The first to enter, and prepared for many things--among which the gloomy surroundings of an ascetic, devoted to the dark usages of the old faith, held the first place in probability--I halted in surprise on the threshold of a lofty and splendid room suffused with rose-tinted light, and furnished with a luxury to which I had been hitherto a stranger. The walls, hung with gorgeous French tapestry, presented a succession of palaces and hunting scenes, interspersed with birds of strange and tropical plumage; between which and the eyes were scattered a profusion of Japanese screens, cabinets, and tables, with some of those quaint Dutch idols, brought from the East, which, new to me, were beginning at this time to take the public taste. Embracing the upper half of the room, and also aruelle, in which stood a stately bed with pillars of silver, a circle of stronger light, dispersed by lamps cunningly hidden in the ceiling, fell on a suite of furniture of rose brocade and silver; in the great chair of which, with her feet on a foot-stool set upon the open hearth, sat an elderly lady, leaning on an ebony stick. A monkey mowed and gibbered on the back of her chair; and a parrot, vieing in brilliance with the broidered birds on the wall, hung by its claws from a ring above her head.
Nor was the lady herself unworthy of the splendour of her surroundings. It is true, her face and piled-up hair, painted and dyed into an extravagant caricature of youth, aped the graces of sixteen, and at the first glance touched the note of the grotesque rather than the beautiful; but it needed only a second look to convince me that with all that she on whom I looked was a great lady of the world, so still she sat, and so proud and dark was the gaze she bent on me over her clasped hands.
At first, it seemed to me, she gazed like one who, feeling a great surprise, has learned to hide that and all other emotions. But presently, "Come in, booby," she cried, in a voice petulant and cracking with age. "Does a woman frighten you? Come nearer, I say. Ay, I have seen your double. But the lamp has gone out."
The woman who had admitted me rustled forward. "It has sunk a little perhaps, madam," she said in a smooth voice. "But I----"
p142IN THE GREAT CHAIR SAT AN ELDERLY LADY LEANING ON AN EBONY STICK
"But you are a fool," the lady cried. "I meant the lamp in the man, silly. Do you think that anyone who has ever seen him would take that block of wood for my son? Give him a brain, and light a fire in him, and spark up those oyster eyes, and----turn him round, turn him round, woman!"
"Turn," Smith muttered, in a fierce whisper.
"Ay," the lady cried, as I went to obey, "see his back, and he is like enough!"
"And perhaps, madam, strangers----"
"Strangers? They'd be strange, indeed, man, to be taken in by him! But walk him, walk him. Do you hear, fellow," she continued, nodding peevishly at me, "hold up your head, and cross the room like a man if you are one. Do you think the small-pox is in the air that you fear it! Ha! That is better. And what is your name, I wonder, that you have that nose and mouth, and that turn of the chin?"
"Charles Taylor," I made bold to answer, though her eyes went through me, and killed the courage in me.
"Ay, Charles, that is like enough," she replied. "And Taylor, that was your mother's. It is a waiting-woman's name. But who was your father, my man?"
"Charles Taylor too," I stammered, falling deeper and deeper into the lie.
"Odds my eyes, no!" she retorted with an ugly grin, and shook her piled-up head at me, "and you know it! Come nearer!" and then when I obeyed, "take that for your lie!" she cried; and, leaning forward with an activity I did not suspect, she aimed a blow at me with her ebony cane, and, catching me smartly across the shins, made me jump again. "That is for lying, my man," she continued with satisfaction, as I stooped ruefully to rub myself. "Before now I have had a man stopped and killed in the street for less. Ay, that have I! and a prettier man than you, and a gentleman! And now walk! walk!" she repeated, tapping the floor imperiously, "and fancy that you have money in your purse."
I obeyed. But naturally the smart of the cane did not tend to set me at my ease, or abate my awe of the old witch; and left to myself I should have made a poor show. Both the man and the woman, however, prompted and drilled me with stealthy eagerness, and whispering me continually to do this and that, to hold up my chin, to lay back my shoulders, to shake out my handkerchief, to point my toes, I suppose I came off better in this strange exhibition than might have been expected. For by-and-by, the lady, who never ceased to watch me with sharp eyes, grunted and bade me stand. "He might pass," she said, "among fools, and with his mouth shut! But odds my life," she continued, irritably, "God have mercy on us that there should be need of all this! Is there no royalty left in the world, that my son, of all people, should turn traitor to his lawful King, and spit on his father's faith? Sometimes I could curse him. And you, woman," she cried with sudden fierceness, "you cajoled him once. Can you do nothing now, you Jezebel?"
But the woman she addressed stood stiffly upright, looking before her, and answered nothing; and the mistress, with a smothered curse, turned to the man. "Well," she said, "have you nothing to say?"
"Only, madam, what I said before," he answered smoothly and gravely; "my lord's secession is no longer in issue. The question is how he may be brought back into the path of loyalty. To be frank, he is not of the stuff of those, whom your ladyship knows, who will readily lick both sides of the trencher. And so, without some little pressure, he will not be brought back. But were he once committed to the good cause, either by an indiscretion on his own part, if he could be induced to that----"
"Which he cannot, man, he cannot," she struck in impatiently. "He made one slip, and he will make no second."
"True, madam," the man answered. "Then there remains only the way which does not depend on him; and which I before indicated; some ruse which may lead both the friends and enemies of the good cause to think him committed to it. Afterwards, this opinion being brought to his notice, and with it, the possibility of clearing himself to the satisfaction both of St. Germain's and St. James's, he would, I think, come over."
