Читать книгу The Carolinian - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 16

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CAPTAIN MANDEVILLE got back to the gubernatorial residence that afternoon to find Lord William deep in the sociabilities of a reception which her ladyship was holding. The long drawing-room was a little crowded. There was an abundance of tories present, such as the Roupells and the Wraggs, and there were a few who, like Miles Brewton, her ladyship's brother-in-law, were so conservative in the method of their opposition to the Royal Government as to appear—at least, in the eyes of whigs—to stand somewhere between the two parties; but the remainder, and they made up the major part of the attendance, were members of families that Sir Andrew Carey would have described as rebel.

The discerning and rather scornful dark eyes of Captain Mandeville beheld here an epitome of the colony itself. Two parties secretly hostile, each arming against the other, and yet each anxiously straining to preserve the peace, since neither felt itself yet ripe for war, nor knew what war might bring it; each prepared for battle as a last resource, yet each intent not to precipitate battle, and each hoping that the ultimate need for it might yet be averted.

The Captain made his way towards his lordship, and found himself presently confronting Lady William, a splendid, vigorous young woman between fair and dark who stood almost as tall as her viceregal husband and displayed an opulence of charms that compelled in the classical-minded the thought of Hebe. And it was not only her figure and movements that suggested vigour, but her countenance, too, which was boldly handsome.

'You are late,' she rallied the Captain. 'And you bring the usual excuse, no doubt. Poor slave of duty!'

'Your ladyship's penetration spares my poor wit.'

'Not penetration, sir. Compassion.' She took him by the arm. 'You are to come and talk to Miss Middleton. She loves a red-coat so much that it almost makes her loyal.'

'Your ladyship must forgive me. I have to see Lord William at once.'

He was grave, and, observing him sharply, there was a flash of apprehension from Lady William's eyes. For all her high and at times rather reckless courage, she dwelt in constant anxiety for the husband she loved who had been elevated to this position of as much difficulty as honour.

'Is it serious?' she asked.

'Not so much serious as urgent,' he reassured her. 'I have had a busy day.'

She recovered the caustic humour that was natural to her.

'Nothing fills me with so much anxiety as your activities, Robert.'

He smiled his acknowledgments, and passed on to draw Lord William presently from the ladies who had been engaging him. They were joined in the small adjacent room by Captain Tasker, his lordship's other equerry, whom Mandeville had beckoned, and by Innes, who had followed of his own accord upon seeing them withdraw. Mandeville wasted no words.

'The fellow who waited upon your excellency this morning, calling himself Dick Williams, was Harry Latimer.'

It was necessary for him to repeat the statement in other terms before it was understood.

'Good luck' said his lordship, and proceeded to recall what had passed. When he had recalled it, he added: 'My God!' and stared blankly at Mandeville.

Mandeville answered the stare with a nod. 'I am afraid he got a good deal of information out of us. He was sent to spy out the land, to pry into your excellency's real feelings towards these Provincials, and to discover the channel through which certain secret information of the transactions of the Provincial Congress was finding its way to you. I am afraid he has succeeded in all three aims.'

'Oh, but it's impossible! There was Cheney!' his lordship exclaimed.

Very briefly Mandeville informed him of what had happened at Fairgrove. His lordship groaned.

'You see with what a dangerous man you have to deal,' said Mandeville. 'He is resourceful, daring, and a passionate rebel, and his wealth gives him extraordinary influence and extraordinary power.'

'Yes, yes,' snapped his lordship impatiently. 'But Featherstone? Have you warned him?'

'That is not important,' said Mandeville coldly. 'Featherstone is a pricked bubble. He is of no further use to us since I was unable to detain Latimer.'

'But, my God, man! We must save him!'

'I wonder,' said Mandeville in such a tone that the three stared at him in amazement.

'But didn't you say that they'll hang him once Latimer has denounced him?'

'That, or tar-and-feather him.' Mandeville mentioned the alternative casually. And in the same level, well-bred voice he added: 'If any such harm were to come to him, we should have a very clear case against Latimer. I, myself, and probably Sir Andrew Carey, too, can bear witness that it was brought about by Latimer's seditious agency.'

'And you would sacrifice Featherstone to obtain that?' The young voice was charged with horror.

Almost Mandeville looked surprised. 'This is neither a case nor a time for sentiment.' His tone was dry. 'Better men than Featherstone have been sacrificed before now to policy. Myself, I am not very tender where a spy is concerned. A short shrift is the stake on the board with him. And consider what you stand to gain. You are afforded the means to rid the State of a dangerous enemy.'

