"We are once more betrayed. He has, I know, done this. I leave his house and him for ever from to-night. I pray God you may yet escape. If you ever loved me, fly--fly at once. Lose no moment.--Katherine."
It was on a bright afternoon, a week after the events which have been described, that Lord Fordingbridge's travelling carriage drew up in front of his house, and my lord descended in an extremely bad humour. There was, perhaps, more than one reason why he was not in the most amiable of tempers, the principal one being that the news which he had hoped to receive ere he again made his entrance into London had not come to hand.
All the time that he had been on his Cheshire property--which he had found to be considerably neglected since his father's departure for France--he had been expecting to receive, from one source or another, the information of the arrest of those three enemies of his, about whom he had given information sufficient to bring them to justice. Yet none had come. Daily he had sent to the coach office at Chester for the journals from London, but, when he had perused them, he still failed to find that any of the three had been haled to justice. Nor was there even a description in any of them of the scene at Vauxhall--which, had he found such description, might have been exceedingly pleasant reading. But, in truth, nothing was more unlikely than that he should find it. A fracas at either Ranelagh or the Spring Gardens was by no means likely to be chronicled in either the "London Journal" or the "Craftsman," or any other news-sheet of the period, since in those days the ubiquitous reporter was unknown, or, when he existed, did not consider anything beneath a murder, a state trial, or an execution worthy of his pen. Also the proprietors of Ranelagh and Vauxhall, and similar places of entertainment, took very good care to keep anything unpleasant that happened out of the papers. Nothing short, therefore, of Mr. Jonathan Tyers sending an account of what had occurred in his grounds to the papers of the day with the request that it might be inserted--accompanied, perhaps, by a payment for such insertion--would have led to the publication of the matter, and that the worthy proprietor of the Spring Gardens would do such a thing as this was not to be supposed.
Also, my lord had received no news from his wife, nor her father, which astonished him considerably. For he had supposed that, in about a week's time, the post would bring him a letter full of accusations, reproaches, and injurious epithets from her ladyship, who, he felt sure, would at once connect him with the arrest of the three men--yet, no more from her than from the public prints did he gather one word. So that at last he began to have the worst fears that, after all, the Government had bungled in some way and that the victims had escaped. It was, therefore, in a very ill humour that he again returned to London, cursing inwardly and vehemently at any delay necessitated by the changing of horses, by nights spent at inns on the road, and by the heavy roads themselves; and at St. Albans, where he once more slept, by receiving no visit at all from Captain Morris, to whom he had written saying that he would be there on a certain evening and would be pleased to see him.
Instead, however, he received a visit from another person who had troubled his mind a great deal during the past week or so; a somewhat rough, uncouth-looking fellow, who seemed to have dogged his footsteps perpetually--who had passed him soon after he left Dunstable on his journey down, whom he saw again at Coventry and at Stafford, and who, to his amazement, now strode into the apartment he occupied as hitherto, and stated that he brought a message from the Captain.
"Hand it to me, then," said his lordship, regarding the man as he stood before him in his rough riding cloak and great boots, and recognising him as the fellow who had appeared so often on his journey.
"There is nothing to hand," the other replied. "Only a word-of-mouth message."
"A word-of-mouth message! Indeed! Captain Morris spares me but scant courtesy. Well, what is the message?"
"Only this. The work has failed, and the birds have escaped from the net. That's all."
"Escaped from the net!" his lordship said, sinking back into the deep chair he sat in, and staring at the uncouth messenger. "Escaped from the net! But the particulars, man, the particulars! How has it come about? Are the Government and their underlings a pack of fools and idiots that they let malignant traitors escape thus?"
"Very like, for all I know, or, for the matter of that, care. The captain's one of their underlings, as you call them, and I'm another. Perhaps we're fools and idiots."
"You are another, are you?" said his lordship, looking at him, "another, eh? Pray, sir, is that why you have dogged me into Cheshire and back again as you have done, for I have seen you often? Am I a suspected person that I am followed about thus? Am I, sir?"
"Very like," again replied this stolid individual. "Very like, though I know not. I received my orders at Dunstable to keep you in sight, and I kept you, that's----"
"Leave the room. Go out of my sight at once!" exclaimed Lord Fordingbridge, springing from his seat and advancing toward the man. "Go at once, or the ostler shall be sent for to throw you out. Go!"
When the man had departed, muttering that "fool, or idiot, or both, he'd done his duty, and he didn't care for any nobleman in England, Jacobite or Hanoverian, so long as he done that," the viscount gave himself up to the indulgence of one of those fits, or rather tempests, of passion, which, as a rule, he rarely allowed himself to indulge in, and cursed and swore heartily as he stamped up and down the room for half an hour.
"Everything goes wrong with me," he muttered, as he shook his fist in impotent rage at his own reflection in the great mirrors over the fireplace, "everything, everything! If that infernal captain had only gone to work as he should have done on the information I gave him, they would all have been lodged in gaol by now--two of them doomed to a certain death and the other to a long imprisonment or banishment to the colonies. And now they are fled--are free--safe, while I am far from safe since Elphinston is at large; and am suspected, too, it seems, since, forsooth, that chuckle-headed boor is set to follow me."
