If, a few minutes before, I had thought myself the most unlucky of men and placed by that which had already happened beyond fear or misfortune, I knew better when I saw that sight from the window; and fell back into the darkness, as if even from the road and through the panes Ferguson's eyes must discover me. Ignorant whether the room in which I stood contained anything to shelter me, or barewalled must of necessity discover me to the first person who entered with a light, my natural impulse, when the moment of panic passed, was to escape from it.
But it was not easy to do this in haste. By the time that, trembling in every limb, I had groped my way into the passage, the key was turning in the lock of the outer door, and I saw myself within an arm's length of capture. This so terrified me that I sprang desperately for the staircase, but stumbled over the lowest step, and fell on my knees with a crash that seemed to shake the walls. For a moment the pain was so sharp that I could only lie where I fell; nor when, spurred by the imminence of the danger, I had got to my feet, could I do more than crawl up the stairs and crouch down on the landing, a little to one side, and out of eye-shot from below.
Willingly now, in return for present safety, would I have forgiven Fortune all her past buffets; for if Ferguson came up, as I thought him sure to come up, I was lost; since I could neither retreat without noise, nor if I could, knew where to hide. In this extremity, my heart beating so thickly that I could scarcely listen, and thought I must choke, I was relieved to hear Ferguson--after spending what seemed to me to be an age, striking flint and steel in the passage--go grumbling into the lower room, whence a glimmer falling on the wall of the passage told me that he had at last succeeded in procuring a light.
It was no surprise to me as I sweated and cringed in my hiding-place, to learn that he was in the worst of tempers. I heard him swear--as I supposed--at the open shutter; then, almost before I had thanked Providence for present safety, he was out again in the passage. I made no doubt that he was going to ascend now, and I gave myself up for lost. But instead, he stood and called "Mary! Mary! Do ye hear, you hussy? If ye are hiding above there, it will be the worse for you, ye d----d baggage! Come down, d'ye hear me?"
Surely now, I thought, getting no answer, he would come up, and my heart stood. But it seemed he called only to make sure, and not because he thought that she was above; for he went back into the lower room, and I heard him moving to and fro, and going about to light a fire, the crackling of which gave an odd note of cheerfulness in the house. I was beginning to weigh the possibility of slipping by the half-open door, on the chance of finding the outer door unfastened; and with this in view, had risen to my feet, when a key again grated in the lock, and supposing it to be Smith, I returned to my former position.
Had it been Smith, it would have been some comfort to me; for I thought him more prudent if no less dangerous than the plotter, and I fancied that I had more to fear from one than from two. But the step that entered was lighter than a man's, while Ferguson's greeting told the rest and made the situation clear.
"Ha, you are here at last, are you!" he cried with an angry oath. "Did you want me to break every bone in your body, lass, that you stayed out till now, and I to have the fire to light? You should have a pretty good tale to tell or have kept clear of this! D'ye hear me? Speak, you viper, and don't stand there glowering like a wood-cat!"
"I am here now," was the answer. My heart leapt, for the voice was Mary's; the tone, sullen and weary, I could understand.
"Here now!" he retorted. "And that is to be all, is it? Perhaps, my girl, I will presently show you two minds about that. Where is the baggage?"
"It is not here."
"Not here?" he cried.
"No," she answered.
"And why not, you Jezebel?"
"You need not misname me," she answered coolly. "I was followed and could not come here; and I could not carry it about with me all day. And I could not send it, for there was no one here to take it in. It is at the Spread Eagle in Gracechurch Street, to go by tomorrow's waggon to Colchester. That is what I told them, but it can be fetched away to-morrow."
"If I did not think you were a big liar, girl?" he answered doubtfully; but I knew by his tone that he believed her.
"You may think what you like," she replied.
"And how do you think I am to do for to-night?" he answered querulously.
"You must do as you can," she said. "You have your Hollands, and I have brought some bread and meat."
"It is a dog's life," he said, with a snarl.
"It is the life you choose," she retorted sharply.
"Peste!" he answered after a pause of sheer astonishment at her audacity. "What is it to you, you slut?"
"Why, a dog's life too! and not of my choice!" she cried passionately, her voice breaking. "What am I better, as I live, than an orange girl in the streets? What do I get, and walk the pavement on your errands night and day? What do I get? And always hiding and sneaking, hiding and sneaking! And for what?"
"For your living, yon beggarly baggage!" he roared. "Who feeds you and clothes you, you graceless hussy? Who boards you and lodges you, and finds you in meat and malt, you feckless toad? You shameless----"
"Ay, call names!" she answered bitterly--and it was not hard to discern that she was beside herself with the long sick waiting and the disappointment. "It is what you are good for! It is all that your plots end in! Call names, and you are happy! But I am tired, and tired of it, I tell you. I am tired of bare boards and hiding, and all for what? For those that, when you have brought them back, you will be as fierce to oust as you are now to restore! And shameless it is you call me?" she continued with feverish rapidity. "Shameless? Have you not sent me out into the streets a hundred times, and close on midnight, and not a thought or care what would happen to me so long as your letter went safe? Have you not sent me where to be taken was to be jailed and whipped, and not a thought of pity or what a life it was for a girl? Have you not done this and more?" she continued, breathless with passion. "And more? And yet you take praise for feeding me! And call me graceless and shameless----"
She paused and gave him room to speak, but though he put on a show of bluster it was evident her violence alarmed him. "Odd's name, and what is all this?" he said. "What ails the girl? What has set you up now, you vixen?"
