later, to my Lord Ailesbury, who remembered it when it was fulfilled, though in another manner than the King had meant.)

He talked too of "little Ken," as he named him (who had been made Bishop last week), and of the story that so many told--(for the King told his stories several times over when he was in a good humour)--and the way he told it to-night was this.

"Ah! that little Ken!" said he. "Little black Ken! He is the man to tell me my sins! Your Grace should hear him"--(added he)--"upon the Seventh Commandment! And such lessons drawn from Scripture too-from the Old Testament!"

He looked up sharply and merrily at Her Grace of Portsmouth as he said this.

"Well; when poor Nell and I went down to Winchester a good while ago," he went on, "what must little Ken do but refuse her a lodging! This is a man to be a Bishop, thought I. And so poor Nell had to sleep where she could."

Her Grace of Portsmouth looked very glum while this tale was told; for she hated Mrs. Nelly with all her heart. She flounced a little in her seat; and one of the dogs barked at her for it.

"First a monk and then a Duchess!" said the King. "Did you ever hear of the good man of Salisbury who put his hand into my carriage to greet me, and was bitten for his pains? 'God bless Your Majesty,' said he, 'and God damn Your Majesty's dogs!'--Eh, Fubbs?"--(for so he called the Duchess).

So he discoursed this evening, very freely indeed, and there was a number