This latter thought was, perhaps, as unpleasant a one as any which rose to his mind, since if he were also suspected it might be the case that, while he had denounced the others, they--or probably Archibald Sholto alone--might have denounced him. And at this terrible thought he quaked with fear, for he knew what an array of charges might be brought. Nay, it was the very fear of those charges being brought, combined with his other fear of Elphinston wreaking vengeance on him for having deceived and stolen his promised wife, that had led to his betraying the three men who alone could denounce him. And now they were all free, instead of being in Newgate or the Tower, and he, it seemed, was as much suspected as they!
He tossed about his bed all night, made a wretched breakfast, and then set out for London, determined at all hazards to discover exactly what had happened, or perhaps to find out that nothing had happened. Yet as he went he mused on what his future course should be, and came to at least one determination.
"I will send her ladyship packing," he said, with a sardonic grin. "I have had enough of her and her airs and graces, and she may go to Elphinston or to the devil for aught I care. I have a surprise to spring upon her, a trump card, or, as the late Louis was said to call that card, 'La dernière piece d'or,' because it always won. And, by Heaven, I'll spring it without mercy!"
In which frame of mind his lordship arrived in front of his town house. But now a new matter of astonishment arose, also a new fuel for his humours; for the house appeared deserted, the blinds were drawn down in all the windows. He could perceive no smoke arising from any chimney, there was no sign of life at all about the place. He bade his manservant get down from beside the coachman and tug lustily at the bell, while all the time that the man was doing so he was fretting and fuming inwardly, and at last was meditating sending for the watch and having the door forced, when it was opened from the inside, and the oldest servant in his establishment, a decrepit, deaf old man, who had acted as caretaker for many years during his and his father's absence abroad, appeared.
"Come here, Luke, come here," his lordship called loudly to him; "come here, I say," and he motioned that he should descend the steps and approach the travelling carriage, from the door of which he was now glaring at him. But, whether from fright or senility, or both combined, the other did not obey him, and only stood shivering and shaking and feebly bowing upon the threshold.
"What devil's game is this?" Fordingbridge muttered to himself as he now sprang out and ran up the steps, after which he grasped the old man by the collar and, dragging him toward him, bawled in his ear question after question as to what cause the present state of the house was owing. But the old fellow only shivered and shook the more, and seemed too paralyzed by his master's violence to do anything but wag his jaws helplessly. Hurling him away, therefore, with no consideration at all for either his age or feebleness, Fordingbridge rushed through the hall ringing a bell that communicated with the kitchens and another with the garrets, calling out the names of male and female servants, and receiving no answer to any of his summons. Then, tired of this at last, he bade his manservant bring in his valises and ordered the travelling carriage off to the stables. But by now the old servitor seemed to have recovered either his breath or his senses somewhat, and coming up to his lordship in a sidling fashion, such as a dog assumes when fearful of a blow if it approaches its master too near, he mumbled that there was no one else in the house but himself.
"So I should suppose," Lord Fordingbridge replied, endeavouring to calm himself and to overcome the gust of passion with which he had once more been seized, "so I should suppose; I have called enough to have waked the dead had there been any here." Then once more regarding the old man with one of his fierce glances, he shouted at him in a voice that penetrated even to his ears, "Where are they all? Where is her ladyship?" in a lower voice. "Where are the servants?"
"Gone, all gone," Luke replied, "all gone. None left but me."
"Where are they gone to?"
The old man flapped his hands up and down once or twice--perhaps he performed the action with a desire to deprecate his master's anger--and looked up beseechingly into his face as though asking pardon for what was no fault of his, then replied:
"Her ladyship has gone away--for good and all, I hear, my lord."
"Ha! Where is she gone to?"
"To Lady Belrose's. I am told. She--she--they--the servants say she will never come back."
The viscount paused a moment--this news had startled even him!--then he muttered, "No, I'll warrant she never shall. This justifies me." And again he continued, still shouting at the old man, so that his valet upstairs must have heard every word he uttered:
"And the servants, where are they?"
"All gone too. They were frightened by the police and the soldiers--"
"The soldiers! What soldiers?"
"They ransacked the house to find Mr. Archibald. But he, too, was gone. That terrified all but me--me it did not frighten. No, no," he went on, assuming a ludicrous appearance of bravery that was almost weird to behold, "me it did not frighten. I remember when, also, the soldiers searched the house for your father, his late lordship with--he! he!--the same re----"
"Silence!" roared Fordingbridge. "How dare you couple my father's name with that fellow? So Mr. Archibald is also gone! But what about the soldiers? The soldiers, I say," raising his voice again to a shriek.
"Ah, the soldiers," Luke repeated. "Yes, yes. The soldiers. Brave soldiers. I had a son once in their regiment, long ago, when Dunmore commanded them; he was wounded at--um----um" and he stopped, terrified by the scowl on Lord Fordingbridge's face.
"What," bawled the latter, "did they do here--in this house? Curse your son and your recollections, too. What did they do here--in my house?"
