It must be confessed that after that it was with a sore shrinking and
foreboding of punishment I prepared to obey Mr. Ferguson's summons,
and at the hour he had fixed knocked at his door. Hitherto he had
always come to me; and even so and on my own ground I had suffered
enough at his hands. What I had to expect, therefore, when entirely in
his power I failed to guess, but on that account felt only the greater
apprehension; so that it was with relief I recognised, firstly, as
soon as I crossed the threshold, a peculiar neatness and cleanliness
in the rooms, as if Ferguson at home were something different from
Ferguson abroad; and secondly, that he was not alone, but entertained
a visitor.
Neither of these things, to be sure, altered his bearing towards me,
or took from the brutality with which it was his humour to address me;
but as his opening words announced that the visitor's business lay
with me, they relieved me from my worst apprehension--namely, that I
was to be called to account for the steps I had taken to escape; at
the same time that they amused me with the hope of better treatment,
since no man could deal with me worse than he had.
"This is your man!" the plotter cried, lying back in his chair and
pointing to me with the pipe he was smoking. "Never was such a brave
conspirator! Name a rope and he will sweat! For my part, I wish you
joy of him. Here, you, sirrah," he continued, addressing me, "this
gentleman wishes to speak to you, and, mind you, you will do what he
tells you, or----"
But at that the gentleman cut him short with a deprecating gesture.
"Softly, Mr. Ferguson, softly!" he said, and rose and bowed to me.
Then I saw that he was the last comer of the three I had met in Covent
Garden; and the one who had dismissed me. "You go too fast," he went
on, smiling, "and give our friend here a wrong impression of me. Mr.
Taylor, I----"
But it was Ferguson's turn to take him up, which he did with a
boisterous laugh. "Ho! Taylor! Taylor!" he cried in derision. "No more
Taylor than I am haberdasher! The man's name----"
"Is whatever he pleases," the stranger struck in, with another bow. "I
neither ask it nor seek to know it. Such things between gentlemen and
in these times are neither here nor there. It is enough and perhaps
too much that I came to ask you to do me a favour and a service, Mr.
Taylor, both of which are in your power."
He spoke with a politeness which went far to win me, and the farther
for the contrast it afforded to Ferguson's violence. With his
appearance I was not so greatly taken; finding in it, though he was
dressed well enough, clearer signs of recklessness than of discretion,
and plainer evidences of hard living than of charity or study. But
perhaps the prayer of such a man, when he stoops to pray, is the more
powerful. At any rate I was already half gained, when I answered;
asking him timidly what I could do for him.
"Pay a call with me," said he lightly. "Neither more than that, nor
less."
I asked him on whom we were to call.
"On a lady," he answered, "who lives at the other end of the town."
"But can I be of any service?" I said, feebly struggling against the
inevitable.
"You can," he answered. "Of great service."
"Devil a bit!" said Ferguson testily, and stared derision at me out of
a cloud of smoke. It occurred to me then that he was not quite sober,
and further that he was no more in the secret of the service than I
was. "Devil a bit!" said he again, and more offensively.
"You will let me judge of that," said the gentleman, and he turned to
the table. "Will you mind changing the clothes you wear for these?" he
said to me with a pleasant air. On which I saw that he had on the
table by his hand a suit of fine silk velvet clothes, and surmounted
by a grand dress peruque, with a laced steinkirk and ruffles to match.
"Pardon the impertinence," he continued, shrugging his shoulders as if
the matter were a very slight one, while I stared in amazement at this
new turn. "It is only that I think you will aid me the better in
these. And after all, what is a change of clothes?"
Naturally I looked at the things in wonder. I had never worn clothes
of the kind. "Do you want me to put them on?" I said.
"Yes," he answered, smiling. "Will you do it on the faith that it will
serve me, and trust to me to explain later?"
"If there is no danger in--in the business," I said reluctantly, "I
suppose I must." As a fact, whatever he asked me, with Ferguson beside
him, I should have to do, so great was my fear of that man.
"There is no danger," he replied. "I will answer for it. I shall
accompany you and return with you."
