CHAPTER IX
DENOUNCED
To put the river between them and their late antagonists and would-be captors naturally occurred to the young men as their wisest plan, although as, urged by Douglas, the other strode towards it, he more than once reproached himself for coming away and leaving Lady Fordingbridge behind. Nor could any words uttered by his friend persuade him to regard his departure as anything else than pusillanimous.
"She went there to meet me; to see me once again," he repeated, "and I have left her to Heaven knows what peril. These men know me-know us-well enough for what we are. 'Tis not difficult to guess whence comes their knowledge! They may accuse her of being a rebel, too. Oh! Kate, Kate! what will be the end of it all; what the finish of our wrecked and ruined lives?"
"No harm can come to her, I tell you," replied his comrade. "Why, man, heart up! Has not the fox, Fordingbridge, made his peace with George; how shall they arrest his wife or her father as rebels? Tush! 'tis not to be thought on. Come, fling away as much of this disguise as possible. We near the end of the lane, and I can hear the shouts of the watermen to their fares; and still we must go a mile or two higher up and take boat ourselves."
As he spoke he discarded his own woollen cloak, and tossed it over a high fence into the grounds of a country house by which they were now passing, while, slowly enough, for his heart was sore within him, Bertie imitated his actions. The axe (which, like the principal part of his dress, had been hired from a costumer or fashioner-a class of tradesmen more common even in those days than these, since fancy dresses were greatly in demand for the masques, ridottos al fresco, and fancy dress balls which took place so frequently) had been lost in the latter part of the riot, and now he discarded also the peculiar mask he had worn, producing from his pocket the ordinary vizard used at such entertainments, and which the forethought of Douglas had induced him to bring. For the rest, his clothes would attract no attention. They were suitable either to a man whose circumstances did not permit of his wearing velvet, silk, or fine broadcloth, or to one who had assumed the simple disguise of a superior workingman. The headsman's knife, however, he did not discard, but slipped up his sleeve, and Douglas retained his sword.
And now they drew near to the end of the lane, when, to their satisfaction, they perceived an alley running out of it and parallel to the course of the river, as they supposed, by the aid of which they might be enabled to follow its course for some distance without coming out on to the bank where, at this moment, there would be many persons from the garden taking boat to the other side.
"Fortune favours us up to now," exclaimed Sholto to his moody companion, as they turned into this smaller lane; "Heaven grant it may continue to do so!" Then, changing the subject, he said, "Bertie, lad, who do you think set those bloodhounds on us? 'Twas some one who knew of our hiding-hole. As we remarked, we were followed from Wandsworth."
"Who!" said Elphinston, stopping to look in his friend's face and peering at him under the light of the stars, "who, but one? The man whom I have to kill; whom I am ordained to kill sooner or later."
"You will kill him?" the other asked, stopping also.
"As a dog, when next I see him-or, no, not as a dog, for that is a creature faithful and true, and cannot conceive treachery-but as some poisonous, devilish thing, adder or snake, that stings us to the death when least we expect the blow. Why," he asked, pausing, "do you shudder?"
"I know not," replied Douglas; "yet I have done so more than once when his name has been mentioned. I know not why," he repeated, "unless I am fey."
"Fey! fey!" echoed Elphinston. "Let him be fey! He should be! It is predestined; his fate at my hands is near. He cannot avoid it."
As they ceased speaking they continued on their way until, at last, the lane opened on to a dreary waste of fields and marshes which stretched towards the very places which they most desired to avoid, Battersea and Wandsworth; while opposite to them, on the other side of the river, were the equally dreary marshes known as Tothill and Pimlico Fields.
"I' faith," said Douglas, as his eye roamed over all this extent of barrenness, which was more apparent than it would otherwise have been owing to the late rising of the moon, now near its full, "I' faith, we're atwixt the devil and the deep sea-or, so to speak, the river. How are we to cross; or shall we go back and over the bridge at Westminster?"
"Nay," replied Bertie; "as we came down the lane I saw a house to the right of us; doubtless 'tis to that the lane belongs. Now, 'tis certain there must be boats somewhere. Let us down to the shore and see. Hark! there is the clock of Chelsea Church striking. The west wind brings the sound across the marshes. Ha! 'tis eleven of the clock. Come, let us waste no time."