"'Tis a long way round," said madam, dryly.
"It is a long way to Rome, madam," said the man, with meaning in his voice.
She nodded and shifted uneasily in her seat. "You think that the one means the other?" she said at last.
"I do, madam. But there is a new point, which has just arisen."
"A new point! What?"
"There is a design, and it presses," the man answered in a low voice, and as if he chose his words with care. "It will be executed within the month. If it succeed, and my lord be still where he is, and unreconciled, I know no head will fall so certainly. Not Lord Middleton's influence, no, nor yours, my lady, will save him."
"What, and my Lord Marlborough escape?"
"Yes, madam, for he has made his peace, and proved his sincerity."
"I believe it," she said, grimly. "He is the devil. And his wife is like unto him. But there's Sidney Godolphin--what of him?"
"He has made his peace, madam."
"Russell?"
"The same, madam, and given proofs."
"But, odds my soul, sir," she cried, sharply and pettishly, "if everybody is of one mind, where does it stick that the king does not come over?"
"On a life, madam," Smith answered, letting each word fall slowly, as if it were a jewel. "One life intervenes."
"Ha!" she said, sitting up and looking straight before her. "Sits the wind in that quarter? Well, I thought so."
"And therefore time presses."
"Still, man," she said, "our family has done much for the throne; and his Gracious Majesty has----"
"Has many virtues, my lady, but he is not forgiving," quoth the tempter, coolly.
On that she sighed, and deeply; and I, hearing the sigh, and seeing how uneasily she moved in her chair, comprehended that in old age the passions, however strong they may have been in youth, become slaves to help others to their aims; ay, and I comprehended also that, sharply as she had just rated both the man and the woman, and great lady as she was, and arrogant as had been her life--whereof evidence more than enough was to be found in every glance of her eye and tone of her voice--she was now being pushed and pushed and pushed, into that to which she was but half inclined. But half inclined, I repeat; and yet the battle was over, and she persuaded. I think, but I am not quite sure, that some assenting word had actually fallen from her--or she was in the act of speaking one--when a gentle knock at the door cut short our conference. Mr. Smith raised his hand in warning, and the woman, gliding to the door, opened it, and after speaking a word to someone without, returned.
"My lord is below," said she.
It was strange to see how madam's face changed at that; and how, on the instant, eagerness took the place of fatigue, and hope ofennui. There was no question now of withstanding her; or of any other giving orders. The parrot must be removed, because he did not like it; and we fared no better. "Let him up," she cried, peremptorily, striking her stick on the floor; "let him up. And do you, Monterey," she continued to the woman, "begone, and quickly. It irks him to see you. And, Smith, to-morrow! Do you hear me? come to-morrow, and I will talk. And take away that oaf! Ugh, out with him! My lord must not be kept waiting for suchcanaille. To-morrow! to-morrow!"
Truth to tell, I desired nothing so much as to be gone and be out of this imbroglio; and the woman, whom madam had called Monterey, twitching my sleeve and whispering me, I followed her, and slipped out as quickly as I could through the door by which we had entered. Even so we were not a moment too soon, if I was to retreat unseen. For as the curtain dropped behind me I heard a man's voice in the room I had left, and the woman with me chancing to have the lamp, which she had lifted from the table, in her hand at the instant--so that the light fell brightly on her face--I was witness of an extraordinary change which passed over her features. She grew rigid with rage--rage, I took it to be--and stood listening with distended eyes, in perfect forgetfulness of my presence; until, seeming at last to remember me, she glanced from me to the curtain and from the curtain to me in a kind of frantic uncertainty; being manifestly torn in two between the desire to hear what passed, and the desire to see me out that I might not hear. But as, to effect the latter she must sacrifice the former, it did not require a sage to predict which impulse, curiosity incited by hatred or mere prudence, would prevail with a woman. And as the sage would have predicted so it happened; after making an abortive movement as if she would place the lamp in my hands, she stealthily laid it on the table beside her, and making me a sign to wait and be silent, bent eagerly to listen.
I fancy that it was the mention of her own name turned the scale; for that was the first word that caught my ear, and who that was a woman would not listen, being mentioned? The speaker was her mistress, and the words "What, Monterey?" uttered in a voice a little sharp and raised, were as clearly heard as if we had been in the room.
"Yes, madam," came the answer.
"Well," my lady replied with a chuckle, "I do not think that you are the person who ought to----"
"Object? Perhaps not, my lady mother," came the answer. The speaker's tone was one of grave yet kindly remonstrance; the voice quite strange to me. "But that is precisely why I do," he continued. "I cannot think it wise or fitting that you should keep her about you."
"You kept her long enough about you!" madam answered, in a tone between vexation and raillery.
"I own it; and I am not proud of it," the new-comer rejoined. Whereat, though I was careful not to look at the woman listening beside me, I saw the veins in one of her hands which was under my eyes swell with the rage in her, and the nail of the thumb grow white with the pressure she was placing on the table to keep herself still. "I am very far from proud of it," the speaker continued, "and for the matter of that----"
"You were always a bit of a Puritan, Charles," my lady cried.
"It may be."
"I am sure I do not know where you get it from," madam continued irritably, stirring in her chair--I heard it crack, and her voice told the rest. "Not from me, I'll swear!"
"I never accused you, madam."
That answer seemed to please her, for on the instant she went off into such a fit of laughter as fairly choked her. When she had a little recovered from the paroxysm of coughing that followed this, "You can be more amusing than you think, Charles," she said. "If your father had had a spark of your humour----"
"I thought that it was agreed between us that we should not talk of him," the man said gravely, and with a slight suspicion of sternness in his voice.