There was a long moment's silence before his lordship found an answer. His humane young soul was shocked.

'You're a cold-blooded Machiavel,' he said at length, in accents of wonder.

Mandeville shrugged. 'Your excellency is the Governor of a province that is rotten with sedition, and you must take what means you can to stamp it out. The Ministry at home expects no less. Is the life of a poor creature like Featherstone to prove an obstacle in so great a work?'

His lordship clenched his hands behind his back, and took a turn in the room, a prey to very obvious agitation. Tasker and Innes looked on saying no word, both of them a little appalled by Mandeville's soulless theories of statecraft. Mandeville watched his excellency almost in contempt. Was this boyish, emotional young nobleman the sort of man to crush the hydra of rebellion? What hope, he wondered, was there for an empire whose ministers gave such positions as these to younger sons all unequipped to bear them?

But Lord William, though humane and emotional, was not by any means as inept in statecraft as Mandeville supposed him. This his pronouncement now showed.

'Humanely speaking, what you suggest, Mandeville, is horrible. Politically it is mad. If we use Featherstone as a bait, how shall we afterwards dare to take Latimer? Before what court in the province will you bring him to trial? What court do you dream would convict him?'

'He could—indeed, he should—be sent to England for trial on such a charge.'

His excellency crashed fist into palm to express his exasperation.

'You would make use of an enactment which is one of the present colonial grievances, to deal with a man who is a hero in the eyes of the mob, and for an offence for which the province will acclaim him? Is that your statecraft? Don't you see that it would precipitate the very thing that we are at all costs to avoid? That it would bring open rebellion about our ears? That it would compel us to have recourse to violence on our side, and so make an end of the last hope of conciliation between the colonies and the empire?'

'That hope is chimerical,' said Captain Mandeville, with assurance. 'It is the illusion that brings indecision and the weakness of indecision into our policy.'

But now Lord William asserted himself. 'A matter of opinion, Mandeville; and not the opinion that I hold myself. However I may prepare for the worst, I still hope for the best. And I hope with some confidence.'

'But if...' Mandeville was beginning.

The Governor held up his hand. 'There is no more to be said.'

Mandeville might dominate him upon all points but this: for upon this his lordship was dominated by his colonial wife and her numerous relatives in Charles Town, in all of whom the hope was confident—being firmly based upon their intense desires—that conciliation must yet prevail.

'I will thank you,' his excellency concluded, 'to waste no time in finding Featherstone. Let him join Kirkland aboard the Tamar. Thornborough will see to him, and he will be safe there. At need we must send him to England.'

If mortified, Mandeville betrayed no sign of it. He bowed his acknowledgment of the Governor's commands.

'It shall be done at once,' he said, as evenly as if there never had been any question of another course.

And Mr. Innes in relating the affair offers upon it this comment:

His excellency called him to his face a cold-blooded Machiavel because he displays energy and determination, qualities in which Lord William is sadly lacking. If Captain Mandeville were the Governor of this province, there would be a speedy end to its mutinous spirit.

Mr. Innes little suspected that in this case the Captain's determination went so much farther than his energy that, failing to discover Gabriel Featherstone at the house of the married sister with whom he dwelt—and where of necessity he must inquire for him in view of the Governor's explicit order—Mandeville was careful to seek him nowhere else where there was the faintest likelihood of his being found. Captain Mandeville intended that the province should be governed according to his own ideas: and, when these ideas were in conflict with the Governor's, it only remained for him to force the Governor's hand.

Meanwhile, Mr. Latimer, too, had returned to Charles Town, and at just about the time that Mandeville was threading his way through the ranks of Lady William's guests, the young rebel was striding into the dining-room of his splendid mansion on East Bay.

It was a room, of rather sombre dignity, panelled in dark oak, with portraits of bygone Latimers sunken into the panelling. Like most of the house, it was furnished mainly in walnut, imported fifty or sixty years ago from Holland, and of the character that in England is associated with the reign of William and Mary. From the wide overmantel the room was surveyed by a saturnine gentleman in a ponderous periwig, between whom and Harry Latimer a resemblance was to be traced. A still stronger resemblance might be traced—and has been traced rather maliciously by Lord Charles Montagu—between this portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller of Charles Fitzroy Latimer, who was the founder of his house, and—in the actual words of Lord Charles—'that merry prince who was charged to his face by the Duke of Buckingham with being, indeed, the father of a good many of his subjects.'