They turned therefore down to the river's bank, walking as quietly as possible so that their feet should make no more noise than necessary on the stones and shingle, for it was now low tide; and then, to their great joy, they saw drawn up by the water's edge a small wherry in which sat a man, and by his side he had a lantern that glimmered brightly in the night.
"Friend," said Elphinston, "we have missed our way after leaving the Spring Gardens; can you put across the river? We will pay you for your trouble."
The fellow looked at them civilly enough, then he said, "Yes, so that you waste no time. I have business here which I may not leave for more than a quarter of an hour. Wilt give me a crown to ferry you across?"
"The price is somewhat high," said Douglas. "Yet, since we would not sleep in these marshes all night, nor retrace our steps to Westminster Bridge, we'll do it."
"In with you, then," replied the man, "yet, first give me the crown; I have been deceived by dissolute maskers ere now." Then, when he had received the money, he said he supposed Ranelagh or the New Chelsea Waterworks3 would do very well. "Aye," said Douglas, "they will do," whereupon, having taken their seats, the man briskly ferried them across.
Yet, as they traversed the river, the fear sprang into their hearts that they had been tracked from Vauxhall, that even yet they were not safe from pursuit. For scarcely were they half way across the stream when the man's lantern, which he had left on the bank-perhaps as a signal-was violently waved about in the air by some hand, while a couple of torches were also seen flickering near it and voices were heard calling to him.
"Ay! ay!" the man bellowed back; "ay! ay! What! may I not earn a crown while you do your dirty work? In good time. In good time," he roared still louder, in response to further calls from the bank, while he pulled more lustily than before towards the north shore.
"What is it?" asked Elphinston. "Who are they who seem so impatient for your services?"
"A pack of fools," the man replied. "Young sprigs of fashion who have been quarrelling there," nodding towards Ranelagh Gardens, to which they were now close, "quarrelling over their wine and their women, I do guess, and two of them have crossed over to measure the length of their swords. Well, well; if one's left on the grass I'll be there pretty soon to see what pickings there are in his pockets. 'Tis the fools that provide the wise men's feasts," whereon this philosopher pulled his boat to the bank, set the young men ashore, and, a moment later, was quickly pulling away back to the duelling party.
Ranelagh itself was shut up as they stepped ashore, all its lights were out and the hackney coachmen and chairmen gone with their last fares; and of that night's entertainment-which was sure to have been a great one in rivalry to its neighbour and opponent at Vauxhall-nothing was left but the shouting figures of those on the other bank, and, perhaps, a dead man on the grass of the marshes, with a sword-thrust through his lungs and his wide-staring eyes gazing up at the moon. It seemed, therefore, that they must walk to Kensington, since no conveyance was to be found here.
"Not that the distance is much," said Bertie Elphinston, who had before now walked at nights from Wandsworth and Chelsea to the Square, simply to gaze on the house that enshrined the woman he had loved so much; perhaps also to see the place where the man dwelt whom he meant to kill when the opportunity should arise-"but 'tis the hour that grows so late. If they have gone home at once from the gardens without being disturbed by any of the police agents, she must be housed by now-and-and-I cannot see her again."
"At least you can wait. If not to-day, then to-morrow you can meet, surely. All trace of us is lost now, we shall never go back to Wandsworth-we must send the landlady our debt by some sure hand-a change of clothes and hiding place will put us in safety again. And as for messages, why, Archibald will convey them."
"Archibald!" exclaimed the other with a start. "Archibald! Heavens! we had forgotten! – what have we been thinking of? He may be taken too."
"Taken! Archibald taken! Oh, Bertie, why should that be?"
"Why should it be! Rather ask, why should it not be? Do you think that tiger's whelp who has set the law on us will spare him? No, Simeon Larpent means to make a clean sweep of all at once; his wife's old lover, that lover's friend, and the priest who knows so much of his early life and all his secrets, plots and intrigues against first one and then the other, Jacobite and Hanoverian alike. I tell you, Archibald is in as great a danger as we are!" and he strode on determinately as he spoke.