"Oh, if you are on your high horse!" madam answered, "the devil take you! But, there, I am sure that I do not want to talk of him, poor man. He was dull enough. Let us talk of something livelier, let us talk of Monterey instead; what is amiss with her?"
"I do not think that she is a fit person to be about you."
"Why not? She is married now," my lady retorted. "D'ye know that?"
"Yes, I heard some time ago that she was married; to Mr. Bridges' steward at Kingston."
"Matthew Smith?"
"Yes."
"And who recommendedhimto my husband, I should like to know?" madam answered in a tone of malice. "Why, you, my friend."
"It is possible. I remember something of the kind."
"And who recommended him to you? Why, she did: in the days when you did not warn people against her." And madam chuckled wickedly.
"It is possible," he answered, "but the matter is twelve years old, and more; and I do not want to----"
"Go back to it," madam cried sharply. "I can quite understand that. Nor to have Monterey about to remind you of it--and of your wild oats."
"Perhaps."
"Perhaps, Mr. Square-Toes? You know it is the case!" was the vivid answer. "For otherwise, as I like the woman, and now, at all events, she is married--what is against her?"
"I do not trust her," was the measured answer. "And, madam, in these days people are more strait-laced than they were; it is not fitting."
"That for people!" my lady cried with a reckless good humour that would have been striking in one half her age. "People! Odds my life, when did I care for people? But come, I will make a bargain with you. Tit for tat. A Roland for your Oliver! If you will give me your Anne I will give you my Monterey."
"My Anne?" he exclaimed, in a tone of complete bewilderment.
"Yes, your Anne! Come, my Monterey for your Anne!"
There was silence for a moment, and then "I do not at all understand you," he said.
"Don't you? I think you do," she answered lightly. "Look you,
'When William king is William king no more.'
'When William king is William king no more.'
Now, you understand?"
"I understand, my lady, that you are saying things which are not fitting for me to hear," the man answered, in a tone of cold displeasure. "The King, thank God, is well. When he ails, it will be time to talk of his succession."
"It will be a little late then," she retorted. "In the meantime, and to please me----"
He raised his hand in protest. "Anything else," he said.
"You have not yet heard what I propose," she cried, her voice shrill with anger. "It is a trifle, and to please me you might well do it. Set your hand to a note which I will see delivered in the proper quarter; promising nothing in the Prince's life-time--there! but only that in the event of his death you will support a Restoration."
"I cannot do it," he answered.
"Cannot do it?" she rejoined with heat. "Why not? You have done as much before."
"It maybe: and been forgiven for it by the best master man ever had!"
"Who feels nothing, forgives easily," she sneered.
"But not twice," he said gravely. "The King----"
"Which King?"
"The only King I acknowledge," he answered, unmoved. "Who knows, believe me, so much more than you give him credit for, that it were well if your friends bethought them of that before it be too late. He has winked at much and forgiven more--no one knows it better than I--but he is not blinded; and there is a point, madam, beyond which he can be as steadfast to punish as your King. If Sir John Fenwick, therefore, who I know well, is in England----"
But at that she cut him short, carried away by a passion, which she had curbed as long as it was in her impetuous nature to curb anything. "Odds my life!" she cried, and at the sound of her voice uplifted in a shriek of anger, the woman listening beside me raised her face to mine, and smiled cruelly--"Odds my life, your King and my King! Kings indeed! Why, mannikin, how many Kings do you think there are! By G--d, Master Charles, you will learn one of these days that there is but one King, sent by God, one King and no more, and that his yea and nay are life and death! You fool, you! I tell you, you are trembling on the edge, you are tottering! A day, a week, a month, at most, and you fall--unless you clutch at the chance of safety I offer you! Sign the note! Sign the note, man! No one but the King and Middleton shall know of it; and when the day comes, as come it will, it shall avail you."
"Never, madam," was the cold and unmoved answer.
So much I heard and my lady's oath and volley of abuse; but in the midst of this, and while she still raged, my companion, satisfied I suppose with what she had learned, and assured that her lady would not get her way, twitched my sleeve, and softly taking up the lamp, signed to me to go before her. I obeyed nothing loth, and regaining the small ante-room by which I had entered, found the man Smith awaiting us.
When they had whispered together, "I'll see you home, Mr. Taylor," said he, somewhat grimly. "And to-morrow I will call and talk business. What we want you to do is a very simple matter."
"It is simply that my lady's son is a fool!" the woman cried, snappishly.
"Well," he said, smiling, "I should hardly call my Lord Shrewsbury that!"
The woman screamed and clapped her hand to his mouth. "You babbling idiot!" she cried, in a passion. "You have let it out."
He stood gaping. "Good lord!" he said.
"You have let it out with a vengeance now!" she repeated, furiously.
He looked foolish; and at last, "He did not hear," he said.
"Hear? He heard, unless he is deaf!" she retorted. "You may lay your account with that. For me, I'll leave you. You have done the mischief and may mend it."
But as the spoken word has sometimes the permanence which proverbs attach to theLittera scripta, and is only confirmed by bungling essays to erase it, so it was in this case; Mr. Smith's endeavours to explain away the fact which he had carelessly blabbed only serving to impress it the more deeply on my memory. It would seem that he was partly aware of this; for not only did his attempts lack the dexterity which I should have expected from one whose features augured much experience of the world, but he quickly gave up the attempt as labour in vain, and gruffly bidding me go before to the coach, followed me and took his seat beside me. We rumbled away. The night was overcast, the neighbourhood seemed to be rural; and, starting from an unknown point, I had less chance than before of tracing the devious lanes and streets through which we drove; so that when the coach presently stopped in a part of the town more frequented, I had not the least idea where we were, or where we had been.