"You!" she cried vehemently. "You and your trade!"
"Well," he said, with a sort of sullen reasonableness, "and what is the matter with the trade? What is wrong with the trade, I say? I'll tell you this, my lass, you would live badly without it."
"I would live honestly," she cried. "And as my father lived!"
"You drab!" he cried. "Leave that alone."
At that, and when judging from the tone of his voice I expected him to break out with fresh oaths and curses, there was instead an astonishing silence, which fell for me at an unlucky moment, for forgetting, in my desire to see as well as hear, the risk I ran, I had crept down the stairs, and now lacked but a pace of seeing into the room. The noise ceasing, I dared neither take that step nor retreat; and it was only when the silence had continued so long that curiosity overcame fear, that I ventured the advance, and looking in, saw that the girl, her fire and fury gone, was leaning against the wall beside the hearth, her face averted; while Ferguson himself, in an attitude of dejection scarcely less marked, stood near her, his head bowed and his blood-shot eyes fixed on the fire.
"Ay, he lived honestly, your father," he muttered at last. "It is true, my lass. I grant it. But he had a fair wind, had Alan, and a short course; and if he had lived to be sixty, God knows! We are what we are made. I mind him well, and the burn we fished and the pickle things we took out, and your mother that played with us in her cutty sark, and not a shoe between us nor a bodle of money; but the green hills round us, and all we knew of the world that it lay beyond them. And that was all your father ever knew, my lass. And well for him! Ay, well for him! But woe's me, and woe to the man who took my living, and woe to the evil King!"
His voice was beginning to rise; in a moment he would have reached his usual pitch of denunciation, of which even now some of his many writings afford a pale reflection; but at the wordKingthere came a sharp knocking at the door, and he paused. For me, I turned in a panic, and, heedless what noise I made, hurried up the stairs. The steps creaked under me, but fortunately the knocking was repeated so quickly and persistently that it covered the sound of my flight; and before I had more than ensconced myself in the old place, Ferguson, doubtless in obedience to some signal, was at the door and had opened it.
Immediately half-a-dozen men poured noisily in, breathing hard and growling in low tones, and passed into the room below. But until the outer door was closed and secured, nothing I could catch, though fear sharpened my ears, was said. Then, as Ferguson went in after them, one of the newcomers raised his voice in answer to a question, and cried with a rattling oath, "What is up? What is up, old fox? Why, all is up! And we'll all swing for it before the month is over, if we cannot clear out to-night! You are a clever one, Mr. Ferguson, but you are caught this time, with better men. God! if I had the sneak here that peached on us, I would cut his liver out! I would----"
Two or three voices joined in to the same tune and drowned his words, one asking where Prendergast was, another where Porter was, a third indulging in threats so horrid and blasphemies so profane that I turned cold where I crouched. I began to understand what had happened, and my situation; but that nothing might be spared me Ferguson, in a quavering voice that proved all was news to him, asked again what was the matter.
"The Blues are moved," cried three or four at once. "They were marching out when we left. The guards at Kensington are doubled, and the orders for the King's hunting to-morrow are cancelled. They were hurrying to and fro calling the Council when we came away, and messengers were beginning to go round the taverns."
"And they have seized the horses at the King of Bohemia's Head," added another, "so they know a lot."
"But is it--certain?" Ferguson asked, with a break in his voice.
"Ay, as certain as that we shall hang if we do not get over!" was the brutal answer.
"And the Captain?"
"I have been at his lodgings. He has not been heard of since noon. He ordered his horse then and they say took the road; and hell to it, if that is so, he is half way to France by this! And safe! Safe, you devils, and we are left here caught like rats!"
"Ay, we'll go farther than France!" one shrieked. "As for me I am off. I shall----"
"No, by God, you don't!" cried another; and flung himself, as it seemed to me, between him and the door. "You don't go and sell the rest of us, and save your own neck. You----"
"Where is Porter?" a third struck in.
"And Prendergast?"
"They are not here! Nor Sir William! Nor Friend! So what is the good of talking like that?"
"He will make a fat hang, will Sir William!" said one, with a mad laugh that died in his throat. "It will cure his gout."
At that, one of the others cried with furious oaths for liquor; and I judged that Ferguson gave them of his Hollands. But it was little among so many, and was gone in a moment, and they calling for more. "There is a keg upstairs," said he. "In the back-room. But get it for yourselves. You have hung me. To think that I should have played the game with such fools."