Their way lay now towards Knightsbridge by a fair, broad road through the fields, and between some isolated houses and villas that were dotted about; and as by this time the moon was well up, everything they passed could be seen distinctly. Of people, they met or passed scarcely any; the road that, an hour or so before, had been covered with revellers of all degrees wending their way back from Ranelagh to the suburbs of Chelsea, Kensington, and Knightsbridge, or to what had, even in those days, been already called "The Great City," was now, with midnight at hand, as deserted as a country lane. Yet one sign they did see of the debaucheries that took place in Ranelagh as well as in the Spring Gardens; a sign of the drunkenness and depravities that prevailed terribly in those days among almost all classes. Lying at the side of the road, where, doubtless, they had fallen together as they reeled away from the night's orgie, they perceived two young men and a young woman-masked, and presenting a weird appearance as they lay on their backs, their flushed faces turned up to the moon, yet with the upper part hidden by the black vizard. It was easy to perceive that all had fallen together and been afterwards unable to rise-as they lay side by side they were still arm in arm, and, doubtless, the first who had fallen had dragged the others after him. The two young men seemed from their apparel to be of a respectable class, perhaps clerks or scriveners, their clothes being of good cloth, though not at all belaced; as for their companion, the bacchante by their sides, she might have been anything from shopgirl or boothdancer down to demirep.
"Now," said Douglas, "here is our chance for disguise. These fellows have good enough coats and hats-see, too, they sport the black cockade. Well, 'twill not hurt them to sell us some apparel." Wherewith he proceeded to lift the nearest sot up and relieve him of his coat, waistcoat, and hat. Apparently the fellow thought he was being put to bed by some one, as he muttered indistinctly, "Hang coat over chair-shan't wear it 'gain till Sunday" – but as Douglas slipped a couple of guineas into his breeches pocket he went to sleep peacefully enough once more. As for the other young man, he never stirred at all while Bertie removed his garments, nor when he put into his pocket a similar sum of two guineas, and also his copper-cased watch, which had slipped from out his fob.
"They are somewhat tight and pinching," remarked Douglas as he and his friend donned their new disguise, "even though we are now as lean as rats after our Scotch campaign."
Yet, tight as their new clothes were, they answered, at least, a good purpose. It would have taken a shrewd eye to recognise in these two respectably clad men-in spite of their coats being somewhat dusty from having lain in the road while on the backs of their late masters, the headsman and the Highlander who, a few hours before, had walked round and round the orchestra pavilion at Vauxhall.
After this they went forward briskly towards Kensington-square, attracting no attention from anyone indeed meeting few people, for at this distance from the heart of the town there was scarcely anyone ever stirring after midnight, and it was somewhat past that time now. As they neared Kensington, it is true, they were passed by a troop of the Queen's Guards (as the 2nd Life Guards were then called) returning, probably, from some duty at St. James's Palace, but otherwise they encountered none whom they need consider hostile to them.
In the square there was, when they reached it at last, no sign of life. The watchman in his box slumbered peacefully, his dog at his feet, and in the windows of the houses scarcely a light was to be seen. Nor was there any appearance of activity in the house belonging to Fordingbridge, though Bertie thought he should have at least seen some light in the room which he knew, from enquiry of Sholto, to be Kate's.
"'Tis strange," he said, "strange. Surely they must have returned from the masquerade by now. After crossing the water a coach would have brought them here in less than an hour. 'Tis passing strange!"
"They may have got back so early," hazarded Douglas, "that already all are abed. Or they may have gone on to Lady Belrose's, in Hanover-square. A hundred things may have happened. And where, I wonder, is Archie? He surely will be in bed."
"Can he be arrested? It may be so."
"God forbid! Yet this darkness and silence seem to me ominous. What shall we do?"
"Heaven knows. Hist! Who comes here?" and as he spoke, from out of one of the doorways over which was, as may still be seen, a huge scallop-shell, there stepped forth a man. Enveloped in one of the long cloaks, or roquelaures, still worn at the period, and with the tip of a sword's scabbard sticking out beneath it, the man sauntered leisurely away from where they were standing, yet as he went they could hear him humming to himself an air they both knew well. It was that old tune "The Restoration" – which they had heard once before this evening! – to which the Highland army marched after it had crossed the border.