"You can get home from here," said he, still ruffled, and scarce able to speak to me civilly.
Then I saw, as I went to descend, that we were near the end of Holborn, in the Tyburn Road, where it grows to country. "I will see you to-morrow," he cried. "And, mind you, in the meantime, the less you say to Ferguson the better, my man!" With which the coach drove away towards Kensington, leaving me standing against the wall of St. Giles's Pound.
Thus released, alone, and free to consider what had happened to me, I found a difficulty in tracing where I had been, but none in following the drift of the strange scene and stranger conversation at which I had been present. Even the plans of those who had conveyed me to that place were transparent. It needed no Solomon to discern that in the man Smith and the woman Monterey the young lord had two foes in his mother's household, as dangerous as foes could be; the woman moved, as I conjectured, by thatspretæ injuria formæ, of which the great Roman poet speaks, and the man by I know not what old wrong or jealousy. It was plain that these two, to obtain their ends, were urging on the mother a most perilous policy: that, I mean, of committing the son to the Jacobite Court, that so he might be cut off from St. James's; moreover, that, as he could not be induced, inpropriâ persona, to such a treasonable step as would serve their ends, advantage was to be taken of some likeness that I bore to him (which Smith had observed the previous evening in Covent Garden) to personate him in a place or company where his presence would be conclusive both for and against him.
I could believe that the mother contemplated but vaguely the power over him which the incident would give her; and dreamed of using it only in the last resort; rather amusing herself in the present with the thought that short of this, and without bringing the deception to his notice, the effect she desired would be produced--since he would be held at St. Germain's to be well affected, and at St. James's the matter would not be known. So, in his own despite, and without his knowledge, he could be reconciled to the one court, while remaining faithful to the other!
But, as in the mass of conspiracies--and this was especially true of the conspiracies of that age--the acute eye can detect the existence of an inner and outer ring of conspirators, whereof the latter are commonly the dupes of the former, so I took it that here Smith and the woman meditated other and more serious results than those which my lady foresaw; and, thinking less of my lord's safety in the event of a Restoration than of punishing him or obtaining a hold upon him--and more of private revenge than of the Good Cause--had madam for their principal tool. Such a consideration, while it increased my reluctance to be mixed up with a matter so two-faced, left me to think whether I should not seek out the victim, and by an early information, gain his favour and protection.
I stood in the darkness of the street doubtful, and weighing the matter. Clearly, if I had to do the thing, now was the time, before I saw Smith, or exposed myself to an urgency which in spite of his politeness might, I fancied, be of a kind difficult to resist. If by going straight to Lord Shrewsbury I could kill two birds with one stone--could at once free myself from the gang of plotters under whom I suffered, and secure for the future a valuable patron--here was a chance in a hundred, and I should be foolish to hesitate.
Nor did I do so long. True, it stuck me a little that I knew nothing of my Lord Shrewsbury's whereabouts in London; nor whether he lived in town, or in the great house among the lanes and gardens which I had visited, but of the road whereto I had no more knowledge than a blind man. This, however, I could learn at the nearest coffee-house: and impulse rather than calculation directing my steps, I hurried hot-foot towards Covent Garden, which lay conveniently to my hand.
It was not until I was in the Square and close to the Piazza that I bethought me how imprudent I was to re-visit the scene of last night's adventure; a place where it was common knowledge that the Jacobites held their assignations; and where I might be recognised. To reinforce this late-found discretion, and blow up the spark of alarm already kindled, I had not stood hesitating while a man could count ten, before my eye fell on the very same soldierly gentleman, with the handkerchief hanging out of his pocket, to whom I had been sent the evening before. He was alone, walking under the dimly-lighted Piazza, as he had walked then; but as I caught sight of him two others came up and joined him: and in terror lest these should be the two I had met before, I retreated hastily into the shadow of St. Paul's Church, and so back the way I had come.
p156I HEARD A LIGHT FOOT FOLLOWING ME
However, I was not to get off so easily. Though the hour was late, the market closed, and the pavement in front of the taverns deserted, or fringed only by a chair waiting for a belated gamester, I ran a greater risk of being recognised, as I passed, than I thought; and had not gone ten paces along King Street before I heard a light foot following me, and a hand caught my arm. Turning in a fright I found it was only a girl; and, at first sight, was for wresting myself from her, glad that it was no worse: but she muttered my name, and looking down I recognised to my astonishment the girl I had seen at Ferguson's earlier in the evening.
At that, I remember, a dread of the man and his power seized me and chilled my very heart. This was the third time this girl, whom I never saw at other seasons, had arisen out of the ground to confront me and pluck me back when on the point of betraying him. I stared at her, thinking of this, with I know not what of affright and shrinking; and could scarcely command either voice or limbs.
And yet as she stood looking at me with the dark length of the street stretching to the market behind her, it must be confessed that there was little in her appearance to cause terror. The night being cold, and a small rain falling, she had a shawl drawn tightly over her head, whence her face, small and pale as a child's, peered at me. I thought to read in it a sly and elfish triumph such as became Ferguson's minion: instead I discerned only a weariness that went ill with her years--and a little flicker of contempt in eye and lip. The weariness was also in her voice when she spoke. "Well met, Mr. Price," she said. "I am in luck to light on you."