"They sought for Mr. Archibald--her ladyship being gone forth. But he, too, was out--ho! ho--and--and he never came back. Then the captain--a brave, young lord, they say--said you were known to be fostering a rebel--they called him a rebel Jesuit priest!--that you were denounced from Dunstable, and that you must make your own account with the Government. Then the maids fled, and next the men--they said they owed you no service. Ah! there are no old faithful servants now--or few--very few."
"Go!" said Fordingbridge, briefly--and again his look terrified the poor old creature so, that he slunk off shivering and shaking as before.
Slowly the viscount mounted the stairs to his saloon, or withdrawing room, and when there he cast himself into a chair and brooded on what he had heard.
"Harbouring a rebel--a rebel Jesuit priest," he muttered. "So! so! am I caught in the toils that I myself set? Pardieu, 'twould seem so. I denounce a rebel, and, unfortunately, that rebel lives on me--is housed with me. I never thought of that! It may tell badly for me; worse, too, because I brought him to England in my train. How shall I escape it?" And he sat long in his chair meditating.
"The captain said," he went on, "that I must make my own account with the Government. Ah, yes, yes; why! so indeed I must. And 'tis not hard. Make my account! Why, yes, to be sure. Easy enough. I, having embraced the principles of Hanover, and being now firm in my loyalty to George, do, the better to confound his enemies, shelter in my house one whom I intend to yield up to him. Well! there's no harm in that, but rather loyalty. Otherwise," and he laughed to himself as he spoke, "I might lay myself open to the reproach of being a bad host; of not respecting the sacredness of the guest."
Eased in his mind by this reflection and by the excuse which he had found, as he considered, for appeasing the Government and satisfying it as to his reasons for sheltering a Jesuit plotter, he rose from his seat and wandered into the other rooms of his house, viewing with particular interest and complaisance the one which had been her ladyship's boudoir, or morning-room.
"A pretty nest for so fair a bird," he muttered, as he regarded the Mortlake hangings and lace curtains, the deep roomy lounge, the bright silver tea service, and--as blots upon the other things--bunches of now withered flowers in the vases. "A pretty nest. Yet, forsooth, the silly thing must fall out of it; wander forth to freedom and misery. For they say, who study such frivolities, that caged birds, once released, pine and die even in their freedom.Soit!'tis better that the bird should escape and die of its own accord than be thrust into the cold open by its master's hand. And that would have happened to your ladyship," and he laughed as he spoke of her, "had you not taken the initiative. My Lady Fordingbridge," uttering the words with emphasis, nay, with unction, "I had done with you. It was time for you to go."
A little clock on the mantelpiece, a masterpiece of Tompion's, chimed forth the hour musically as he spoke; he remembered his father buying it as a present for his mother the year before they fled to France; and turning round to look at it he saw, standing against its face, where it could not fail to be observed, a letter addressed to him. Opening it, he found written the words, "I have left the house and you. I know everything now." That was all; there was no form of address, no superscription. Nothing could be more disdainful, nor, by its brevity, more convincing. And, whatever the schemes the man might have been maturing in his evil mind against the writer, yet that brief, contemptuous note stung him more than a longer, more explanatory one could have done.
"So be it," he said again, "so be it." Then he bade his man come and dress him anew, and afterwards call a hackney coach. And on entering the latter when ready, he ordered the driver to convey him first to the Duke of Newcastle's (the Secretary of State), and later to Lady Belrose's in Hanover-square.
"For, to commence," he muttered, as he drove off, "I must square his grace, and then have one final interview with my dearly beloved Katherine. Newcastle has the reputation of being the biggest fool in England--he should not be difficult to deal with; while as to her--well, she is no fool but yet she shall find her master."
Fortune had, indeed, stood the friend of those three denounced men, otherwise they must by now have been lying--as Fordingbridge had said--in one of the many prisons of London awaiting their trial; trials which--in the case of two at least--would have preceded by a short time only their executions and deaths; deaths made doubly horrible by that which accompanied them, by the cutting out and casting into the fire of the still beating hearts of the victims, the disembowelling and quartering and mangling.
Yet, if such was ever to be their fate--and they tempted such fate terribly by their continued presence in London, or, indeed, in England--it had not yet overtaken them; until now they were free. How Douglas Sholto and Bertie Elphinston had escaped the snare you have seen; how Archibald Sholto eluded those who sought him has now to be told.
Kate had no sooner departed in a chariot, sent for her by Lady Belrose, to take a dish of tea in company with the other members of the proposed party before going on to Vauxhall, than Mr. Archibald, who had a large room at the top of the house, was apprised by the servant that a Scotch gentleman awaited him in the garden.[4]On desiring to be informed what the gentleman's name and errand were--for those engaged as the Jesuit now was omitted no precautions for their safety--a message was brought back that the visitor was an old friend of Mr. Archibald's, whom he would recognise on descending to the garden, and that his business was very pressing. Now Archibald was a man of great forethought--necessity had made him such--and therefore, ere he descended to the garden, he thought it well to take an observation of this mysterious caller, who might be, as he said, a friend or, on the other hand, a representative of the law endeavouring to take advantage of him.
