But as the spoken word has sometimes the permanence which proverbs
attach to the _Littera scripta_, and is only confirmed by bungling
essays to erase it, so it was in this case; Mr. Smith's endeavours to
explain away the fact which he had carelessly blabbed only serving to
impress it the more deeply on my memory. It would seem that he was
partly aware of this; for not only did his attempts lack the dexterity
which I should have expected from one whose features augured much
experience of the world, but he quickly gave up the attempt as labour
in vain, and gruffly bidding me go before to the coach, followed me
and took his seat beside me. We rumbled away. The night was overcast,
the neighbourhood seemed to be rural; and, starting from an unknown
point, I had less chance than before of tracing the devious lanes and
streets through which we drove; so that when the coach presently
stopped in a part of the town more frequented, I had not the least
idea where we were, or where we had been.
"You can get home from here," said he, still ruffled, and scarce able
to speak to me civilly.
Then I saw, as I went to descend, that we were near the end of
Holborn, in the Tyburn Road, where it grows to country. "I will see
you to-morrow," he cried. "And, mind you, in the meantime, the less
you say to Ferguson the better, my man!" With which the coach drove
away towards Kensington, leaving me standing against the wall of St.
Giles's Pound.
Thus released, alone, and free to consider what had happened to me, I
found a difficulty in tracing where I had been, but none in following
the drift of the strange scene and stranger conversation at which I
had been present. Even the plans of those who had conveyed me to that
place were transparent. It needed no Solomon to discern that in the
man Smith and the woman Monterey the young lord had two foes in his
mother's household, as dangerous as foes could be; the woman moved, as
I conjectured, by that _spretae injuria formae_, of which the great
Roman poet speaks, and the man by I know not what old wrong or
jealousy. It was plain that these two, to obtain their ends, were
urging on the mother a most perilous policy: that, I mean, of
committing the son to the Jacobite Court, that so he might be cut off
from St. James's; moreover, that, as he could not be induced, in
_propria persona_, to such a treasonable step as would serve their
ends, advantage was to be taken of some likeness that I bore to him
(which Smith had observed the previous evening in Covent Garden) to
personate him in a place or company where his presence would be
conclusive both for and against him.
I could believe that the mother contemplated but vaguely the power
over him which the incident would give her; and dreamed of using it
only in the last resort; rather amusing herself in the present with
the thought that short of this, and without bringing the deception to
his notice, the effect she desired would be produced--since he would
be held at St. Germain's to be well affected, and at St. James's the
matter would not be known. So, in his own despite, and without his
knowledge, he could be reconciled to the one court, while remaining
faithful to the other!
But, as in the mass of conspiracies--and this was especially true of
the conspiracies of that age--the acute eye can detect the existence
of an inner and outer ring of conspirators, whereof the latter are
commonly the dupes of the former, so I took it that here Smith and the
woman meditated other and more serious results than those which my
lady foresaw; and, thinking less of my lord's safety in the event of a
Restoration than of punishing him or obtaining a hold upon him--and
more of private revenge than of the Good Cause--had madam for their
principal tool. Such a consideration, while it increased my reluctance
to be mixed up with a matter so two-faced, left me to think whether I
should not seek out the victim, and by an early information, gain his
favour and protection.
I stood in the darkness of the street doubtful, and weighing the
matter. Clearly, if I had to do the thing, now was the time, before I
saw Smith, or exposed myself to an urgency which in spite of his
politeness might, I fancied, be of a kind difficult to resist. If by
going straight to Lord Shrewsbury I could kill two birds with one
stone--could at once free myself from the gang of plotters under whom
I suffered, and secure for the future a valuable patron--here was a
chance in a hundred, and I should be foolish to hesitate.
Nor did I do so long. True, it stuck me a little that I knew nothing
of my Lord Shrewsbury's whereabouts in London; nor whether he lived in
town, or in the great house among the lanes and gardens which I had
visited, but of the road whereto I had no more knowledge than a blind
man. This, however, I could learn at the nearest coffee-house: and
impulse rather than calculation directing my steps, I hurried hot-foot
towards Covent Garden, which lay conveniently to my hand.
