CHAPTER XIX
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 streets solus 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.
CHAPTER XX
The clocks had gone midnight, when I parted from Mary at the door of the house and groped my way upstairs to my room; where, throwing off my clothes I lay down, not to sleep, but to resolve endlessly and futilely the plans we had made, and the risks we ran and the thousand issues that might come of either. Cogitation brought me no nearer to a knowledge of the event, but only heated my brain and increased my impatience; the latter to such a degree that with the first light I was up and moving, and had my trunk packed. Nor did I fail to note the strange and almost incredible turn which now led me to look for support in my flight to the very person whose ominous entrance twenty-four hours earlier had forced me to lay aside the thought.
Long before it could by any chance be necessary I opened my door, and softly carrying out my box, placed it in a dark corner on the landing. After this a great interval elapsed, during which I conjured up a hundred mischances. At length I heard someone afoot opposite; and then the stumbling tread of a porter carrying goods down the stairs. About eleven I ventured to peep out, and learned with satisfaction that the trunk had vanished; it remained therefore for me to do the same. Bestowing a last look on the little attic which had been my home so long, and until lately no unhappy home, I took up my hat and cloak; and making sure for the fiftieth time that I had my small stock of money, hidden in my clothes, I opened the door, and stealing out, stood a minute to listen before I descended.
I heard nothing to alarm me; yet a second later I shrieked in affright, and almost sank down under the sudden grip of a hand on my shoulder. The hand was Ferguson's; who listening, at my chamber door, had heard me move towards it, and flattened himself against the wall beside it; and so, being in the dark corner farthest from the staircase, had eluded my notice. He chuckled vastly, at his cunning, and the fright he had given me, and rocking me to and fro, asked me grimly what I had done with my fine clothes and my wig.
"Ay, and that is not all," he continued. "I shall want to know a little more about that matter, my friend. And mind you, Mr. Price, the truth! The truth, or I will wring this tender ear of yours from your head. For the present, however, that matter may wait. I shall have it, when I want it. Now I have other work for you. Come into my room."
"I am going to the tavern," I said desperately. And I hung back. "Afterwards, Mr. Ferguson, I will-"
"Oh, to the tavern," he answered, mimicking me. "And for what?"
"My dinner," I faltered.
He burst into a volley of oaths, and seizing me again by the shoulder ran me into his room. "Your dinner, indeed, you dirty, low-born pedlar," he cried in a fury. "Who are you to dine at taverns when the King's business wants you? Stand you there, and listen to me, or by the God above me, you shall never take meat or drink again. Do you see this, you craven?" and he plucked out his horrible horse pistol, and flourished the muzzle in my face. "Mark it, and remember that I am Ferguson, the famous Ferguson, Ferguson the plotter, and no little person to be thwarted! And now listen to me."
I could have wept with rage and despair, knowing that with every moment this wretch kept me, my chance of fulfilling the appointment at Clerkenwell Gate was passing; and that if he detained me only one half hour longer, I must be late. To the pistol, however, and his scowling, truculent, blotched face that lacking the wig, which hung on a chair beside him, was one degree more ugly than its wont, there was no answer; and I said sullenly that I would listen.
"You had better," he answered. "Mark you, there is a gentleman coming to see me; and to his coming and to what he says to me I will have a witness. You follow me?"
"Yes," I said, looking round, but in vain, for a way of escape.
"And you are the witness. You shall go into that room, mark you, and you shall be as mute as a mouse! I put this little cupboard open, the back is thin and there is a crack in it; set your eye to that and you will see him. And look you, listen to every word, and note it; and keep still-keep still, or it will be the worse for you, Mr. Price!"
"Very well," I said obediently; hope springing up, as I thought I saw a way of escape. "And what time must I be here?"
"You are here, and you will stay here," he answered dashing to the ground the scarce-born plan. "Why, man, he may come any minute."
"Still-if I could go out for-for two minutes," I persisted. "I should be easier."
"Go out! Go out!" he cried, interrupting me in a fury. "And dinners? And taverns? And you would be easier! D'ye know, Mr. Price, I have my doubts about you! Ay, I have!" he continued, leering at me with his big, cunning eyes; and now thrusting his face close to mine, now drawing it back again. "Are you for selling us, I wonder? Mind you, if that is your thought, two can play at that game, and I have writing of yours. Ay, I have writing of yours, Mr. Price, and for twopence I would send it where it will hang you. So be careful. Be careful or-give me that coat."