The opportunity for this observation presented itself, however, without any difficulty. On the backstairs of each flight in the houses of Kensington-square there existed precisely what exists in the present day in most houses, namely, windows half-way up each flight, and, gazing out into the garden--up and down the gravel walks of which the visitor was walking, sometimes stopping to inspect or to smell some of the roses already in bloom, and sometimes casting glances of impatience at the house--Archibald saw the man who, later on, was to deliver Kate's message to Bertie.
"Why!" he exclaimed to himself, "as I live 'tis James McGlowrie. Honest Jemmy! Indeed, he can come on no evil intent to me or to those dear to me. Yet--yet--I fear. Even though he means no harm he may be the bearer of bad news," and so saying he passed down the stairs and to the man awaiting him.
"James," he said, addressing the other in their native brogue, "this is a sight for sair een. Yet," he went on, "what brings you here? First, how did you know I dwelt here, and next, what brings you?--though right glad I am to see you once again."
"I have a wee bit message for ye, Archibald," said the other, shaking him warmly by the hand, "that it behoves you vary weel to hear. And," dropping at once into the verbosity that was to so tease, while at the same time it amused, Elphinston some hours later, "not only to hear, but, so to speak, as it were, to ponder on, yet also to decide quickly over and thereby to arrive at a good determination. D'ye take, Archibald Sh----, I mean, so to speak, Mr. Archibald?"
"Why, no," said the other, with a faint smile, "I cannot in truth say that I do. James McGlowrie, you can speak to the point when you choose. Choose to do so now, I beg you."
"To the point is very well. And so I will speak. Now, Archie, old friend, listen. Ye ken and weel remember, I doubt not, Geordie McNab, erstwhile of Edinburgh."
"Indeed I do."
"So--so. Vary weel. Now Geordie McNab is come south and has gotten himself into the Scotch Secretary of State's office, for Geordie is no Jacobite!--and there he draws £200 a year sterling--not Scotch. Oh, no. Geordie is now vary weel to do, and what with the little estate his poor auld mother left him, which, so to speak, yields him thirty bolls and firlots of barley, some peats at twopence per load, and many pecks of mustard seed at a shilling, and----"
"Jemmy, Jemmy," said the other, reproachfully, "was this the important errand you came here upon?"
"Nay, nay. My tongue runs away with me as ever. Yet, listen still. Geordie is no Jacobite, yet, i'faith, there's a many he's overweel disposed to, among others an old schoolfellow o' his, one Archibald."
"One Archibald! Ha! I take you. And, Jemmy, is he threatened; has he aught to fear from the Scotch Secretary's office?"
"The warst that can befall. Ay, man, the very warst. So are also two friends of his, late of--hem--a certain army that has of late made excursions and alarums, as the bard hath it."
"So! I understand! We have been informed against, blown upon. Alas! alas! We were free but for this--our names not even upon the list."
"Yet now," said McGlowrie, "are they there. Likewise also your addresses and habitments--all are vary weel known. My laddie, ye must flee out o' the land and awa' back to France, and go ye must at once. There's no time to be lost."
"I cannot go without warning the others--without knowing they are safe." Then, while a terribly stern look came into his face, he said, "Who has done this thing, McGlowrie, who has done it?"
"Can ye not vary weel guess? 'Tis not far to seek."
"Ay," the Jesuit answered, "it needs no question. Oh! Simeon Larpent, Simeon Larpent, if ever I have you to my hand again, beware. Oh! to have you but for one hour in Paris and with the Holy Church to avenge me, a priest, against you!" Then changing this tone to another more suitable, perhaps, to the occasion and the danger in which he stood, he asked:
"What do they mean to do? When will they proceed to the work, think you?"
"At once; to-night, perhaps; to-morrow for certain. Go, Archie, go, pack up your duds and flee, I say. Even now the Government may have put the officers upon your hiding-place; have told the soldiers at Kensington to surround the house. Lose no time."
"But the boys--the boys at Wandsworth. What of them?"
"They shall be warned, even though I do it myself. But now, Archie, up to your room, bring with you--in a small compass, so to speak--your necessaries, and come with me."
"But where to? Where to?"
"Hech! with me. I have a bit lodgment, as you will know vary weel soon, in the Minories; 'tis near there poor Lady Balmerino lodges--though they promise her that after her lord is condemned, as he must be--as he must be!--she shall be lodged with him in the Tower to the last; come with me, I say. For the love o' God, Archie, hesitate no longer."
Then indeed, Archibald Sholto knew that, if he would save himself and help the others, and--as he hoped--wreak his vengeance on the treacherous adder that had stung them, he must follow honest James McGlowrie's counsel. So, very swiftly he passed up to his room, collected every paper he possessed, and carried away with him a small valise, in which were a change of clothes, several bank bills and a bag of guineas, Louis d'ors, and gold crowns. Then he returned to the garden where McGlowrie was still walking up and down as before, and announced that he was ready to follow him.
"Only," he said, "we will go as quietly as may be, and without a word. I will not even tell the servants I am going, Heaven knows if they are not spies themselves. I will just vanish away, and, as I hope, leave no trace. Come, Jemmy, there is a door behind the herb-garden that gives into the lane, and the lane itself leads to the West-road. If we can cross that in safety we can pass by Lord Holland's--he is Secretary of War now, and of the Privy Council--yet that matters not to us; behind his leafy woods we shall come to the other road. Then for a hackney or a passing coach to the city. Only, the boys, Jemmy, the boys! What of them?"