They laughed recklessly, a savage note in their voices. "Ay, you should have stuck to your pen, old fox," one cried. "Then it was only the printer hung. But we'll drink your health before you swing. Up, Keyes, and fetch the stuff. It may be bad, but we'll drink to the squeezing of the rotten orange once more; if it be the last toast I drink!"
The terror that had gripped me on their first entrance, and driving all the blood in my body to my heart had there set it bounding madly--this terror I should vainly try to describe to persons who have never been in such a situation or within a few feet of death, as I then found myself. That, reckless and driven to the wall, the conspirators would sacrifice me to their vengeance if they discovered me I felt certain; and at any moment they might come up and discover me. Yet behind me were the confining walls of the rooms whence I knew of no exit, and before me, where alone evasion seemed to be possible, the open door of the room below, and the flood of light that issued from the doorway, forbade the attempt. I lay sweating and listening therefore, while they snarled and cursed in the black mood of men betrayed and hopeless; and yet because of the chance that after all they might go out as they had come, I could so far keep my terror within bounds.
Not so, when I heard Ferguson bid the man mount and fetch the keg. Had he come without a light I might still have controlled myself and kept quiet; and holding my breath though I were suffocated, and silencing my heart though I died, might have lain and let him pass in the darkness. Nay, had I crouched low, he need not have observed me with a light; for I was a little beside the stairhead, and to enter the room whence I had broken out he need not face me. But when I heard him stumbling upwards, a sudden sense of the loneliness of the house in that far corner of town came on me; and with it, an overwhelming perception of my helplessness and of the life and death struggle to which the men below were committed--so that death seemed to be in the air; which together so far overcame me that I did the last thing I should have expected. As the man came up the stairs, the light in his hand, I rose up and stood, gasping at him.
He paused and held up the light. "The devil!" he said, staring. And then, "Who the ---- are you? Here, Ferguson! Here's your man!"
The only answer from below was a roar for liquor.
"What are you doing here?" he went on, puzzled as much by my silence as my presence.
"I am--going," I stammered; a desperate hope rising in my breast at sight of the man's perplexity. He might let me pass.
For aught I know he would have done so; and it is possible that I might have gone unseen by the open door below and gained the street. But as he stood staring, a second man came into the passage, and looked up and saw me. "Hallo!" he said. "Who is that?"
"Ferguson's man," Keyes answered. "But, boil me, if I know what is the matter with him!"
The other called Ferguson and he came out, and saw me; looked, and with a scream of rage, sprang up the stairs. In the fury of his wrath--he threw himself on me so suddenly and with so much violence and intention that I was a child in his hands; and but for the other's exertions, who not understanding the matter tore him from me, I must have been choked out of hand. As it was I was black in the face, dizzy, and scarcely conscious when they freed me from him: nor in much better case for the respite. For with all they could do he would not release my shoulder, but dragging me down, cried breathlessly and continuously to the others to listen--to listen! That he had the traitor! that I was the informer! the spy, the blood-seller! And with that, and as he partly forced and partly tugged me down the men thickened round me, until dragged into the lighted room I found myself hemmed in by a circle of lowering faces and gloomy eyes, a circle that, look where I might, presented no breach or chance of escape, no face that pitied or understood. He who seemed to be in highest authority among them--afterwards I knew him for Charnock, the unfrocked Fellow of Magdalen, who suffered with King and Keyes--did indeed make Ferguson let me go; thrusting him back and calling on him to tell his tale, and have done with his blasphemy. But though I turned that way in momentary hope of aid, I read no encouragement in a face as stern and relentless as it was fanatical. A lamp hooked high on one wall, and so that it threw its light downwards, obscured half the circle, and flung a bright glare on the other half; but in light or shade, seen or unseen, and whether drink flushed it, or passion blanched it, every face that met my shrinking gaze seemed to be instinct with coming doom.
In such situations fear, which spurs some minds, paralyses others. Vainly I tried to think, to frame a defence, to deny or avoid. The glare of the lamp dazzled and confused me. To Ferguson's passionate iterations, "The Lord has delivered him into our hands! I tell you, the Lord has delivered him into our hands! There is your informer! I swear it! I can prove it!" I could find no answer except a feeble, "I am not! I am not!" which I continued to repeat--while one plucked me this way that he might see me better, and another that way--until Keyes struck me on the mouth, and thrusting me back bade me be silent.
"And you, too, Mr. Ferguson," Charnock said, raising his hand to still the tumult, "have done with your blasphemy. And talk plainly. Say what you know, and have no fear; if what you allege be proved, we will do justice on him."
"Ay, by----!" cried Cassel, the swearer. "A life for a life."
"But, first, what do you know?" Charnock continued brusquely. "Speak to the point. We must be gone by midnight if we are to save ourselves."
Then, and then only, I think, Ferguson, hitherto blinded by rage, became sensible of the fact that he stood himself in a dubious position; and that to tell all, and particularly to reveal the visit which the Secretary had paid to him at his lodgings, would, even with the addition of the attempt he had made on the Duke's life, place his conduct in a light far from favourable. Not only were the men before him in no mood to draw fine distinctions, or take all for granted, but it was on the credit of his name and as his tool that I had come to be mixed up in the matter and gained my knowledge of it. It took no great acuteness, therefore, to foresee that their suspicions, once roused, they would punish first and prove afterwards, and be as ready to turn on the master as the man.
