How! Old thief thy wits are lame;
To clip such it is no shame;
I rede you in the devil's name,
Ye come not here to make men game.
--SWINBURNE.
Daniel Pye, having arrived at that corner stone in Holborn Row
which afforded him a full view of the house whence he had just been
ignominiously dismissed, turned and shook a menacing fist in its
direction. His body ached, he was smarting in every limb, and he had a
grievance which clamoured loudly for revenge.
In Paris he had endured, whilst executing his duty, the buffetings and
blows of a crowd of rowdy apprentices; this he had done not from any
deep-rooted attachment to a capricious and exacting mistress, nor from
any very exalted notions of abstract duty, but chiefly for the sake of
the commendations and the rewards which the due fulfilment to Mistress
Peyton's commands would naturally bring in its train.
The fact that, in order to allay the futile anxieties of a pretty
woman, good Daniel Pye subsequently went in for a somewhat
highly-coloured tale of his adventures was, after all, a venial sin,
and surely the minor transgression which he had committed in delivering
the letter, half an hour later than he should have done, did not call
for such malignant and cruel treatment as his ungrateful mistress had
thought fit to impose upon him. Under a paltry accusation of theft,
which the lady herself must have known was totally unfounded, she had
handed him over to the magistrate for punishment. Convicted of the
charge on the most flimsy evidence, he had been made to stand in the
pillory two hours, and been publicly flogged like some recalcitrant
'prentice, or immoral wench.
Nay, worse! For Mistress Peyton herself, accompanied by Sir John
Ayloffe, had gone down to Bridewell to see her serving-man whipped,
under the pretence that she wished to see justice properly tempered
with mercy, since she only desired merited chastisement for him and not
wanton cruelty.
And yet when he, Daniel Pye, was howling at the whipping post like one
possessed, the while a crowd of young jackanapes--among whom were some
of Pye's fellow servants--stood hooting and jeering, Sir John Ayloffe
at Mistress Peyton's special command had ordered that an additional
ten strokes with the lash be dealt him with no lenient hand. And when
Daniel anon stood in the pillory, bruised, sore, every limb in his body
aching with the heavy blows, Sir John had caused baskets full of rotten
eggs and scraps of tainted fish and meat and decayed vegetable to be
distributed among the spectators so that the ribald youngsters might
throw this evil-smelling refuse at the unfortunate man whose sole crime
had been a tiny lie spoken in order to reassure an ungrateful mistress.
Finally Pye was dismissed from Mistress Peyton's service, despite his
abject entreaties. He was kicked out of the street door by a young
lacquey whom he himself had oft flogged for impertinence and who now
had already assumed the comfortable shoes of office which Daniel had
worn for so long.
To the last the mistress had persisted in her unfounded and cruel
accusations. To the last she coldly asserted that Daniel had robbed her
of seventy thousand pounds.
Seventy thousand pounds! By Heaven! Daniel was not aware that such a
vast sum existed in the world, nor if he had stolen it--which of course
he had not--would he have known what to do with all that money!
No wonder, therefore, that the man felt mentally as well as bodily
sore--nay, that he swore to be revenged on the cruel lady who had so
wantonly wronged him. What form his revenge would take he could not at
first determine, but these were days when it was not over-difficult for
a man to make his petty spite be very uncomfortably felt, provided he
had nothing more to lose and possessed neither conscience nor fear of
ulterior punishment.
Now Daniel Pye, we know, had no overwhelming regard for truth; as to
punishment, by the Lord, he had had all the punishment that any menial
could possibly receive. He could sink no lower in the hierarchy of
respectable domesticity; he had nothing more to lose, nothing more to
gain. A serving-man who had been publicly flogged for theft was an
outcast as far as gentlemen's houses were concerned. All the service
that a branded thief might obtain in future would be in mean taverns or
places of doubtful reputation where the master could not afford to be
over-particular in the choice of his henchmen.
Pye had indeed shaken a menacing fist at the house in Holborn Row.
Though he had not thought out the exact form which his revenge might
take, he knew by instinct in what quarter to seek for guidance in this
desire.
His steps led him almost mechanically in the direction of Whitefriars.
When he himself was still a respectable lacquey; he would have scorned
to set foot in this unhallowed spot where cheats, liars and other
reprobates rubbed shoulders with the wastrels of aristocratic descent
who had sought sanctuary here against their creditors.
In a corner of the narrow street, and in what had once been the
refectory of white-robed monks, there now stood a tavern of evil
fame--one or two low-raftered rooms, wherein light and air penetrated
in such minute particles that these had not the power to drive away the
heavy fumes of alcohol, of rank tobacco, of vice and of licentiousness
which filled every corner of this dark and squalid spot.