"Have no fear. If they are not warned already by Geordie McNab 'twill surprise me very much, and once I have seen ye off to the Minories I'll be away to Wandsworth myself. Thereby I'll make sure. Come, Archie, come. The evening draws in. Come, mon."
"I will. Only, Jemmy, stick your honest nose outside the garden gate and see that neither soldiers, spies, nor men of the law are there. If it is as you say, the house may even now be surrounded."
McGlowrie did as the other requested, going out and sauntering up and down the lane, but seeing no signs of anyone about who might threaten danger. To a maid-servant, drawing water from a well which served for many of the gardens of the houses, he gave in his pleasant Scotch way the "good e'en," and remarked that "the flowers were thirsty these warm May nights, and required, so to speak as it were, a draught to refresh 'em "; and to a boy birdnesting up tree he observed that it was a cruel sport which would wring a poor mither's heart, even as his own mither's would full surely be wrung should he be torn away from her grasp, even as he was tearing the young from the nest. But, all the time he was delivering these apothegms, his eye was glancing up and down the lane, and searching for any sign of danger. And, seeing none, he went back to Archibald Sholto and bade him follow since all was clear.
"And now," said he, as they passed to the left of Holland House and so reached Kensington Gravel Pits, "let us form our plans. First, there are the two young men, who must of a surety have been warned by Geordie, yet, supposing he should have failed, must yet be warned, so to speak. Now, shall I get me away----"
"Alas!" said Sholto, "I have just recalled to mind that, if they are not already on their guard, 'tis now too late. They were to go to the masquerade at Vauxhall; are there by now. 'Tis certain. One of them had an appointment with--with the wife of the double-dyed scoundrel who owns the house we have but just now quitted."
"Hoot! Ma conscience! With his enemy's wife. Vary good! Vary good! Perhaps 'tis not so strange the man is his enemy. Weel, weel, 'tis no affair of mine, yet I like not this trafficking wi' other men's goods. But since they are away on this quest they need no warning. Now for yourself, Archie. Get you away to the Minories--here is the precise address," and he slipped a piece of paper into his hand, "go there, lie perdu, and await my return."
"But Kate! Lady Fordingbridge! I must let her know of my absence; what will she think when she returns home and finds me gone? And the others--they may be taken when they also return to their homes."
"Leave't to me. I will await my lady's return from these worldly doings--ma word! a married woman and meeting other men in such sinfu' places!--even though she comes not till the break o' day--as is very likely, I fear, under the circumstances! And, meanwhile, for the others we must trust to Geordie."
"No," said Archibald Sholto, "we will not trust to Geordie, true as I believe him to be. This is the best plan. If you will wait--as I know you will--until her ladyship returns, though it will not be for some hours yet, I apprehend, I will make my way to Wandsworth, find out if they are warned, and, if not, will myself wait their return. Then I will accept your shelter in the Minories for a time until we can all three get safe back to France. For France is now our only refuge again, as it has so often and so long been before."
"Humph!" said McGlowrie, "perhaps so 'tis best. None know you at Wandsworth?"
"None. No living soul except the woman of the house--a true one. Her father fell in the Cause in the '15' at Sherriffmuir. She is safe."
"So be it. Then away with you to yon village, and trust me to manage things in this one. Now, off wi' you, Archie, but first make some change in your clothing."
"But how? I have no other clothes but those I wear."
"Hoot! a small changement is easy, and sometimes, so to speak as it were, effectual. Off with that hat and wig." And as he spoke he took off each of his.
"You will lose by the exchange, Jemmy," said Archibald. "Mine is but a rusty bob and a poor hat; both yours are very good."
"No matter. To-morrow at the lodgment we will change again."
Therefore, with his appearance considerably altered, Archibald Sholto prepared now to set out for Wandsworth. But ere he did so he said one word to honest James McGlowrie.
"Jemmy," he remarked, "make no mistake about Ka--Lady Fordingbridge and this meeting with Bertie Elphinston to which she has gone. She is as good and pure a woman as ever lived and suffered. I have known her from a child, gave her her first communion; there is no speck of ill in her."
"Lived and suffered, eh?" repeated the other.
"Ay, lived and suffered! The man she has gone to meet was to have been her husband; they loved each other with all their hearts and souls; and by foul treachery she was stolen from him by that most unparalleled scoundrel, Fordingbridge. Remember that, Jemmy, when you see her to-night; remember she is as pure a woman as your mother was, and respect her for all that she has endured."
"Have no fear," said Jemmy, manfully, "have no fear. Although ye are a Papist, Archie, and a priest at that, I'll e'en take your word for it."
So, with a light laugh from the Jesuit at the rigid and plain-spoken Presbyterianism of his old schoolfellow and whilom fag, they parted with a grasp of the hand, each to what he had to do. That James McGlowrie carried out his portion of the undertaking has been already told, as well as how, after the information he gave Lady Fordingbridge, she decided to accept Lady Belrose's offer of her house as a refuge, if only temporarily; and how he afterwards became a messenger from her to Bertie Elphinston.