Presently the man turned and came towards them slowly, then as he passed by he looked straight in their faces, and, seeming satisfied by what he saw, he muttered, "A fine spring night, gentlemen. Ay, and so it is. A fine night for the young lambs outside the town and for the hawks within-though the hawks get not always their beaks into the lambs too easily; in fact, I may give myself classical license and say they are non semper triumphans."
"In very truth," replied Bertie, "some-though 'tis not always the hawks-are nunquam triumphans. That is, if I apprehend your meaning."
"Ay, sir," said the man, dropping his classics and changing his manner instantly. "You apprehend me very well. Sir, I am here with a message for you from a certain Scotch trader, one Mr. Archibald; also from a certain fair lady-"
"Ah!"
"Or rather, let me say, without beating about the bush, I brought to a certain fair lady, to-night, a message from Mr. Archibald, while she, considering it possible that a certain, or two certain brave gentlemen might appear in this square to-night, did beg me to remain in this sad square to deliver the message."
"Sir," said Elphinston, teased by the man's quaint phraseology, yet anxious to know what the message really was that had been sent from Father Sholto to Kate, and on from her to him, "sir, we thank you very much. Will you now please to deliver to us that message?"
"Sir, I will. It is for that I am here." Then without more ado he said hastily, "The worthy trader has been warned from a friend, a countryman of ours, who is connected, or attached, so to speak, to the Scotch Secretary of State's Orifice, that he may very possibly be cast into durance should he remain there," and he jerked his thumb at Lord Fordingbridge's house as he spoke; "whereon, seeing that precaution is the better part of valour, the worthy trader has removed himself from the hospitable roof there," upon which he this time jerked his head instead of his thumb towards the house, "and has sought another shelter which, so to speak as it were, is not in this part of the town, but more removed. But, being a man of foresight and precaution, also hath he gone to warn two gallant gentlemen residing at a sweet and secluded village on the river to be careful to themselves remove-"
"That," said Douglas, "we have already done. Yet his warning must have got there too late."
"And," continued their garrulous and perspicacious friend, "also did he request and desire me to attend here in the square until a certain fair lady should return from the gallimanteries and ridottos al fresco to which she had that evening been."
"And did the certain fair lady return?" asked Elphinston, unable to repress a smile at his stilted verbiage.
"Return she did. In gay company! Two sparks with her, dressed in the best, though somewhat dishevelled as though with profane dancings and junketings-one had his coat ripped from lapel to skirt-and an elderly man-I fear me also a wassailer! – with a fierce eye. Then I up and delivered the worthy-hem! – trader's message, when, lo! as flame to torch-wood, there burst forth from all a tremendous clamjamfry such as might have been heard up there," and this time he jerked his head towards where Kensington Palace lay.
"As how?" asked the young men together. "Why should they make a clamjamfry?"
"Hech!" answered their eccentric countryman, "'tis very plain ye ken not women-nor, for that matter, the young sparks of London! This is how it went. One certain fair lady-from whom I bring you a wee bit message-wrung her hands and wept, saying, 'Betrayed, betrayed again! The veellain! the veellain!' whereby I think she meant not you; the other fair lady, who is maybe an hour or so older, stormed and scolded and screeched about unutterable scoundrels, yet bade the other cease weeping and seek her house, to which she was very welcome; while the two young men uttered words more befitting their braw though unholy dishevelled apparel, and spake of him," and here the nodding head was wagged over to Fordingbridge's house again, "as though he were Lucifer incarnate-though that was not the name, so to speak as it were. And for the old man with the fierce eye, hech! mon, his language was unbefitting a Christian."
"And the message the lady scrawled. What is it?"
"'Tis here," the other replied. "You must just excuse the hasty writing-" but ere he could finish his remark Bertie had taken a piece of paper from his hand which he brought out from under his cloak, and, striding to where an oil lamp glimmered over a doorway, read what it contained. The few lines ran as follows:
"We are once more betrayed. He has, I know, done this. I leave his house and him for ever from to-night. I pray God you may yet escape. If you ever loved me, fly-fly at once. Lose no moment. – Katherine."