These, when I came to review the scene afterwards, coolly and in safety, were, I had no doubt, the reflections that gave Ferguson pause at the last moment, and occasioned a kind of fit into which he fell at that--his eyes glaring, his jaws moving dumbly, and his hands springing out in uncouth gestures, like those of a man half-paralysed--a fit which at the time was set down to pure rage and a temper of mind always bordering on the insane. I suppose that in that moment, and under cover of that display, his crafty brain, apt in such crises, did its work, for when he found his voice he had his tale pat; and where truth and a lie most ingeniously and sometimes inexplicably mixed would scarcely serve his turn or win him credence, he imposed on them, even on Charnock, by pure scorn and an air of superior knowledge.
"What I know?" said he. "You shall have it. It is enough to blast him ten times. To-day it happened that the Secretary came to me to my lodgings."
For a moment the roar of surprise which followed this statement, silenced him. But in a moment he recovered himself.
"Ay!" he said, looking round him, defiantly. "The Secretary. What of it? Do you think that you know everything, or that everything is told to you? To-day, I say, the Duke of Shrewsbury came to my lodgings."
"Why?" cried Charnock, between his teeth. "Why?"
"Why?" Ferguson answered. "Well, if you will have it, to send a message through me to the other Duke, as he has done three times before since his Grace has been in England."
"To the Duke of Berwick?"
"What other Duke is there?" the plotter asked, scornfully.
"But G----! If the Secretary knows that his Grace is in England----"
"Well?"
"What will he not know?"
"I cannot say what he will not know, Mr. Charnock," the plotter answered, with a cunning smile that brought his wig to his eyebrows. "But I can say what he did not know. He knew nothing of your little business. For the rest, when he left me I missed my man here, and coming to enquire, learned that he had been seen to join the Secretary at the door of the house, speak to him, and go away with him. That was enough for me. I changed my lodging, slipped away here, and had been here an hour when you came. As soon as you said that some one had peached to-day I knew who it was. Then Keyes cried that he was here, and there he was."
"But how did he come to be here?" Charnock asked sternly, and with suspicion.
"God knows!" said Ferguson, shrugging his shoulders; "I don't."
"You did not bring him?"
"Go to, for a fool! Perhaps he came to listen, perhaps he was sent. He knew of this place. For the rest, I have told you all I know, and it is enough or should be. Hang the dog up! There is a beam and a hook. You hound, you shall swing for it!" he shrieked, passionately, as he brought his crimson, blotched face close to mine, and threatened me with his two swollen fingers. "You thought to outwit me, did you? You, you dog! You crossed me and thought to sell me, did you? You dolt! you zany! you are sold yourself! Sold and shall swing! Swing! Ay, and so shall all my enemies perish!"
"An end to that," said Charnock, pushing him away roughly. "All the same, if this is true, he shall swing."
"Well, it is true enough," cried a man thrusting himself forward, while with shaking knees and chattering teeth, and tongue that refused to do its work, I strove to form words, to speak, to say or do something--something that might arrest the instant doom that threatened me. "It is true enough," continued he coolly. "I was on the watch at the Kensington end this afternoon and saw the Secretary arrive and go in to the Dutchman. And he had this bully boy with him. I know him again and can swear to him."
I believe that it is one thing to confront with calmness a death that is known to be inevitable, and quite another and a far more difficult thing to assume the same brow where hope and a chance remain. I am not greatly ashamed, therefore, that in a crisis which amply justified all the horror and repugnance which mortals feel at the prospect of sudden and violent dissolution, I fell below the heroic standard, and said and did things,miles impar Achilli.
Nevertheless, it is with no good-will I dwell on the matter; in writing, as in life, there are decencies and indecencies; things to be told and others to be implied. Let few words then suffice, alike for the moment when Charnock, holding back the others, wrung from me, half-swooning as I was, the admission that I had been to Kensington, and that the sentry was not mistaken: and for those minutes of frenzied terror which followed, when screaming and struggling in their grasp, now trying to fling myself down, and now shrieking prayers for mercy, I was dragged to a spot below the hook, and held there by relentless fingers while a rope was being fetched from the next room. I had no vision, as I have read some have, of the things done in my life: but the set, dark faces that hemmed me in under the light, the grim looks of one, and the scared pallor of another, even Ferguson's hideous visage as he hovered in the background, biting his nails between terror and exultation--all these, even enlarged and multiplied, I saw with a dreadful clearness, and a keenness of vision that of itself was torture.
"Oh, God!" I cried at last. "Help! Help!" For from man I could see no help.
"Ay, man, pray," said Charnock, inexorably. "Pray, for you must die. We will give you one minute. Here comes the rope. Who will fasten it?"
"A fool," cried a hard gibing voice, from somewhere beyond the circle. "No other."