As for Archibald Sholto, he, too, did that which he had said would be best. He made his way from Kensington to Chelsea and so to Wandsworth, only to find when he had arrived there that his brother and friend had long since--for it was by then nine o'clock--departed for Vauxhall. Therefore he said a few words to the landlady--herself an adherent of the Stuarts, as she, whose father had fallen at Sherriffmuir, was certain to be--telling her that it was doubtful if they would ever return to their lodgings, but that, if they did, she must manage to send them off at once. He told her, too, the address of the Minories where he could be communicated with, under cover to McGlowrie, and, since he it was who had sent them as lodgers to her house, he gave her some money on their account. Then he left her and, thorough and indomitable in all he did, made his way to the Spring Gardens.
"If they are there," he thought, as he waited outside the inn in Wandsworth--an old one, known then, as now, as the Spread Eagle, while the horse was being put into the shafts of the hackney coach he had hired, "I may see them in time to warn them. Dressed as the executioner, the woman said of Bertie and Douglas, without any disguise, though in a garb that will be supposed to be one in that place; there should be no difficulty in finding them if they are still there. Thank God, they were not caught in their lodgings."
He did not know, nor could the landlady have told him--not knowing herself--of how they had been watched and followed from the village to Vauxhall; so he passed his time on the lonely drive through the Battersea marshes in meditating how this last act of treachery of Lord Fordingbridge was to be repaid. For that it should be so repaid, and with interest, Archibald Sholto had already determined. "Though not for his baseness to me so much," he muttered, "as to those whom I love. For since to me, a priest, there can be no home, no wife, no children, I have centred all my heart upon those three--my brother, our friend Bertie, and poor, bonnie Kate. And those it is against whom he has struck. May God forget me if I strike not equally, ay! and with more certainty than he has done, when my hour comes."
A good friend was Archibald Sholto, Jesuit though he was, but a terrible foe. As you shall see.
On his way to the garden he passed half a dozen young men of fashion who, from their talk and actions, he knew to be about to assist at a duel, and, forgetting that he was in secular garb, he could not forbear from addressing them in his priestly character and begging them to desist from the sin they contemplated. But they bade him pass on and not interfere in what concerned him not, while one, striking at the horse with his clouded cane, caused the animal to dash off upon the uneven road or track. These, doubtless, were the men for whom the boatmen who ferried Bertie and Douglas across later on were waiting.
So he reached the gardens, but only to find that most of the company was already gone, and that, with the exception of a few revellers who would keep the night up so long as it were possible, none of the masqueraders remained. Yet, even from these he gathered enough to set his mind fairly at rest; for, happening to hear one of them speak of the "merry disturbance" which had taken place that night, and also boast somewhat loudly of how he had assisted the Jacobites in resisting the limbs of the law, he, by great suavity and apparent admiration of the speaker's prowess, managed to extract from him a more or less accurate account of what had taken place.
Thus he learned that, in some way, his brother and friend had made their escape--aided, of course, by the pot-valiant hero to whom he was listening--and also that the "ladies of fashion" and the gentlemen by whom they were accompanied had also departed without molestation. "Though," continued the narrator, as he swallowed the last drop of brandy in his glass and then looked ruefully at the empty vessel, "I know not if they would have been allowed to go so freely had not I and my friend assisted in protecting them."
After that Archibald withdrew, and, on foot, made his way to the City, while as he crossed London Bridge nearly two hours later--for he was weary with all that had happened that day--the sun came up and lighted with a rosy hue the Tower lying on his right hand.
"Ay," he muttered. "Ay, many's the poor aching heart within your walls this morning besides the doomed Balmerino, Cromartie, and Kilmarnock--for nought can save them; thank God that some at least are free at present. But how long will they be so? How long? How long?"
During the time which elapsed between the eventful proceedings of that day and the time when my Lord Fordingbridge--agitated by receiving no news in Cheshire from his wife--returned to London, all those whom this history has principally to deal with met together with considerable frequency.
For, whether the clue was lost to the whereabouts of Elphinston and the Sholtos, or whether the Government was growing sick of the wholesale butchery of Jacobites which was going on in Scotland and England--though it would scarce seem so, since two of the lords in the Tower and some score of other victims were yet to be executed and their remains to be brutally used--at least those three friends were still at large. Archibald Sholto was in hiding at James McGlowrie's lodgings in the Minories, in the neighbourhood of which that honest gentleman was much engaged in the grain and cattle trade between London and Scotland and also Holland and France. Farther east still was Bertie Elphinston, he being close to the spot where the unhappy Lady Balmerino, his kinswoman, was lodged; while in the West End, or rather the west of London, at the Kensington Gravel Pits, and under the roof of no less a person than Sir Charles Ames, Douglas had found a home and hiding place.
As for Kate and her father, they were in Hanover-square, the guests of Lady Belrose, and were to remain as such until the former had had an interview with Fordingbridge. "For," said Kate to her friend who, although a comparatively new one, was proving herself to be very staunch, "then I shall know, then I shall be able to decide; though even now my decision is taken, my mind made up. Who can doubt that it is he who has done this? He and no other. No other!"