CHAPTER X
HOW MY LORD RETURNED HOME
It was on a bright afternoon, a week after the events which have been described, that Lord Fordingbridge's travelling carriage drew up in front of his house, and my lord descended in an extremely bad humour. There was, perhaps, more than one reason why he was not in the most amiable of tempers, the principal one being that the news which he had hoped to receive ere he again made his entrance into London had not come to hand.
All the time that he had been on his Cheshire property-which he had found to be considerably neglected since his father's departure for France-he had been expecting to receive, from one source or another, the information of the arrest of those three enemies of his, about whom he had given information sufficient to bring them to justice. Yet none had come. Daily he had sent to the coach office at Chester for the journals from London, but, when he had perused them, he still failed to find that any of the three had been haled to justice. Nor was there even a description in any of them of the scene at Vauxhall-which, had he found such description, might have been exceedingly pleasant reading. But, in truth, nothing was more unlikely than that he should find it. A fracas at either Ranelagh or the Spring Gardens was by no means likely to be chronicled in either the "London Journal" or the "Craftsman," or any other news-sheet of the period, since in those days the ubiquitous reporter was unknown, or, when he existed, did not consider anything beneath a murder, a state trial, or an execution worthy of his pen. Also the proprietors of Ranelagh and Vauxhall, and similar places of entertainment, took very good care to keep anything unpleasant that happened out of the papers. Nothing short, therefore, of Mr. Jonathan Tyers sending an account of what had occurred in his grounds to the papers of the day with the request that it might be inserted-accompanied, perhaps, by a payment for such insertion-would have led to the publication of the matter, and that the worthy proprietor of the Spring Gardens would do such a thing as this was not to be supposed.
Also, my lord had received no news from his wife, nor her father, which astonished him considerably. For he had supposed that, in about a week's time, the post would bring him a letter full of accusations, reproaches, and injurious epithets from her ladyship, who, he felt sure, would at once connect him with the arrest of the three men-yet, no more from her than from the public prints did he gather one word. So that at last he began to have the worst fears that, after all, the Government had bungled in some way and that the victims had escaped. It was, therefore, in a very ill humour that he again returned to London, cursing inwardly and vehemently at any delay necessitated by the changing of horses, by nights spent at inns on the road, and by the heavy roads themselves; and at St. Albans, where he once more slept, by receiving no visit at all from Captain Morris, to whom he had written saying that he would be there on a certain evening and would be pleased to see him.
Instead, however, he received a visit from another person who had troubled his mind a great deal during the past week or so; a somewhat rough, uncouth-looking fellow, who seemed to have dogged his footsteps perpetually-who had passed him soon after he left Dunstable on his journey down, whom he saw again at Coventry and at Stafford, and who, to his amazement, now strode into the apartment he occupied as hitherto, and stated that he brought a message from the Captain.
"Hand it to me, then," said his lordship, regarding the man as he stood before him in his rough riding cloak and great boots, and recognising him as the fellow who had appeared so often on his journey.
"There is nothing to hand," the other replied. "Only a word-of-mouth message."
"A word-of-mouth message! Indeed! Captain Morris spares me but scant courtesy. Well, what is the message?"
"Only this. The work has failed, and the birds have escaped from the net. That's all."
"Escaped from the net!" his lordship said, sinking back into the deep chair he sat in, and staring at the uncouth messenger. "Escaped from the net! But the particulars, man, the particulars! How has it come about? Are the Government and their underlings a pack of fools and idiots that they let malignant traitors escape thus?"
"Very like, for all I know, or, for the matter of that, care. The captain's one of their underlings, as you call them, and I'm another. Perhaps we're fools and idiots."
"You are another, are you?" said his lordship, looking at him, "another, eh? Pray, sir, is that why you have dogged me into Cheshire and back again as you have done, for I have seen you often? Am I a suspected person that I am followed about thus? Am I, sir?"
"Very like," again replied this stolid individual. "Very like, though I know not. I received my orders at Dunstable to keep you in sight, and I kept you, that's-"
"Leave the room. Go out of my sight at once!" exclaimed Lord Fordingbridge, springing from his seat and advancing toward the man. "Go at once, or the ostler shall be sent for to throw you out. Go!"