On that, and though I did not comprehend in the least degree what was
required of me, I consented, and took the clothes at the stranger's
bidding into the next room, where I put off mine and put these on; and
presently, seeing myself in a little square of glass that hung against
the wall, scarcely knew myself in a grand suit of blue velvet slashed
and laced with pearl-colour, a dress peruque and lace ruffles and
cravat. Being unable to tie the cravat, I went back into the room with
it in my hand; where I found not only the two I had left but the girl
who had summoned me that morning. The two men greeted the change in me
with oaths of surprise; the girl, who stood in the background, with an
open-eyed stare; but for a moment and until the stranger had tied the
cravat for me, nothing was said that I understood. Then Mr. Ferguson
getting up and walking round me with a candle, gazing at me from top
to toe, the other asked him in a voice of some amusement if he knew
now who I was.
"A daw in jay's feathers!" said he, scornfully.
"And you do not know him?"
"Not I--except for the silly fool he is!"
"Then you do not know--well, someone you ought to know!" the stranger
answered dryly. "You are getting old, Mr. Ferguson."
My master cursed his impudence.
"I am afraid that you do not keep abreast of the rising generation,"
the other continued, coolly eyeing the rage his words excited. "And
for your Shaftesburys, and Monmouths, and Ludlows, and the old gang,
they don't count for much now. You must look about you, Mr. Ferguson;
you must look about you and open your eyes, and learn new tricks, or
before you know it you will find yourself on the shelf."
It would be difficult to exaggerate the fury into which this threw my
master; he raved, stamped, and swore, and finally, having recourse to
his old trick, tore off his wig, flung it on the ground, and stamped
on it. "There!" he cried, with horrible imprecations, the more
horrible for the bald ugliness of the man, "and that is what I will do
to you--by-and-by, Mr. Smith. On the shelf, am I? And need new tricks?
Hark you, sir, I am not so much on the shelf that I cannot spoil your
game, whatever it is. And G-- d-- me but I will!"
Mr. Smith, listening, cool and dark-faced, shrugged his shoulders; but
for all his seeming indifference, kept a wary eye on the plotter.
"Tut--tut, Mr. Ferguson, you are angry with me," he said. "And say
things you do not mean. Besides, you don't know----"
"Know?" the other shrieked.
"Just so, know what my game is."
"I know this!" Ferguson retorted, dropping his voice on a sudden to a
baleful whisper, "Who is here, and where he lies, Mr. Smith. And----"
"So do Tom, Dick, and Harry," the other answered, shrugging his
shoulders contemptuously; and then to me, "Mr. Taylor," he continued
with politeness, "I think we will be going. Light the door, my dear.
That is it. I have a coach below, and--good-night, Mr. Ferguson,
good-night to you. I'll tell Sir George I have seen you. And do you
think over my advice."
At that my master broke out afresh, cursing the other's impudence, and
frantically swearing to be even with him; but I lost what he said, in
a sudden consternation that seized me, as I crossed the threshold; a
kind of shiver, which came over me at the prospect of the night, and
the dark coach ride, and the uncertainty of this new adventure. The
lights in the room, and Mr. Smith's politeness, had given me a courage
which the dark staircase dissipated; and but for the hold which my new
employer, perhaps unconsciously, laid on my arm, I think I should have
stood back and refused to go. Under his gentle compulsion, however, I
went down and took my seat in the coach that awaited us; and my
companion following me and closing the door, someone unseen raised the
steps, and in a moment we were jolting out of Bride Lane, and turned
in the direction of the Strand.
More than this I could not distinguish with all my curiosity, and look
out as I might; for Mr. Smith muttering something I did not catch,
drew the curtain over the window on my side, and, for the other,
interposed himself so continually and skilfully between it and my
eyes, that the coach turning two or three corners, in a few minutes I
was quite ignorant where we were, or whether we still held a westward
direction. A hundred notions of footpads, abductions, Mr. Thynne, and
the like passed through my mind while the coach rumbled on, and
rumbled on, and rumbled on endlessly; nor was the fact that we
appeared to avoid the business parts of the town, and chose unlighted
ways, calculated to steady my nerves. At length, and while I still
debated whether I wished this suspense at an end, or feared more what
was to follow, the coach stopped with a jerk, which almost threw me
out of my seat.
"We are there," said my companion, who had been some time silent. "I
must trouble you to descend, Mr. Taylor. And have no fears. The matter
in hand is very simple. Only be good enough to follow me closely, and
quickly."