I started convulsively: I had forgotten the girl's presence. So doubtless had the conspirators, for at the sound they turned quickly towards her; and, the ring of men opening out in the movement, she became visible to me. She stood confronting all, daring all. Her lips red, her face white as paper, her eyes glittering with a strange, wild fierceness. Long afterwards she told me that the sound of my shrieks and cries ringing in her ears had been almost more than she could bear: that as scream rose on scream she had driven the nails into her palms until her hands bled, and so only had been able to restrain herself, knowing well that if she would intervene to the purpose her time was not yet.
Now that it had come, nothing could exceed the mockery and scorn that rang in her tone. "A fool," she cried, stridently, "has fetched it, and a fool will fasten it! And, let who hang, they will hang. And two of you. Ay, you at the back there, will hang them. Why, you are fools, you are all fools, or you would take care that every man among you put his hand to the job, and was as deep as another. Or, if you like precedence, and it is a question of fastening--for the man who fetched, he is as good as dead already--let the hand that wove the noose, tie it! Let that man tie it!" And with pitiless finger she pointed to the old plotter, who, sneaking, and cringing in the background, had already his eye on the door and his mind on retreat. "Let him tie it!" she repeated.
"You slut!" he roared, his eyes squinting, his face livid with fury. "Your tongue shall be slit. To your garret, vixen."
But the others, as was not unnatural, saw the matter in a different light. "By ----, the wench is right!" cried Cassel; and Keyes saying the same, and another backing him, there was a general chorus of "Ay, the girl is right! The girl is right!" At that the man who had brought the rope, threw it down. "There's for me!" he said, gloomily, and with an ugly gleam in his eyes. "Let the old devil take it up. It is his job, not mine, and if I swing, he shall swing too."
"Fair!" cried all. "That is fair!" And, "That is fair, Mr. Ferguson," said Charnock. "Do you put the rope round his neck."
"I?" Ferguson spluttered; glaring from under his wig.
"Yes, you!" the man who had brought the rope retorted with violence. "You! And why not, I'd like to know, my gentleman?"
"I am no hangman!" cried the plotter, with a miserable assumption of dignity.
But the words and the evasion only inflamed the general rage. "And are we?" Cassel roared, with a volley of oaths. "You covenanting, psalm-singing, tub-thumping old quill-driver!" he continued. "Do you think that we are here to do your dirty work, and squeeze throats at your bidding?Peste!For a gill of Hollands I would split your tongue for you. That and your pen have done too much harm already!"
"Peace!" Charnock said. "Go softly, man. And do you, Mr. Ferguson, take up the rope and do your part. Otherwise we shall have strange thoughts of you. There have been things said before, and it were well you gave no colour to them."
I cannot believe that even I, writhing as a few minutes before I had writhed in their hands, and screaming and begging for life, could have presented a more pitiable spectacle than Ferguson exhibited, thus brought to book. All the base and craven instincts of a low and cowardly nature, brought to the surface by the challenge thus flung in his face, he quailed and cowered before the men; and shifting his feet and breathing hard glanced askance, first at one and then at another, as if to see who would support him, or who could most easily be persuaded. But he found scant encouragement anywhere; the men, savage and ill-disposed, to begin, and driven to the wall, to boot, had now conceived suspicions, and in proportion as delay and his conduct diverted their rage from me, turned it on him with growing ferocity.
"Here is the cock of the pit!" cried Keyes, who seemed to be a trooper and a man of no education, lacking even the occasional French word or accent that betrayed the others' sojourn with King Louis. "D---- him! He would have us hang the man, but won't lay a finger on him himself! He is no Ketch, isn't he? Well, I hang no man either, unless I put a hand onhim." And he pointed full at the plotter.
A murmur of assent, stern and full of meaning, echoed his words.
"Mr. Ferguson," said Charnock, with grave politeness, "you hear what this gentleman says? And mind you, if you ask me, he has reason. A few minutes ago you were forward with us to hang this person. And among gentlemen to urge another to do what you will not do yourself, lays you open to comment. It may even be pretended, that if your rogue informed, you were not so ignorant of the fact as you would have us believe you."
It was wonderful to see how the men, sore and desperate, caught at that notion, and with what greedy ferocity they turned on the knave who, only a few moments before, had swayed their passions to his will. It was to no purpose that Ferguson, head and hands shaking as with a palsy, strove frantically to hurl back the accusation. His wonted profanity seemed to fail him on this occasion, while the violence which had daunted men of saner temperaments proved no match for Cassel's brutality, who, breaking in on him before he had stammered a score of words, called him liar and sneak, and, denouncing him with outstretched finger, was in the act to hound his comrades on him, when something caught the ear of one of them, and with a cry of alarm this man, who stood near the door, raised his hand for silence.