On a cane day-bed under one of the tall windows lounged a large fair young man reading 'The Vicar of Wakefield.' He was the male counterpart of Lady William Campbell: but his countenance lacked a good deal of the force of hers, and his personality a good deal of her magnetism. Still, he remained a young gentleman of very amiable exterior whom it was impossible not to like. That he was indolent and good-natured, you perceived at a glance. That the most serious business he knew in life were horse-racing, cock-fighting, and fox-hunting, you would have no difficulty in believing at once. That he should be taking sufficient interest in provincial politics to be whole-heartedly on the side of the colonials was less obvious.

On Latimer's appearance, Mr. Thomas Izard tossed aside his book, and stifled a yawn.

'I was beginning to grow anxious for you,' he said.

'Why, what's o'clock?' As he asked the question, Latimer sought the answer to it from the tall walnut clock standing in the corner. 'Half-past five. Egad! I had no notion it was so late.'

'The time will ha' been spent agreeably.'

'Agreeably!' Latimer flung himself into a chair to render a brief account of it. 'You see,' he ended, 'I didn't overrate the risk to my liberty, although I hadn't reckoned on finding Captain Mandeville there.'

Tom considered him with a gloomy eye. 'I could ha' told you it would be long odds. The gallant Captain rides out there almost daily.'

'Why didn't you?'

'You'd ha' seen the inference, and given me the lie, most like. And, let me perish, I don't want to quarrel with you about any member of the faithless sex, Harry.'

His bitter allusion to womankind derived from the fact that his wife had left him a year ago to run off with a young French nobleman who had visited the colony. Considering that she was a termagant and a scold who had given him two years of married torment, he should have been thankful. Instead, the human mind being tortuous, he was resentful, and prayed for the day when he might call out and kill the Frenchman who had really done him the greatest service of his life.

I mention the otherwise irrelevant fact that you may realize that he was about the unlikeliest counsellor Harry Latimer could have found just then.

'Ye-es,' he answered slowly, his eyes troubled. And then he brushed the painful thing aside. His voice was almost casual. 'Myrtle has discovered that she can't marry a man who doesn't believe that King George can do no wrong. And she has demonstrated to me her preference for a red-coat who has the honour to serve His Gracious Majesty. It's logical, I suppose.'

'Logical!' Mr. Izard sneered. 'Who ever knew a woman to be logical? It's calculating. That's what it is, Harry. And so, let me perish, not worth a thought. I'm glad you take it so well. As I wrote to you, Mandeville may be Earl of Chalfont some day if his luck holds.'

But to his surprise Harry turned on him in sudden fury.

'What the devil do you mean, Tom?'

'Good Gad! Isn't it what you mean?'

'D'ye suppose I'd suspect Myrtle of being mercenary? Of selling herself for a title?'

'Never been known in the history of the world, has it?'

'Never with such women as Myrtle.'

'It seems to me you've a lot to learn, Harry,' said Mr. Izard, as one speaking with the authority of experience. 'Women are the most damned...'

'I'll thank you not to generalize. Mr. Thomas Izard on Woman isn't edifying.'

'No. By Gad! He isn't! The subject don't allow it. But he's instructive.'

And then the entrance of old Julius put a timely term to an unprofitable discussion. He brought a tray on which were glasses and a silver bowl containing a delectable punch of rum and pineapple and lemons, also a silver box of fine leaf and a couple of pipes.

Not until they were alone again did any word pass between the two friends, and then the interrupted subject was not resumed. There was a much more urgent matter.

'Since I require no deputy at the meeting, Tom, you may give me the letter that I left with you.'

'Gladly enough,' said Tom, and fetched the package from his pocket. 'Egad, if you hadn't returned, and I had had to attend the meeting for you, I shouldn't have been there long. I'd ha' had a party of Sons of Liberty out at Fairgrove to fetch you away to-night.'

'I was sure I could trust you for that,' said Harry, smiling. 'They little knew what they would be invoking when they thought to detain me.'

The walnut clock struck the hour of six. Mr. Latimer bounded to his feet.

'I must go,' he said. 'Six is the hour of the meeting. Stay to sup with me. I'll not be very long. Smoke a pipe meanwhile.'

He was almost at the door when Tom called after him. 'Look to yourself, Harry. Don't go abroad unarmed. You'll be a marked man, stab me, after what's happened.'