I shivered in my shoes; but without seeming to mark me, "I want this note taken to Mr. Watkins," she continued, rapidly pressing a scrap of paper into my hand. "He is in the tavern there, the Seven Stars. Ask for the Apollo Room, and you will find him."
"But, one minute," I protested, as in her eagerness she pushed me that way with her hand, "did Mr. Ferguson----Is it from him?"
"Of course, fool," she answered, sharply. "Do you think that I have been standing here for the last half-hour in cold and wet for my own pleasure?"
"But if he sent it?" I remonstrated, feebly, "perhaps he may not like me to interfere--to----"
"Like me to?" she retorted, sharply, mocking my tone. "Who said he would? Cannot you understand that it is I who do not like to? That I am not going into that place at this time of night, and half in the house drunken brutes? It is bad enough to be here, loitering up and down as if I were what I am not--and free to be spoken to by every impudent blood that passes! Go, man, and do it, and I will wait so long. What do you fear?"
"The rope," said I, "to be plain with you." And I looked with abhorrence at the scrap of paper she had given me. "I have taken too many of these," I said.
"Well, you will take one more!" she answered, doggedly. "Or you are no man. See, there is the door. Ask for the Apollo Room, give it to him, and the thing is done!" And with that she set both hands to me and pushed me the way she would have me move--I mean towards the tavern. "Go!" she said. "Go!"
Hate the thing as I might, and did, I could not resist persuasions addressed to me in such a tone; nor fail to be moved by the girl's shrinking from the task, which had to be done, it seemed, by one of us. After all, it was no more than I had done several times before; and my reluctance having its origin in the resolution, to which I had just come, to break off from the gang, yielded to the reflection that the design lay as yet in my own breast, and might be carried out as well to-morrow as to-day. In a word, I complied out of pity, went to the tavern, and walked boldly in.
I had been in the house before, and knew where I should find a waiter of whom I might enquire privately; I passed by the public room, therefore, and was for going to the place I mean. I had scarcely advanced three paces beyond the threshold, however, before a great noise of voices and laughter and beating of feet met my ears and surprised me; the hubbub was so loud and boisterous as to be unusual even in places of that kind. I had no more than taken this in, and set it down to an orgy beyond the ordinary, when I came on a pale-faced group standing at gaze at the foot of the stairs, the landlord, two or three drawers, and as many women being among them. It was easy to see that they were in a fever about the noise above; for while the host was openly wringing his hands and crying that those devils would ruin him, a woman who seemed to be his wife was urging first one and then another of the drawers to ascend and caution the party. That something more than disorderliness or a visit from the constable was in question I gathered from the host's pale face; and this was confirmed when on seeing me they dispersed a little, and affected to be unconcerned. Until I asked for the Apollo Room, whereon they all came together again and fell on me with complaints and entreaties.
"'Fore God, sir, I think your friends are mad!" the host cried, in a perfect fury. "Go up! Go up, and tell them that if they want to be hanged, and to hang me as well, they are going the right way about it."
"It is well it is night," said the head waiter grimly, "or the Market porters would have broken our windows before now."
"And got us all in the Compter!" the women wailed. And then to me, "Go up, sir, go up and tell them that if they would not have the mob pull the house down----"
But the tumult above, waxing loud at that moment, drowned her words, and certainly took from me what little good-will to ascend I had. However, the host, having me there, a person who had enquired for the room, would take no denial, but, delighted to have found a deputy, he fairly set me on the stairs and pushed me up. "Go up and tell them! Go up and tell them!" he kept repeating. "You asked for the room and there it is."
In a word I had no choice, and with reluctance went up. The noise was such I could not fail to find the door and the room; I knocked and opened, a roar of voices poured out, and even before I entered the room I knew what was afoot, and could swear to treason. Such cries as "Down with the Whigs and damn their King!" "The 29th of May and a glorious Restoration!" "Here's to the Hunting Party!" poured out in a confused medley; with half-a-dozen others equally treasonable, and equally certain, were they overheard in the street, to bring down the mob and the messengers on the speakers.
True, as soon as the half-muddled brains of the company took in the fact that the door was open, and a stranger standing on the threshold--which they were not quick to discern owing to the cloud of tobacco-smoke that filled the room--nine-tenths quavered off into silence and gaped at me; that proportion of the company having still the sense to recognise the risk they were running, and to apprehend that judgment had taken them in the act. Two men in particular, older than the rest--the one a fat, infirm fellow with a pallid face and the air of a rich citizen, the other a peevish, red-eyed atomy in a green fur-lined coat--were of this party. They had not, I think, been of the happiest before, seated in the midst of that crew; but now, sinking back in their high-backed chairs, they stared at me as if I carried death in my face. A neighbour of theirs, however, went beyond them; for, with a howl that the Secretary was on them and the officers were below, he kicked over his chair and dashed for a window, pausing only when he had thrown it up.
But with all this the recklessness of some was evident: for while I stood, uncertain to whom to speak, one of the more drunken staggered from his seat, and giving a shrill view-halloa that might have been heard in Bedford House, made towards me with a cup in his hand.
"Drink!" he cried, with a hiccough as he forced it upon me. "Drink! To the squeezing of the Rotten Orange! Drink, man, or you are no friend of ours, but a snivelling, sneaking, white-faced son of a Dutchman like your master! So drink, and----Eh, what is it? What is the matter?"