And without releasing my arm he hurried me out of the coach, and
through a door in a wall. This admitted us only to a garden; and that
so dark, and so completely obscured by high walls and the branches of
trees, which showed faintly overhead, feathering against the sky, that
but for the guidance of his hand, I must have stood, unable to
proceed. Such an overture was far from abating my fears; nor had I
expected this sudden plunge into a solitude, which seemed the more
chilling, as we stood in London, and had a little while before passed
from the hum of the Strand. I tried to consider where we could be, and
the possibilities of retreat; but my conductor left me little room for
indecision. Still holding my arm, he led me down a walk, and to a
door, which opened as we approached. A flood of light poured out and
fell on the pale green of the surrounding trees; the next moment I
stood in a small, bare lobby or ante-room, and heard the door chained
behind me.
My eyes dazzled by a lamp, I saw no more at first than that the person
who held it, and had admitted us, was a woman. But on her setting down
the lamp, and proceeding to look me up and down deliberately, the
while Mr. Smith stood by, as if he had brought me for this and no
other, I took uneasy note of her. She appeared to be verging on forty
but was still handsome after a coarse and full-blown fashion, with
lips over-full and cheeks too red; her dark hair still kept its
colour, and the remains of a great vivacity still lurked in her gloomy
eyes. Her dress, of an untidy richness worn and tarnished, and
ill-fastened at the neck, was no mean match for her face; and led me
to think her--and therein I was right--the waiting-woman of some great
lady. Perhaps I should, if let alone, have come something nearer the
truth than this, and quite home; but Mr. Smith cut short my
observations by falling upon her in a tone of anger, "Hang it, madam,
if you are not satisfied," he cried, "I can only tell you----"
"Who said I was not satisfied?" she answered, still surveying me with
the utmost coolness. "But----"
"But what?"
"I cannot help thinking---- What is your name, sir, if you please?"
This to me.
"Taylor," I said.
"Taylor? Taylor?" She repeated the name as if uncertain. "I remember
no Taylor; and yet----"
"You remember? You remember? You know very well whom you remember!"
Mr. Smith cried, impatiently. "It is the likeness you are thinking of!
Why, it is as plain, woman, as the nose on his face. It is so plain
that if I had brought him in by the front door----"
"And kept his mouth shut!" She interposed.
"No one would have been the wiser."
"Well," she said, grudgingly, and eyeing me with her head aside, "it
is near enough."
"It is the thing!" he cried, with an oath.
"As a Chelsea orange is a China orange!" she answered, contemptuously.
At that he looked at her in a sort of dark fury, precisely, so it
seemed to me, as Ferguson had looked at him an hour before. "By
heaven, you vixen," he cried in the end, surprise and rage contending
in his tone, "I believe you love him still!"
Her back being towards me I did not see her face, but the venom in her
tone when she answered, made my blood creep. "Well," she said, slowly,
"and if I do? Much good may it do him!"
Ambiguous as were the words--but not the tone--the man shrugged his
shoulders. "Then what are we waiting for?" he asked, irritably.
"Madam's pleasure," she answered. And I could see that she loved to
baulk him. However, her pleasure was, this time, short-lived, for at
that moment a little bell tinkled in a distant room, and she took up
the lamp. "Come," she said. "And do you, sir," she continued, turning
to me and speaking sharply, "hold up your head and look as if you
could cut your own food. You are going to see an old woman. Do you
think that she will eat you?"
I let the gibe pass, and wondering of whom and what it was she
reminded me, whenever she spoke, I followed her up a short dark flight
of stairs to a second ante-room, or closet, situate, as far as I could
judge, over the other. It was hung with dull, faded tapestry and
smelled close, as if seldom used and more seldom aired. Setting down
the lamp on a little side-table whereon a crumpled domino, a couple of
masks, and an empty perfume bottle already lay, she bade us in a low
voice wait for her and be silent; and enforcing the last order by
placing her finger on her lip, she glided quietly out through a door
so skilfully masked by the tapestry as to seem one of the walls.
Left alone with Mr. Smith, who seated himself on the table, I had
leisure to take note of the closet. Remarking that the wall at one end
was partly hidden by a couple of curtains, between which a bare
bracket stood out from the wall, I concluded that the place had been a
secret oratory and had witnessed many a clandestine mass. I might have
carried my observations farther; but they were cut short at this point
by the return of the woman, who nodding, in silence, held the door
open for us to pass.