It was not until I was in the Square and close to the Piazza that I
bethought me how imprudent I was to re-visit the scene of last night's
adventure; a place where it was common knowledge that the Jacobites
held their assignations; and where I might be recognised. To reinforce
this late-found discretion, and blow up the spark of alarm already
kindled, I had not stood hesitating while a man could count ten,
before my eye fell on the very same soldierly gentleman, with the
handkerchief hanging out of his pocket, to whom I had been sent the
evening before. He was alone, walking under the dimly-lighted Piazza,
as he had walked then; but as I caught sight of him two others came up
and joined him: and in terror lest these should be the two I had met
before, I retreated hastily into the shadow of St. Paul's Church, and
so back the way I had come.
[Illustration: I HEARD A LIGHT FOOT FOLLOWING ME]
However, I was not to get off so easily. Though the hour was late, the
market closed, and the pavement in front of the taverns deserted, or
fringed only by a chair waiting for a belated gamester, I ran a
greater risk of being recognised, as I passed, than I thought; and had
not gone ten paces along King Street before I heard a light foot
following me, and a hand caught my arm. Turning in a fright I found it
was only a girl; and, at first sight, was for wresting myself from
her, glad that it was no worse: but she muttered my name, and looking
down I recognised to my astonishment the girl I had seen at Ferguson's
earlier in the evening.
At that, I remember, a dread of the man and his power seized me and
chilled my very heart. This was the third time this girl, whom I never
saw at other seasons, had arisen out of the ground to confront me and
pluck me back when on the point of betraying him. I stared at her,
thinking of this, with I know not what of affright and shrinking; and
could scarcely command either voice or limbs.
And yet as she stood looking at me with the dark length of the street
stretching to the market behind her, it must be confessed that there
was little in her appearance to cause terror. The night being cold,
and a small rain falling, she had a shawl drawn tightly over her head,
whence her face, small and pale as a child's, peered at me. I thought
to read in it a sly and elfish triumph such as became Ferguson's
minion: instead I discerned only a weariness that went ill with her
years--and a little flicker of contempt in eye and lip. The weariness
was also in her voice when she spoke. "Well met, Mr. Price," she said.
"I am in luck to light on you."
I shivered in my shoes; but without seeming to mark me, "I want this
note taken to Mr. Watkins," she continued, rapidly pressing a scrap of
paper into my hand. "He is in the tavern there, the Seven Stars. Ask
for the Apollo Room, and you will find him."
"But, one minute," I protested, as in her eagerness she pushed me that
way with her hand, "did Mr. Ferguson----Is it from him?"
"Of course, fool," she answered, sharply. "Do you think that I have
been standing here for the last half-hour in cold and wet for my own
pleasure?"
"But if he sent it?" I remonstrated, feebly, "perhaps he may not like
me to interfere--to----"
"Like me to?" she retorted, sharply, mocking my tone. "Who said he
would? Cannot you understand that it is I who do not like to? That I
am not going into that place at this time of night, and half in the
house drunken brutes? It is bad enough to be here, loitering up and
down as if I were what I am not--and free to be spoken to by every
impudent blood that passes! Go, man, and do it, and I will wait so
long. What do you fear?"
"The rope," said I, "to be plain with you." And I looked with
abhorrence at the scrap of paper she had given me. "I have taken too
many of these," I said.
"Well, you will take one more!" she answered, doggedly. "Or you are no
man. See, there is the door. Ask for the Apollo Room, give it to him,
and the thing is done!" And with that she set both hands to me and
pushed me the way she would have me move--I mean towards the tavern.
"Go!" she said. "Go!"