Wishing that I had the courage to strike him in the back, praying that the next word he said might choke him, hating him with a dumb hatred, the blacker for its impotence, and for the menial services he made me do him, I gave him the long-skirted plum-coloured coat to which he pointed, and saw him clothe his lank ungainly figure in it, and top all with his freshly curled wig. He bade me tie his points and fasten on his sword; and this being done to his liking-and he was not very easy to please-he pulled down his ruffles, and walked to and fro, preening himself and looking a hundred times more ugly and loathsome for the finery, with which, for the first time, I saw him bedizened.
Preparations so unusual, by awakening my curiosity as to the visitor in whose honour they were made, diverted me from my own troubles; to which I had done no more than return when a knock came at the outer door. Ferguson, in a flush of exultation that went far to show that he had entertained doubts of the visitor's coming, thrust me into the next room; a mere closet, ill-lighted by one small window, and bare, save for a bed-frame. Here he placed me beside the crack he had mentioned; and whispering in my ear the most fearful threats and objurgations in case I moved, or proved false to him, he cast a last look round to assure himself that all was right; then he went back into his own apartment, where through my Judas-hole I saw him pause. The girl's departure with the luggage had left the room but meagrely furnished; whether this and the effect it might have on his visitor's mind struck him, or he began at the last moment to doubt the prudence of his enterprise, he stood awhile in the middle of the floor gnawing his nails, and listening, or perhaps thinking. The drift of his reflections, however, was soon made clear; for on the visitor's impatiently repeating his summons, he moved stealthily to one of the windows-which being set in the mode of garret windows, deep in the slope of the roof, gave little light-and by piling his cloak in a heap on the sill, he contrived to obscure some of that little. This done, and crying softly "Coming! Coming!" he hastened to the door and opened it, bowing and scraping with an immense show of humility.
The man, who had knocked, and who walked in with an impatient step as if the waiting had been little to his taste, was tall and slight; for the rest, a cloak, and a hat flapping low over his face, hid both features and complexion. I noticed that Ferguson bowed again and humbly, but did not address him; and that the gentleman also kept silence until he had seen the door secured behind him. Then, and as his host with seeming clumsiness, brushed past him and so secured a position with his back to the light, he asked sharply, "Where is he?"
The plotter leant his hands on the back of the chair and paused an instant before he answered. When he did he spoke with less assurance than I had ever heard him speak before; he even stammered a little. "Your Grace," he said, "has come to see a person-who-who wrote to you? From this house?"
"I have. Where is he?"
"Here."
"Here? But where, man, where?" the newcomer replied, looking quickly round.
Still Ferguson did not move. "My lord Duke, you came here, in a word-to see Lord Middleton?" he said.
It was easy to see that the visitor's gorge rose at the other's manner, no less than at this naming of names. But with an effort he swallowed his chagrin. "If you know that, you know all," he answered with composure. "So without more, take me to him. But I may as well say, sir, since you seem to be in his confidence-"
"It was my hand wrote the letter."
"Was it so? Then you should know, sir, that a madder and more foolish thing was never done! If my Lord Middleton," the stranger continued coldly, his tone inclining to sarcasm rather than to feeling, "desired to ruin his best friend and the one most able to save him in a certain event-if he meant to requite, sir, one who has already suffered more than was reasonable in his service, by consigning him to his destruction, he did well. Otherwise he was mad. Mad, or worse, to send such a letter to a place where he must know of his own knowledge that nine letters out of ten are opened by others' hands!"
"Your Grace is right," Ferguson answered drily, and in his natural voice; at the sound of which, either because of its native harshness or because it touched some chord in his memory, the other started. "But the fact is," the plotter continued hardily, and with a smack of impertinence, "my Lord Middleton, so far as I know, is still with the King at St. Germain's."
"At St. Germain's?" the stranger cried. "With the King?"
"Yes, and to be candid," Ferguson answered, "I was not aware, my lord, that you had sent him a safe conduct."
"You villain!" the Duke cried, and stepped forward, his rage excited as much by the man's manner as by the trick which had been played him. "How dared you say, then, that he was here?" he continued. "Answer, fellow, or it will be the worse for you."
"I said only, your Grace," Ferguson replied, retreating a step, "that the writer of the letter was here."
For a moment the Duke, utterly dumfounded by this, stood looking at him. "And you are he?" he said at last, with chilling scorn, "and the author of this-plot!"
"And of many plots besides," my master answered jauntily. And then, "My lord, do you not know me yet?" he cried.