It was no small thing could enlighten that brain clouded by the fumes of drink and conceit; but the silence, perfect and clothing panic--a silence that had set in with his first word, and a panic that had grown with a whisper passed round the table--came home to him at last. "What is it? What is the matter?" he cried, with a silly drunken laugh. And he turned to look.
No one answered; but he saw the sight which I had already seen--his fellows fallen from him, and huddled on the farther side of the table, as sheep huddle from the sheep-dog; some pale, cross-eyed, and with lips drawn back, seeking softly in their cloaks for weapons; others standing irresolute, or leaning against the wall, shaking and unnerved.
Cooled, but not sobered by the sight, he turned to me again. "Won't he drink the toast?" he maundered, in an uncertain voice. "Why--why not, I'd like to know. Eh? Why not?" he repeated; and staggered.
At that someone in the crowd laughed hysterically; and this breaking the spell, a second found his voice. "Gad! It is not the man!" the latter cried with a rattling oath. "It is all right! I swear it is! Here you, speak, fool!" he went on to me. "What do you here?"
"This for Mr. Wilkins," I answered, holding out my note.
I meant no jest, but the words supplied the signal for such a roar of laughter as well-nigh lifted the roof. The men were still between drunk and sober; and in the rebound of their relief staggered and clung to one another, and bent this way and that in a paroxysm of convulsive mirth. Vainly one or two, less heady than their fellows, essayed to stay a tumult that promised to rouse the watchmen; it was not until after a considerable interval--nor until the more drunken had laughed their fill, and I had asked myself a hundred times if these were men to be trusted with secrets and others' necks--that the man with the white handkerchief, who had just entered, gained silence and a hearing. This done, however, he rated his fellows with the utmost anger and contempt; the two elderly gentlemen whom I have mentioned, adding their quavering, passionate remonstrances to his. But as in this kind of association there can be little discipline, and those are most forward who have least to lose, the hotheads only looked silly for a moment, and the next were calling for more liquor.
"Not a bottle!" said he of the white handkerchief, "Nom de dieu, not a bottle!"
"Come, Captain, we are not on service now," quoth one.
"Aren't you?" said he, looking darkly at them.
"No, not we!" cried the other recklessly, "and what is more, we will have no 'Regiment du Roi' regulations here! Is not a gentleman to have a second bottle if he wants one?"
"It is twelve o'clock," replied the Captain. "For the love of Heaven, man, wait till this business is over; and then drink until you burst, if you please! For me, I am going to bed."
"But who is this--lord! I don't know what to call him!" the fellow retorted, turning to me with a half-drunken gesture. "This Gentleman Dancing Master?"
"A messenger from the old Fox: Mr.--Taylor, I think he calls himself?" and the officer turned to me.
"Yes," said I.
"Well, you may go. Tell the gentleman who sent you that Wilkins got his note, and will bear the matter in mind."
I said I would; and was going with that, and never more glad than to be out of that company. But the fellow who had asked who I was, and who, being thwarted of his drink, was out of temper, called rudely to know where I got my wig, and who rigged me out like a lord; swearing that Ferguson's service must be a d----d deal better than the one he was in, and the pay higher than a poor trooper's.
This gave the cue to the man who had before forced the drink on me; who, still having the cup in his hand, thrust himself in my way, and forcing the liquor on me so violently that he spilled some over my coat, vowed that though all the Scotch colonels in the world barred the way, I should drink his toast, or he would skewer me.
"To Saturday's work! A straight eye and a firm hand!" he cried. "Drink man, drink! For a hunting we will go, and a hunting we will go! And if we don't flush the game at Turnham Green, call me a bungler!"
I heard one of the elder men protest, with something between a curse and a groan, that the fool would proclaim it at Charing Cross next; but, thinking only to be gone (and the man being so drunk that it was evident resistance would but render him more obstinate, and imperil my skin), I took the cup and drank, and gave it back to him. By that time two or three of the more prudent--if any in that company could be called prudent--had risen and joined us; who when he would have given another toast, forced him away, scolding him soundly for a leaky chatterer, and a fool who would ruin all with the drink.
Freed from his importunities, I waited for no second permission; but got me out and down the stairs. At the foot of which the landlord's scared face and the waiting, watching eyes of the drawers and servants, who still lingered there, listening, put the last touch to the picture of madness and recklessness I had witnessed above. Here were informers and evidences ready to hand and more than enough, if the beggars in the street, and the orange girls, and night walkers who prowled the market were not sufficient, to bring home to its authors the treason they bawled and shouted overhead.
The thought that such rogues should endanger my neck, and good, honest men's necks, made my blood run cold and hot at once; hot, when I thought of their folly, cold, when I recalled Mr. Ashton executed in '90 for carrying treasonable letters, or Anderton, betrayed, and done to death for printing the like. I could understand Ferguson's methods; they had reason in them, and if I hated them and loathed them, they were not so very dangerous. For he had disguises and many names and lodgings, and lurked from one to another under cover of night; and if he sowed treason, he sowed it stealthily and in darkness, with all the adjuncts which prudence and tradition dictated; he boasted to those only whom he had in his power, and used the like instruments. But the outbreak of noisy, rampant, reckless rebellion which I had witnessed--and which it seemed to me must be known to all London within twenty-four hours--filled me with panic. It so put me beside myself, that when the girl who had employed me on that errand met me in the street, I cursed her and would have passed her; being unable to say another word, lest I should weep. But she turned with me, and keeping pace with me asked me continually what it was; and getting no answer, by-and-by caught my arm, and forced me to stand in the passage beyond Bedford House and close to the Strand. Here she repeated her question so fiercely--asking me besides if I were mad, and the like--and showed herself such a termagant, that I had no option but to answer her.