"Indeed, dear," replied her hostess, as she bade her black boy--a present from her devoted admirer, Sir Charles--go get the urn filled, for they were drinking tea after dinner, "indeed, dear, no one, I think, from all that you have told me. Yet if you leave him, what is to become of you and Mr. Fane? You have, you say--pardon me for even referring to such a thing--no very good means of subsistence. I," went on her ladyship, speaking emphatically, "should at least take my settlement. I would not, positively I would not, allow the wretch to benefit by keeping that. No, indeed!"
"If," replied Kate, "'tis as I fear--nay, as I know it is, I will not touch one farthing of his. Not one farthing. I will go forth, and he Shall be as though I had never seen or spoken to him."
"But," asked the more practical woman of the world, "what will you do, dear? You cannot live on air, and--which is almost worse--you cannot marry someone who will give you a good home. And you so pretty, too!" she added.
"Marry again!" exclaimed Kate, her eyes glistening as she spoke. "Heaven forbid! Have I not had enough of marriage? One experience should suffice, I think."
"It has indeed been a sad one," answered Lady Belrose, who had herself no intention of continuing her widowhood much longer, and was indeed at that moment privately affianced to Sir Charles Ames. "But, Kate, if your monster were dead you might be happy yet."
"No, no," the other replied, "never. And he is not dead, nor like to die. I am, indeed, far more likely to die than he--since the doctors all say I am far from strong, though I do not perceive it."
"But what will you do?" again asked the practical hostess. "How live? Mr. Fane has, you say, no longer sufficient youth or activity to earn a living for you at the fence school--can you, dear, earn enough for both?"
"I think so," Kate replied, "by returning to Paris. That we must do--there is nothing to be earned here. But, in Paris, Archibald Sholto has much influence in the court circles; he knows even the King and--and--the new favourite, La Pompadour, who has deposed Madame de Chateauroux. Also he is a friend of Cardinal Tencin, who owes much to the exiled Stuarts. It is, he thinks, certain that some place either at the court, or in the prince's household--if he has escaped from Scotland, which God grant!--or in the Chevalier St. George's, at Rome, might be found for me--a place which would enable me to keep my old father from want for the rest of his life."
"Kate, you are a brave woman, and a good one, too, for from what you have told me your father himself has behaved none too well to you, and----"
"I must forget that," the other replied, "and remember only how for years he struggled hard to keep a home for us, to bring me up as a lady. I must put away every thought of his one wrong to me and remember only all that he has done for my good."
Meanwhile Kate's determination to part from her husband--if, as no one doubted, he it was who had endeavoured to betray the others to the Government--was well known to her three friends; and therefore, with them as with her and her father, preparations were being hurried on by which they also might return to France. For them there was, as there had been before the invasion of Scotland and England, the means whereby to exist; Douglas and Bertie had not sacrificed their commissions in the French regiments to which they belonged, and Archibald was employed by the Stuart cause as an agent, was also a member of the College of St. Omer, and was a priest of St. Eustache. That Bertie Elphinston would ever have left London while his kinsman and the head of his house, Arthur, Lord Balmerino, lay in the Tower awaiting his trial and certain death was not to be supposed, had not a message come from that unhappy nobleman ordering him to go. Also, he bade him waste no time in remaining where he was hourly in danger and could, at the same time, be of no earthly good.
"He bids me tell you, Bertie," said Lady Balmerino, in a meeting which she contrived to have with the young man on one of those evenings when both were lodged in the Eastend, and while she wept piteously as she spoke, "he bids me tell you that it is his last commandment to you, as still the head of your house and the name you bear, to flee from England. The rank and title of Balmerino must die with him, but he lays upon you the task of bearing and, he hopes, perpetuating the name of Elphinston honourably. Also he sends you his blessing as from a dying old man to a young one, bids you trust in God and also serve the House of Stuart while there is any member of it left. And if more be needed to make you fly, he orders you to do it for your mother's sake."
After that Elphinston knew where his duty lay--knew that he must return to France. It was hard, he swore, to leave England and also, thereby, to leave the scoundrel Fordingbridge behind and alive, still he felt that it must be so. Fordingbridge merited death--yet he must escape it!
But he had one consolation, too. Ere long Kate would be back in Paris--it was not possible that her husband could be innocent--therefore he would sometimes see her. A poor consolation, indeed, he told himself, to simply be able to see the woman who was to have been his wife yet was now another man's--no power on earth, no determination on her part to sever her existence from Fordingbridge could alter that!--yet it was something. Consequently, he with the others set about the plans for their departure.
Now, to so arrange and manage for this departure, they looked to James McGlowrie, who had both the will and the power to help them.