Here the informer, the perjurer, the cheat, held his court unmolested,
here the debtor was free from pursuit, and the highway robber safe from
the arm of the law.
Whitefriars was sanctuary! Oh, the mockery of the word! For it was the
brawlers and the bullies, the termagants and hags that inhabited these
once holy and consecrated precincts, who enforced this self-ordained
law of sanctuary. Neither townguard nor soldiery would dare to enter
the unhallowed neighbourhood save in great numerical strength, and
even then the flails of the lawless fraternity, the bludgeons of the
men and stew-pans and spits of the women oft gained a victory over the
musketeers.
To this spot now Daniel Pye unhesitatingly turned his footsteps. The
servant kicked out of house for theft, the henchman who had been
flogged and had stood in the pillory, naturally drifted towards those
who like himself were at war with law and order, who had quarrelled
with justice or were nursing a grievance.
It was then late in the afternoon. Outside the beautiful May sun was
trying to smile on the grimy city, on all that man had put up in order
to pollute God's pure earth: the evil-smelling, narrow streets, the
pavements oozing with slimy, slippery mud, the rickety, tumble-down
houses covered with dirt and stains. All this the sun had kissed and
touched gently with warmth and promise of spring, but into that corner
of Whitefriars where Daniel Pye now stood, it had not attempted to
penetrate.
Overhead the protruding gables right and left of the street almost met,
obscuring all save a very narrow strip of sky. Underfoot the slimy mud,
fed by innumerable overflowing gutters, hardly gave a foothold to the
passerby.
But the door of the brothel stood invitingly open. Daniel Pye walked in
unchallenged; scarce a head was turned or a glance raised to appraise
the newcomer. He looked sulky and unkempt, his clothes were soiled and
tattered after the painful halt in the pillory. In fact he looked what
he was--a rebel against society like unto themselves.
Men sat in groups conversing in whispers and drinking deeply out
of pewter mugs. One of these groups, more compact than the others,
occupied the centre of the room. In the midst of it a man with thin,
long, yellow hair straggling round a high forehead, his thin shanks
encased in undarned worsted stockings, his stooping shoulders covered
by a surcoat of sad-coloured grogram, seemed to hold a kind of court.
Daniel slouched toward that group; the man in the sad-coloured coat
raised a pair of pale, watery eyes to him, and no doubt recognising by
that subtle instinct peculiar to the great army of blackguards, that
here was a kindred spirit, he made way for the stranger so that the
latter might sit on the bench beside him.
After a very little while Pye found himself quite at home in that
low-raftered room, wherein the air surfeited with evil-smelling fumes
was less foul than the sentiments, the lies, the blasphemies that were
freely emitted here.
The group of whom Mistress Peyton's ex-henchman had now become a
unit, and over which presided the lanky-haired, pale-eyed youth,
consisted of men who had neither the enthusiasm of their own villainy
nor the courage of their own crimes; they were the spies that worked
in the dark, the informers who struck unseen. False oaths, perjured
information, lying accusations were their special trade. It did not
take Daniel Pye very long to learn its secrets.
The man with the yellow hair was called Oates. He had once been a
priest, now he was a renegade, a sacrilegious liar, and maker of false
oaths. Close to him sat another man, outwardly very different to look
at, for he was stout and florid, and his eyes were bleary, but the
perversion of the soul within was equal in these two men. Oates and
Tongue! What a world of infamy do their very names evoke! They were the
leaders of this band of false informers who lived and throve by this
infamous trade. Oates soon made a fortune by those very schemes which
he propounded to his henchmen on this memorable day when Daniel Pye
drifted into their midst.
The East Anglian peasant torn from his primitive home amongst the
wheatfields of Norfolk, transplanted into the vitiated atmosphere of
the great city, there to learn the abject lessons which the service
of a capricious woman and the bribes of her courtiers do so readily
teach to a grasping nature, now fell a ready slave to the insidious
suggestions of these perjurers. Pye at first had listened with half an
ear. His thoughts were still centred on vengeance and on his own aches
and pains, and the denunciations against Papists which was the chief
subject of discussion between Oates and his audience seemed to him of
puerile significance.
But the eye of the other, of him with the florid complexion, was
constantly fixed on Daniel Pye. Gradually he drew the latter into
conversation. A vague question here, a suggestion there, and the whole
history of that day's bitter wrongs was soon poured into overwilling
ears: the accusation of theft, the whipping post, the pillory.
Pye felt no shame in retailing these humiliating woes to a stranger.