Rage died down in the others' faces, and involuntarily they clustered together. But the panic was of short duration; hardly had the alarm been given and taken, or the lamp which hung against the wall been snatched down and shaded, before the sound of a key in the door reassured the conspirators. For me, who throughout the scene, last described, had leaned half-swooning against the wall, listening, with what feelings the reader may easily judge, to the contest for my life--for me, who now stood reprieved, and for the moment safe, any change might be expected to be fraught with terror. But whether I had passed the bitterness of death, or sheer terror had exhausted my capacity for suffering, it is certain that I awaited the event with lack-lustre eyes; and hearing a cry of, "It's Mat Smith!" felt neither fear nor surprise, nor even moved, when Smith entered, followed by a woman, and with a quick glance took in the room and its occupants.
"Good," said Cassel with an oath. "I thought that the soldiers were on us. But if they had been, curse me, but I would have sent this old Judas to his place before me!"
Smith looked with a grim smile from the speaker to Ferguson; and raising his eyebrows, "Judas," said he, with ironical politeness, as he laid his cloak and cane upon the table, "is it possible that you refer to my friend Mr. Ferguson?"
"Strangle your friend!" Cassel answered coarsely. "Do you know that his man there has blown on the thing and sold us?"
Smith's eye had already found me, where I leaned against the wall, my hands tied. "I see," he said coolly. "I knew before that the game was up; and I have been somewhere, and warned someone," he added, with a glance at Charnock, who nodded. "But I did not know how they had the office."
"He gave it! That is how they had it!" Cassel retorted. "And it is my belief that like man like master! And that that poor piece there would no more have dared to inform without his patron's leave than----"
He left the end of his sentence to be understood; but Charnock, taking up the tale and disregarding Ferguson's mutterings, described in a few words what had happened. When he came to the girl's intervention in my behalf, the woman who had entered with Smith, and who, though she seemed to be known to the conspirators--for her appearance caused no remark--had hitherto remained fidgetting in the background, moved forward into the room; and approaching the girl, who was sitting moodily at a table by the fire, touched her cheek with her fingers, and slipping her hand under her chin, turned up her face. To this the girl made no resistance, and the two women remained looking into one another's eyes for a long minute. Then the elder, who was the same woman I had seen with Smith at the great lady's house in the outskirts, let the girl's face drop again, with a little flirt of her fingers.
"Doris and Strephon, I see?" she said with a sneer.
What the girl answered I did not catch, for as she raised her head again to reply, my ear caught the sound of rising danger. Ferguson was speaking, his words, no longer coherent, a mere frothing of oaths and calling of hideous fates on his head if he had ever betrayed, if he had ever sold, if he had ever deceived, now ran in a steady current of wrathful denunciation. And the men listened; he had their ears again; he was no longer on his trial. Afterwards I learned that while my attention was astray with the women. Smith, by stating what I had stated to him--namely, that the Secretary had used Ferguson as the intermediary through whom to warn Berwick--had confirmed the plotter's story, and at a stroke had restored his position. Whereon, full of spite, and desperately certain that however exposed he lay on other sides I at any rate knew enough to hang him, the wretched man had set himself anew to compass my destruction. Deterred neither by the check he had received, nor by the gloomy looks of the conspirators, who responded but sluggishly to his appeal, he drove home again and again, and with wild words and wilder oaths, the one point on which he relied, the one point that was so dear to him that he could not understand their hesitation.
"Waste of time?" he cried. "We would be better employed looking to ourselves and slipping away to Romney, would we? But you are fools! You are babes! There is the evidence that can swear to you all! There is the evidence keen to do it! There is the evidence in your hands! And you will let him escape?"
"There is evidence without him," said King sulkily. "Where is Prendergast?"
"Oh, he is honest."
"But where is he? And where is Porter?"
"Where is Sir John Fenwick for that matter?" replied the man who had answered for Prendergast. "He is too high and mighty to mix with us, and will only eat the chestnut when we have got it out of the fire. For that matter, where are Friend and Parkyns? They are not here."
"Pshaw!" Ferguson cried, in a rage at the digression. "Why will you be thinking of them? Cannot you see that they are tainted, they are in it? They cannot if they will! And they are gentlemen besides, and not dirty knaves like this fellow."
"For the matter of that," said Cassel, bluntly, "Preston was a lord. But he sold Ashton."
The words brought a kind of cold breath of suspicion into the room, at the chill touch of which each looked stealthily at his neighbour, as if he said, "Is it he? Or he?" Ferguson seeing on this that he made little progress, and that the men, though they looked at me vengefully, were not to be kindled, grew furious and more furious, and began to storm and rave. But Charnock in a moment cut him short.
"Mr. Ferguson is so far right," said he, "that if we let this person go to perfect his evidence against us, we shall be very foolish. Clearly, it is to set a premium on treason."
"Then let Mr. Ferguson deal with him," Cassel answered, curtly. "He is his man, and it is his business. I don't lay a hand on him, and that is flat."
"Nor I! Nor I!" cried several, with eagerness. God knows if they thought in their hearts to curry favour with me.
"You are all mad!" Ferguson cried, beating the air.
"And you are a coward!" Cassel retorted. "I'd as soon trust him as you. If you are taken you'll peach, Ferguson! G-- ---- you! I know you will. You will peach! You are as white-livered a cur as ever lived!"
