CHAPTER XXVIII
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 on him." 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.
CHAPTER XXIX
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.
"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 force majeure. 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!"