Ever since he had been kicked out of the house by that insolent
subordinate he had longed to tell the tale to some one. Truly he would
have gone raving mad with compressed rage if he had had to go silently
to bed. The stranger was a sympathetic listener:
"Strike me! but 'tis a damnable tale," he said, "misdeeds that cry
loudly for revenge. Cannot you, friend, be even with a woman who hath
treated you so ill?"
"How can I?" growled Pye, moodily. "A woman! She is rich, too, and hath
many friends--"
"Well-favoured, too, mayhap," suggested the other.
"Ay, she's counted pretty--"
"And her friends are mostly gentlemen, I imagine."
"Mostly," replied Daniel impatiently, for he liked not this digression
from the all-absorbing topic of his own woes.
Tongue said nothing more for the present, but anon he called for mulled
ale, and made Pye draw nearer to the table and partake largely of his
lavishness.
The ale had been strengthened with raw alcohol, and made heady with
steaming and the admixture of spices. It had special properties--as
all blackguards in search of victims or confederates well knew--of
loosening tongues and addling feeble minds.
Daniel Pye had had no desire to be reticent. He was already over-ready
to talk. But the spirituous ale which soon got into his head killed
that instinctive native suspicion in him, which in more sober moments
would have caused him to look askance at the easy familiarity of his
newly-found friend.
Pye was quite unaware of the fact that Tongue was really questioning
him very closely, and that he himself gave ready answer to every
question. Within half an hour, he had told the other all that there
was to know about Mistress Peyton and her household, but still Master
Tongue was disappointing in his offers of advice. Daniel was under
the impression that the man with the florid face would help him to be
revenged on his spiteful mistress, and yet time went on and Daniel had
told his story over and over again in every detail and yet nothing had
been suggested that sounded satisfactory.
He wanted to dwell on his troubles, those final ten lashes specially
ordered, the rotten eggs thrown at him one by one by that damnable
little scullion whom he himself had so often thrashed. Yet Master
Tongue would no longer dwell on these interesting facts, but always
dragged the conversation back to Mistress Peyton's household, or to the
gentlemen who formed her court.
"Surely, friend," he said somewhat impatiently at last, "you must have
known some of these gentlemen quite intimately. If as you say your
mistress was a noted beauty, she must have had many admirers, some more
favoured than others--some of these must have been Papists. The Duke of
Norfolk now--did he come to see your lady?"
"No," replied Daniel Pye, sulkily. "But just as that rascally scullion
hit me in the eye--"
"Never mind about that now," interrupted the other. "Try and tell me
the names of those gentlemen who most often visited this Mistress Julia
Peyton."
"There was Sir John Ayloffe--"
"He is no Papist--who else?"
"Sir Anthony Wykeham--"
"Oh!" said Tongue eagerly. "Did he come often?"
"No. Only once. But as I was telling you, there was a youngster in that
crowd--"
But the other again broke in impatiently:
"You only saw Sir Anthony Wykeham once? When was that?"
"He came with my lord of Stowmaries."
"My lord Stowmaries? You know my lord Stowmaries? Did he come often?"
"Every day nearly. Mistress Peyton is like to marry him, now that he's
rid of his first wife."
To Daniel Pye's utter astonishment, this simple fact--which he himself
considered of very minor interest in comparison with the story of his
own troubles--seemed to delight his newly-found friend.
Master Tongue jumped up with every sign of eager excitement.
"You knew my lord Stowmaries?" he reiterated insistently. "You knew him
well?"
Then as Pye, somewhat bewildered, assented, he ejaculated:
"By G--d! the best man we could ever have hit upon, under the
circumstances."
He now slipped his hand confidentially under Pye's arm, forcing him
to rise, then he dragged him away from the group, and into a distant
corner of the room.
"Friend," he whispered eagerly, "let me tell you that you are in luck
to-day. You want your revenge; you shall have it, and much more yet
to boot, and your spiteful mistress will yet have cause to rue the day
when she turned you out of doors. Listen to me, man! Are you desirous
of securing a good competence as well as of being even with her who had
you whipped and pilloried?"
"Ay!" replied Daniel Pye with a fervour which was too deep for a longer
flow of words.
"Then do you go out of here now and find means to kill time in some
other tavern close by. But at ten of the clock this night return here.
You will find me and my friend Oates, and one or two more of these
gentlemen who have a vast scheme in hand for our own good fortune,
wherein we will ask you to participate. Nay, ask me no more now!" added
the man with the bleary eyes. "It were too long to explain, and there
are several pairs of ears present in this room at this moment who are
not meant to hear all that I say. But I tell you, friend, that if you
be willing, my friend Oates will help you to your revenge, and in
addition there will be at least £30 in your pocket, and the chance of
earning more. Well, what say you?"
"That I'll come," said Daniel Pye simply.