Then, seeing them divided, and the most bloody-minded of them--for such Cassel had been a short time before--taking up my cause, I thought that for certain the bitterness of death was past; and I took courage, discerning for the first time solid land beyond the deeps and black suffocating fears through which I had passed. For the first time I allowed my thoughts to dwell on the future, and myself to hope and plan. But the warm current of returning life had scarcely coursed through my veins and set my heart beating, before Charnock's cold voice, taking up the tale, smote on my ear, and in a moment dashed my jubilation. There was that in his tone gripped my heart afresh.
"Peace, man," he said. "Peace! Is this a time to be bickering? Let us be clear before we separate, what is to be done with this man. For my part, I am not for letting him go."
"Nor I," said Smith, speaking almost for the first time.
The others, lately so hot and impassioned, looked at the speakers and at one another with a sort of apathy.
Only Ferguson cried violently, "Nor I, by----! Nor I. We are many, and what is one life?"
"Quite so, Mr. Ferguson," Charnock retorted. "But will you take the life?"
The plotter drew back as he had drawn back before. "It is everybody's business," he muttered.
"Then will you take part in it? You are the first to condemn. Will you be one to execute?"
Ferguson moistened his lips with his tongue, and, swallowing with an effort, looked shiftily at me and away again. The sweat stood on his face. For me, I watched him, fascinated; watched him, and still he did not answer.
"Just so," said Charnock, at last. "You will not. And that being so, is there anyone else who will? If not, what is to be done?"
"Put him in a lugger," Keyes cried, "at the bridge; and by morning----"
"He wall be taken off at the Nore," Cassel answered scornfully. "And you too if you think to get off that way. There are more Billops in the Pool than the Billop who gave up Ashton."
"Gag him and leave him here."
"And have him found by the messengers to-morrow morning?" Cassel answered. "As well and better, call a chair, and pay the chairmen, and bid them take him to the Secretary's office with our compliments."
"Well, if not here, in one of the other pens. Ferguson knows plenty."
The woman who had come in with Smith laughed. "That might answer," she said, "if his sweetheart were not here. Do you think she would leave him to starve?"
There was a general stir and muttering as the men turned to the girl. "Pooh," said one, "it is Ferguson's girl."
"And your spy's sweetheart," the woman repeated.
The girl lifted her head and showed the room a face pale, weary, and dull-eyed. "He is nothing to me," she said.
And the men would have believed her; but the woman, with a swift, cat-like movement, seized her wrist and held it. "Nothing to you, my girl, isn't he?" she cried. "Then you have the fever or the small-pox on you! One, two, three----"
Her face flaming, the girl sprang up and snatched away her hand.
The woman laughed--and how I hated her! "He is nothing to you, isn't he?" she said in a mocking tone. "Yet what will you not give me to save him, my chick? What will you not give me to see him safe out of this house? What----?"
"Peace, peace!" cried Charnock. "Time is everything, and we are wasting it. Unless we would be taken, every man of us, we should be half-way to Romney Marsh by morning."
"Will you leave him to me!" said Smith suddenly.
"Leave him?"
"Ay. Or better, let me have two minutes' talk with him here, and if he comes to my way of thinking, I will answer for him."
"Answer for him?" cried Ferguson, with a sneer. "If you answer for him no better than I did, you will give us small surety."
"Ay, but I am not you, Mr. Ferguson," Smith retorted, in a tone of contempt, whereat the older man writhed impotently.
"This person--Mr. Taylor or Mr. Price--or whatever his name is--knows me and that what I say I do."
"Well, do--what you like with him," Charnock answered peevishly, "so that you stop his mouth."
To my great joy the other men assented in the same tone, being glad to be rid of the burden. It may seem strange to some that those who had prepared an hour before to take my life, should now be as ready to let me go; but there are few men who are eager to take life in cold blood, and kill a man as they would a sheep. Moreover, in favour of these men--on whose memory the Assassination Plot has cast obloquy not altogether deserved, since few of them were assassins in the strict sense, and the worst of all, Ferguson, escaped his just fate--in their favour I say, it is to be observed that the fact which they designed, however horrid in the eyes of good citizens, and certainly not to be defended by me, was not in their sight so much a murder as an act of private warfare carried into the enemy's country. So fully I am persuaded was this the case, that had it been a question of stabbing the King in the back, or shooting him from a window, I believe not one would have volunteered. Let this stand to their credit: to the credit of men whom I saw and have described at their worst, drunken, reckless, ill-combined, and worse governed; whose illegal design had it been accomplished, must have postponed the Protestant succession in these realms; but who, misguided and betrayed as they were by leaders more evil than themselves, evinced some spark of chivalry in their lives--for all did it in a measure for a cause--and in their sufferings a fortitude that would have become better men and a nobler effort.
So much of them. One released my hands, and another at Smith's request found him a light; and my new protector bidding me follow him, and leading the way upstairs to the bare room at the back whence I had broken out, those we left were deep in muttered plans and whisperings of the Marsh, and Hunt's house, and Harrison's Inn at Dimchurch, before we were out of hearing.