"Mad?" I cried, passionately. "Aye, I am mad--to have anything to do with such as you."
"But what is it? What has happened?" she persisted, peering at me; and so barring the way that I could not pass.
"Could you not hear?"
"I could hear that they were drinking," she answered. "I knew that, and therefore I thought that you should go to them."
"And run the risk?"
"Well, you are a man," she answered coolly.
At that I stood so taken aback--for she spoke it with meaning and a sort of sting--that for a minute I did not answer her. Then, "Is not a man's life as much to him, as a woman's is to her?" I said with indignation.
"A man's!" she replied. "Aye, but not a mouse's! I will tell you what, Mr. Taylor, or Mr. Price, or whatever your name is----"
"Call me what you like!" I said. "Only let me go!"
"Then I will call you Mr. Craven!" she retorted bitterly. "Or Mr. Daw in Peacock's feathers. And let you go. Go, go, you coward! Go, you craven!"
It was not the most gracious permission, and stung me; but I took it sullenly, and getting away from her went down the passage towards the Strand, leaving her there; not gladly, although to go had been all I had asked a moment before. No man, indeed, could have more firmly resolved to wrench himself from the grasp of the gang whose tool this little spitfire was; nor to a man bred to peaceful pursuits (as I had been) and flung into such an imbroglio as this--wherein to dance on nothing seemed to be the alternative whichever way I looked--was it a matter of so much consequence to be called coward by a child, that I must hesitate for that. Add to this, that the place and time, a dingy passage on a dark night with rain falling and a chill wind blowing, and none abroad but such as honest men would avoid, were not incentives to rashness or adventure.
And yet--and yet when it came to going,nullis vestigiis retrorsum, as the Latins say, I proved to be either too much or too little of a man, these arguments notwithstanding; too little of a man to weigh reason justly against pride, or too much of a man to hear with philosophy a girl's taunt. When I had gone fifty yards, therefore, I halted; and then in a moment, went back. Not slowly, however, but in a gust of irritation; so that for a very little I could have struck the girl for the puling face and helplessness that gave her an advantage over me. I found her in the same place, and asked her roughly what she wanted.
"A man," she said.
"Well," I answered sullenly, "what is it?"
"Have I found one? that is the question," she retorted keenly. And at that again, I could have had it in my heart to strike her across her scornful face. "My uncle is at least a man."
"He is a bad one, curse him!" I cried in a fury.
She looked at me coolly. "That is better," she said. "If your deeds were of a piece with your words you would be no man's slave. His least of all, Mr. Price!"
"You talk finely," I said, my passion cooling, as I began to read a covert meaning in her tone and words, and that she would be at something. "It comes well from you, who do his errands day and night!"
"Or find someone to do them," she answered with derision.
"Well, after this you will have to find someone else," I cried, warming again.
"Ah, if you would keep your word!" she cried in a different tone, clapping her hands softly, and peering at me. "If you would keep your word."
Seeing more clearly than ever that she would be at something, and wishing to know what it was, "Try me," I said. "What do you mean?"
"It is plain," she answered, "what I mean. Carry no more messages! Be sneak and spy no longer! Cease to put your head in a noose to serve rogues' ends! Have done, man, with cringing and fawning, and trembling at big words. Break off with these villains who hold you, put a hundred miles between you and them, and be yourself! Be a man!"
"Why, do you mean your uncle?" I cried, vastly surprised.
"Why not?" she said.
"But--if you feel that way, why do his bidding yourself?" I answered, doubting all this might be a trap of that cunning devil's. "If I sneak and spy, who spies on me, miss?"
"I do," she said, leaning against the wall of Bedford Garden, where one of Heming's new lights, set up at the next corner, shone full on her face. "And I am weary of it."
"But if you are weary of it----"
"If I am weary of it, why don't I free myself instead of preaching to you?" she answered. "First, because I am a woman, Mr. Wiseman."
"I don't see what that has to do with it," I retorted.
"Don't you?" she answered bitterly. "Then I will tell you. My uncle feeds me, clothes me, gives me a roof--and sometimes beats me. If I run away as I bid you run away, where shall I find board and lodging, or anything but the beating? A man comes and goes; a woman, if she has not someone to answer for her, must to the Justice and then to the Round-house and be set to beating hemp; and her shoulders smarting to boot. Can I get service without a character?"
"No," I said, "that is true."
"Or travel without money?"
"No."
"Or alone--except to Whetstone Park?"
"No."
"Well, it is fine to be a man then," she answered, leaning her little shawled head farther and farther back against the wall, and slowly moving it to and fro, while she looked at me from under her eyelashes, "for he can do all. And take a woman with him."
I started at that, and stared at her, and saw a little colour come into her pale face. But her eyes, far from falling under my gaze, met my eyes with a bold, mischievous look; that gradually, and as she still moved her head to and fro, melted into a smile.
It was impossible to mistake her meaning, and I felt a thrill run through me, such as I had not known for ten years. "Oh," I said at last, and awkwardly, "I see now."
"You would have seen long ago if you had not been a fool," she answered. And then, as if to excuse herself she added--but this I did not understand--"Not that fine feathers make fine birds--I am not such a fool myself, as to think that. But----"
"But what?" I said, my face warm.
"I am a fool all the same."