When the man had departed, muttering that "fool, or idiot, or both, he'd done his duty, and he didn't care for any nobleman in England, Jacobite or Hanoverian, so long as he done that," the viscount gave himself up to the indulgence of one of those fits, or rather tempests, of passion, which, as a rule, he rarely allowed himself to indulge in, and cursed and swore heartily as he stamped up and down the room for half an hour.
"Everything goes wrong with me," he muttered, as he shook his fist in impotent rage at his own reflection in the great mirrors over the fireplace, "everything, everything! If that infernal captain had only gone to work as he should have done on the information I gave him, they would all have been lodged in gaol by now-two of them doomed to a certain death and the other to a long imprisonment or banishment to the colonies. And now they are fled-are free-safe, while I am far from safe since Elphinston is at large; and am suspected, too, it seems, since, forsooth, that chuckle-headed boor is set to follow me."
This latter thought was, perhaps, as unpleasant a one as any which rose to his mind, since if he were also suspected it might be the case that, while he had denounced the others, they-or probably Archibald Sholto alone-might have denounced him. And at this terrible thought he quaked with fear, for he knew what an array of charges might be brought. Nay, it was the very fear of those charges being brought, combined with his other fear of Elphinston wreaking vengeance on him for having deceived and stolen his promised wife, that had led to his betraying the three men who alone could denounce him. And now they were all free, instead of being in Newgate or the Tower, and he, it seemed, was as much suspected as they!
He tossed about his bed all night, made a wretched breakfast, and then set out for London, determined at all hazards to discover exactly what had happened, or perhaps to find out that nothing had happened. Yet as he went he mused on what his future course should be, and came to at least one determination.
"I will send her ladyship packing," he said, with a sardonic grin. "I have had enough of her and her airs and graces, and she may go to Elphinston or to the devil for aught I care. I have a surprise to spring upon her, a trump card, or, as the late Louis was said to call that card, 'La dernière piece d'or,' because it always won. And, by Heaven, I'll spring it without mercy!"
In which frame of mind his lordship arrived in front of his town house. But now a new matter of astonishment arose, also a new fuel for his humours; for the house appeared deserted, the blinds were drawn down in all the windows. He could perceive no smoke arising from any chimney, there was no sign of life at all about the place. He bade his manservant get down from beside the coachman and tug lustily at the bell, while all the time that the man was doing so he was fretting and fuming inwardly, and at last was meditating sending for the watch and having the door forced, when it was opened from the inside, and the oldest servant in his establishment, a decrepit, deaf old man, who had acted as caretaker for many years during his and his father's absence abroad, appeared.
"Come here, Luke, come here," his lordship called loudly to him; "come here, I say," and he motioned that he should descend the steps and approach the travelling carriage, from the door of which he was now glaring at him. But, whether from fright or senility, or both combined, the other did not obey him, and only stood shivering and shaking and feebly bowing upon the threshold.
"What devil's game is this?" Fordingbridge muttered to himself as he now sprang out and ran up the steps, after which he grasped the old man by the collar and, dragging him toward him, bawled in his ear question after question as to what cause the present state of the house was owing. But the old fellow only shivered and shook the more, and seemed too paralyzed by his master's violence to do anything but wag his jaws helplessly. Hurling him away, therefore, with no consideration at all for either his age or feebleness, Fordingbridge rushed through the hall ringing a bell that communicated with the kitchens and another with the garrets, calling out the names of male and female servants, and receiving no answer to any of his summons. Then, tired of this at last, he bade his manservant bring in his valises and ordered the travelling carriage off to the stables. But by now the old servitor seemed to have recovered either his breath or his senses somewhat, and coming up to his lordship in a sidling fashion, such as a dog assumes when fearful of a blow if it approaches its master too near, he mumbled that there was no one else in the house but himself.
"So I should suppose," Lord Fordingbridge replied, endeavouring to calm himself and to overcome the gust of passion with which he had once more been seized, "so I should suppose; I have called enough to have waked the dead had there been any here." Then once more regarding the old man with one of his fierce glances, he shouted at him in a voice that penetrated even to his ears, "Where are they all? Where is her ladyship?" in a lower voice. "Where are the servants?"