Smith's first act, when we reached the room above, was to close the door upon us. This done, he set his candle on the floor--whence its flame threw dark wavering outlines of our figures on the ceiling--and moved to the hearth. Here, while I stared, wondering at his silence, he searched for some spring or handle, and finding it, caused a large piece of the wainscot to fall out and reveal a cavity about three feet deep and six long. He beckoned me to bring the candle and look in, and supposing it to be a secret way out, I did so. However, outlet there was none. The place was nothing more than a concealed cupboard.
p255THE PLACE WAS NOTHING MORE THAN A CONCEALED CUPBOARD
"Well?" he said, when he had moved the candle to and fro that I might see the better--his face the while wearing a smile that caught and held my gaze. "Well? what do you think of it, Mr. Taylor?"
I did not understand him, and I said so, trembling.
"It is a tolerable hiding-place?" said he.
I nodded; to please him I would have said it was a palace.
"And not a bad prison?"
I nodded again; staring at him, fascinated. I began to understand.
"And a grave?"
I shuddered. "What do you mean?" I muttered.
"Lay a man in there, bound hand and foot, and gagged; what would you find in a year's time, Mr. Price? Not much."
I stared at him.
"If they knew of that downstairs," he continued, stopping to snuff the candle with his fingers, then looking askance at me, "would they use it, I wonder? Would they use it? What do you think, Mr. Price?"
Again I made no answer.
"Shall I tell them?" said he easily.
"What--what do you want?" I whispered hoarsely.
"That is better," said he, nodding. "Well, to be candid, almost nothing. Two pledges. First, that you will give no evidence against anyone here. That of course."
I muttered assent. I was ready to promise anything.
"And secondly, that you will, when I call upon you, do me a little favour, Mr. Price. It is a small matter, a trifle I asked you at my lady's house three days back. Promise to do that for me, as and when I demand performance, and in ten minutes from this time you shall leave the house, safe, free, and unhurt."
"I promise," I said eagerly. "I promise honestly!"
But even while I spoke--this seemed to be the strangest of all the things that had happened to me that night, that this man should think it worth while to pledge me under such circumstances, or value at a groat a promise so given. For the pledge was a pledge to do ill, and as soon as he and the other conspirators were laid by the heels or had fled the country, what sanction remained to bind me? I saw that as I spoke, and promised--and promised. And would have promised fifty times--with the reservation that I did so under forcemajeure. Who would not have done the same, being in my place?
But I suppose I answered too quickly to please him, and so he read my thoughts, or he had it in his mind from the first to read me a lesson, for the words were scarcely out of my mouth before he slid his hand into his breast with the ugliest smile I ever saw on a man's face; and he signed to me to get into the cupboard. "Get in," he said, between his closed teeth; and then when, terrified by the change in him and the order, I began to back from it, "Get in!" he said, in a voice that set me shaking; "or take the consequences. Do you hear me? I am no Ferguson to threaten and no more."
I dared resist no longer, and I crawled in, trembling and praying him not to shut me in--not to shut me in.
"Lie down!" he said, gloating on me with cruel eyes, and his hand still in his breast.
I lay down, praying for mercy.
"On your back! On your back!" he continued. "And your hands by your sides. So! That is better. Now listen to me, Mr. Price, and think on what I say. When you want to be laid out for good as you are laid out now, when you are ready for your coffin and shroud--and the worms--then break your promise to me, for coffin and shroud and worms will be ready. Think of that--think of that and of me when the temptation comes. And hark you, you fancy," he went on, fixing his eyes on mine, "and you count on it, that I shall be taken with the others, or escaping shall be where you need not fear me. Don't deceive yourself. If a week hence I am in prison, take that for a sign, and please yourself. But if I am free, obey, obey--or God help you!"
I know not how to describe with any approach to fidelity the peculiar effect which words apparently so simple had on me, or the terror, out of all proportion to the means chosen--for he spoke without oath, violence, or passion--into which they threw me, and which was very far from passing with the sound. I had feared Ferguson, but I feared this man more, a hundred times more! And yet I can give no reason, adduce no explanation, save that he spoke quietly, and so seemed to mean all and something beyond what he said. The plans for deceiving him and breaking my word which I had entertained a moment before melted into thinnest air while I lay and sweated in my narrow berth, not daring to move eye or limb until he gave me leave.
And he, as if he knew how fear of him grew on me under his gaze--or in sheer cruelty, I know not which--kept me there, and sat smiling and smiling at me (as the devil may smile at some dead man passed beyond redemption)--kept me there God knows how long. But so long, and to such purpose, that when at length he bade me rise, and looking closely into my face, nodded, and told me I might go--nay, later than that, when he had led me downstairs and opened the door for me, and supported me through it--for in the cold air I staggered like a drunken man--even then, I say, so heavy was the spell of fear laid on me, and such his power, I dared not move or stir until he had twice--smiling the second time--bidden me go. "Go, man," said he, "you are free. But remember!"