An old acquaintance of his in Scotland, when both were boys who had not then gone forth into the world, McGlowrie had kept up an occasional correspondence with Archibald Sholto until the present time, and thereby had been able to afford him assistance and had proved himself invaluable when Fordingbridge informed against them. Indeed, had McGlowrie not known where Archibald Sholto was living when in London, Geordie McNab's information derived from the Scotch Secretary's Office could never have been utilized, and Archibald Sholto must at least have been taken. And now he was to be even more practically useful than before--it was in his cattle-trading boats that all were, one by one, to be conveyed to the continent. "Though," said Jemmy, as he arranged plans with them one night in a little inn at Limehouse where they were in the habit of meeting, and where there was little danger of their being discovered, "I can give none of ye any certain guarantee, so to speak as it were, of ye getting over in safety. Infernal sloops o' war and bomb-ketches, and the devil knows what else, are prowling about the waters looking for rebels, and as like as not may light upon the one or other of you."
"We must risk that," said Bertie. "Great heavens! what have we not risked far worse?"
"Vary weel," replied McGlowrie; "then let one of you begin the risk to-morrow night. And you it had best be, Mr. Elphinston. My little barky drops down the river then, and once you're round the North Foreland you will be safe, or nearly so, to reach Calais. Be ready by seven to-morrow night."
"Why do you select me to go first, Mr. McGlowrie? I have quite as many, if not more, interests in England than either Douglas or Archie."
"Um!" muttered honest Jemmy, who did not care to say that he thought a man who was philandering about after a married woman was best got out of the way as soon as possible, though such was, indeed, his opinion, he being a strict moralist. "Um! I thought the noble lord had laid his commands on ye to be off and awa' at anst. The head of the family must be obeyed."
"Also," said Archibald Sholto, "you have your mother to think of. We have no mother. Bertie, you had best go to-morrow night."
"And you have seen Kate," whispered gentle Douglas Sholto, who took, perhaps, a more romantic view of things--for he had known of their love from the first and, from almost envying them at its commencement, had now come to pity them, "have made your farewells. If you get safe to France you must of a surety meet again--for Fordingbridge is a villain, and she will keep her word and part from him--is it not best you go at once?"
"You and I have always gone together, Douglas, hand in hand in all things," his friend replied; "I like not parting from you now."
"Still let it be so, I beg you. Remember, once we are back in Paris all will be as happy as it has been before, or nearly so, and there will be no Fordingbridge there. He, at least, will not be by us to set the blood tingling in our veins with the desire to slay him."
"So be it," said Bertie, "I will go."
This being therefore decided, McGlowrie gave his counsel as to what was to be done. The "little barky" of which he had spoken was in the habit of taking over to Calais good black cattle in exchange for French wines (what did it matter if sometimes the bottles were stuffed full of lace instead of Bordeaux?), silks, and ribbons, and it was as a drover he proposed Elphinston should go. The duties would be nothing, and the assumption of them would be a sufficient explanation of his being on board.
"And then," said he, "when once you set your foot on Calais sands you can again become Captain Elphinston of the regiment of Picardy, and defy King Geo--hoot! what treason am I talking?"
It was the truth that he had seen Kate again since the night of the conflict at Vauxhall, and then, stung to madness by the renewed villainy and treachery of her husband, he had pleaded to her to let him seek out Fordingbridge and slay him with his own hands. But, bitterly as she despised and hated the man who had brought them such grief and sorrow, she refused to even listen to so much as a suggestion of his doing this.
"No, no, no!" she exclaimed, shuddering at the very idea of such a tragedy. "No, no. What benefit would it be to you or to me to have the stain of his blood on our hands?"
"It would remove for ever the obstacle between us," he said; "would set you free; would place us where we were before."
"Never, never," she replied. "I have been his wife--though such by fraud and trickery--and if he were dead, God knows I could not mourn him; yet I will not be his murderess, his executioner, as I shall be if I let you slay him. If he fell by your hand, I could never look upon your face again. Moreover, even were I hardened enough to do so--which I am not--do you not know that the French law permits no man to become the husband of a woman whose first husband he has slain? We should be as far apart then as ever--nay, farther, with his death between us always."
"I know, I know," he said, recognising, however, as he did so that there was no possibility of his taking vengeance on Fordingbridge, since by doing so he would thus place such a barrier between them. "Yet there are other lands where one may live besides France and England. There is Sweden, where every soldier is welcome; there is----"
"Cease, I beseech you, cease! It can never be. If in God's good time He sees fit to punish him, he will do so. If not, I must bear the lot that has fallen to me. Meanwhile be assured that once I find he has done this act of treachery, I shall never return to him."
"And we shall meet in Paris--that is, if ever I can get back there?"
"Yes," she answered. "We shall meet in Paris; for it is there I must go. There, at least, I must find a means of existence; though, since now we understand, since we have forgiven each other--is it not so?--'twould perhaps be best that we should not meet again."
"No, no," he protested. "No, no. For even though this snake has crept in between us--so that never more can we be to each other what--what--my God!--what we once were; so that there must be no love, no passing of our days, our lives, together side by side--yet, Kate, we can at least know that the other is well if not happy; we can meet sometimes. Can we not? answer me."
"Oh, go!" she exclaimed, breaking down at his words and weeping piteously, as she sank into a chair and buried her head in her hands. "Go! In mercy, go! I cannot bear your words; they break my heart. Leave me, I beseech you!"
So--because he, too, could bear the interview no longer, and could not endure to see her misery--he left her, taking her hand and kissing it ere he departed, and whispering in her ear that soon they would meet again.