Her eyes falling with that, and her pale face growing to a deeper colour, I had no doubt of the main thing, though I could not follow her precise drift. And I take it, there are few men who, upon such an invitation, however veiled, would not respond. Accordingly I took a step towards the girl, and went, though clumsily, to put my arm round her.
But she pushed me off with a vigour that surprised me; and she mocked me with a face between mischief and triumph; a face that was more like a mutinous boy's than a girl's. "Oh, no," she said. "There is a good deal between this and that, Mr. Price."
"How?" I said shamefacedly.
"Do you go?" she asked sharply. "Is it settled? That first of all, if you please."
As to the going--somewhere--I had made up my mind long ago; before I met her, or went into the Seven Stars, or knew that a dozen mad topers were roaring treason about the town, and bidding fair to hang us all. But being of a cautious temper, and seeing conditions which I had not contemplated added to the bargain, and having besides a shrewd idea that I could not afterwards withdraw, I hesitated. "It is dangerous!" I said.
"I will tell you what is dangerous," she answered, wrathfully, showing her little white teeth as she flashed her eyes at me, "and that is to be where we are. Do you know what they are doing there--in that house?" And she pointed towards the Market, whence we had come.
"No," I said reluctantly, wishing she would say no more.
"Killing the King," she answered in a low voice. "It is for Saturday, or Saturday week. He is to be stopped in his coach as he comes from hunting--in the lane between Turnham Green and the river. You can count their chances. They are merry plotters! And now--now," she continued, "do you know where you stand, Mr. Price, and whether it is dangerous?"
"I know"--I said, trembling at that bloody design, which no whit surprised me since everything I had heard corroborated it--"I know what I have to do."
"What?" she said.
"Go straight to the Secretary's office," I said, "and tell him. Tell him!"
"You won't do it," she answered, "or, at least, I won't."
"Why?" I asked, atremble with excitement.
"Why?" she echoed, mocking me; and I noticed that not only were her eyes bright, but her lips red. "Why, firstly, Mr. Price, because I want to have done with plots and live honestly; and that is not to be done on blood-money. And secondly, because it is dangerous--as you call it. Do you want to be an evidence, set up for all to point at, and six months after to be decoyed to Wapping, dropped into a dark hold, and carried over to France?"
"God forbid!" I said, aghast at this view of things.
"Then have done with informing," she answered, with a little spurt of heat. "Or let be, at any rate, until we are safe ourselves and snug in the country. Then if you choose, and you do nothing to hurt my uncle--for I will not have him touched--we may talk of it. But not for money."
Those words "safe and snug," telling of a prospect that at that moment seemed of all others the most desirable in the world, dwelt so lovingly on my ear, that in place of hesitation I felt only eagerness and haste.
"I will go!" I said.
"You will?" she said.
"Yes," I answered.
"And----"
"And what?" I said, wondering.
She hesitated a moment, and then, "That is for you to say," she replied, lowering her eyes.
It is possible that I might not have understood her, even then, if I had not marked her face, and seen that her lips were quivering with a sudden shyness, which words and manner in vain belied. She blushed, and trembled; and, lowering her eyes, drew forward the shawl that covered her head, the street-urchin gone out of her. And I, seeing and understanding, had other and new thoughts of her which remained with me. "If you mean that," I said, clumsily, "I will make you my wife--if you will let me."
"Well, we'll see about it, when we get to Romford," she answered, looking nervously aside, and plucking at the fringe of the shawl. "We have to escape first. And now--listen," she continued, rapidly, and in her ordinary voice. "My uncle is removing to-morrow to another hiding-place, and I go first with some clothes and baggage. He will not flit himself till it is dark. Do you put your trunk outside your door, and I will take it and send it by the Chelmsford waggon. At noon meet me at Clerkenwell Gate, and we will walk to Romford and hide there until we know how things are going."
"Why Romford?" I said.
"Why anywhere?" she answered, impatiently.
That was true enough; and seeing in what mood she was, and that out of sheer contrariness she was inclined to be the more shrewish now, because she had melted to me a moment before, I refrained from asking farther questions; listening instead to her minute directions, which were given with as much clearness and perspicuity as if she had dwelt on this escape for a twelvemonth past. It was plain, indeed, that she had not fetched and carried for the famous Ferguson for nothing; nor watched his methods to little purpose. Nor was this all: mingled with this display of precocious skill there constantly appeared a touch of malice and mischief, more natural in a boy than a girl, and seldom found even in boys, where the gutter has not served for a school. And through this again, as through the folds of a shifting gauze, appeared that which gradually and as I listened took more and more a hold on me--the woman.
Yet I suppose that there never was a stranger love-making in the world; if love-making that could be called wherein one at least of us had in mind ten thoughts of fear and death for one of happiness or love; and a pulse attuned rather to the dreary drip of the wet eaves about us, and the monotonous yelp of a cur chained among the stalls, than to the flutter of desire.
And yet, when, our plan agreed upon, and the details settled, we turned homewards and went together through the streets, I could not refrain from glancing at my companion from time to time, in doubt and almost incredulity. When the dream refused to melt, when I found her still moving at my elbow, her small shawled head on a level with my shoulder--when, I say, I found her so, not love, but a sense of companionship and a feeling of gratulation that I was no longer alone, stole for the first time into my mind and comforted me. I had gone so many years through these streetssolus et caelebs, that I pricked my ears and pinched myself in sheer astonishment at finding another beside me and other feet keeping time with mine; nor knew whether to be more confounded or relieved by the thought that of all persons' interests her interests marched with mine.