Hate the thing as I might, and did, I could not resist persuasions
addressed to me in such a tone; nor fail to be moved by the girl's
shrinking from the task, which had to be done, it seemed, by one of
us. After all, it was no more than I had done several times before;
and my reluctance having its origin in the resolution, to which I had
just come, to break off from the gang, yielded to the reflection that
the design lay as yet in my own breast, and might be carried out as
well to-morrow as to-day. In a word, I complied out of pity, went to
the tavern, and walked boldly in.
I had been in the house before, and knew where I should find a waiter
of whom I might enquire privately; I passed by the public room,
therefore, and was for going to the place I mean. I had scarcely
advanced three paces beyond the threshold, however, before a great
noise of voices and laughter and beating of feet met my ears and
surprised me; the hubbub was so loud and boisterous as to be unusual
even in places of that kind. I had no more than taken this in, and set
it down to an orgy beyond the ordinary, when I came on a pale-faced
group standing at gaze at the foot of the stairs, the landlord, two or
three drawers, and as many women being among them. It was easy to see
that they were in a fever about the noise above; for while the host
was openly wringing his hands and crying that those devils would ruin
him, a woman who seemed to be his wife was urging first one and then
another of the drawers to ascend and caution the party. That something
more than disorderliness or a visit from the constable was in question
I gathered from the host's pale face; and this was confirmed when on
seeing me they dispersed a little, and affected to be unconcerned.
Until I asked for the Apollo Room, whereon they all came together
again and fell on me with complaints and entreaties.
"'Fore God, sir, I think your friends are mad!" the host cried, in a
perfect fury. "Go up! Go up, and tell them that if they want to be
hanged, and to hang me as well, they are going the right way about
it."
"It is well it is night," said the head waiter grimly, "or the Market
porters would have broken our windows before now."
"And got us all in the Compter!" the women wailed. And then to me, "Go
up, sir, go up and tell them that if they would not have the mob pull
the house down----"
But the tumult above, waxing loud at that moment, drowned her words,
and certainly took from me what little good-will to ascend I had.
However, the host, having me there, a person who had enquired for the
room, would take no denial, but, delighted to have found a deputy, he
fairly set me on the stairs and pushed me up. "Go up and tell them! Go
up and tell them!" he kept repeating. "You asked for the room and
there it is."
In a word I had no choice, and with reluctance went up. The noise was
such I could not fail to find the door and the room; I knocked and
opened, a roar of voices poured out, and even before I entered the
room I knew what was afoot, and could swear to treason. Such cries as
"Down with the Whigs and damn their King!" "The 29th of May and a
glorious Restoration!" "Here's to the Hunting Party!" poured out in a
confused medley; with half-a-dozen others equally treasonable, and
equally certain, were they overheard in the street, to bring down the
mob and the messengers on the speakers.
True, as soon as the half-muddled brains of the company took in
the fact that the door was open, and a stranger standing on the
threshold--which they were not quick to discern owing to the cloud of
tobacco-smoke that filled the room--nine-tenths quavered off into
silence and gaped at me; that proportion of the company having still
the sense to recognise the risk they were running, and to apprehend
that judgment had taken them in the act. Two men in particular, older
than the rest--the one a fat, infirm fellow with a pallid face and the
air of a rich citizen, the other a peevish, red-eyed atomy in a green
fur-lined coat--were of this party. They had not, I think, been of the
happiest before, seated in the midst of that crew; but now, sinking
back in their high-backed chairs, they stared at me as if I carried
death in my face. A neighbour of theirs, however, went beyond them;
for, with a howl that the Secretary was on them and the officers were
below, he kicked over his chair and dashed for a window, pausing only
when he had thrown it up.
But with all this the recklessness of some was evident: for while I
stood, uncertain to whom to speak, one of the more drunken staggered
from his seat, and giving a shrill view-halloa that might have been
heard in Bedford House, made towards me with a cup in his hand.
"Drink!" he cried, with a hiccough as he forced it upon me. "Drink! To
the squeezing of the Rotten Orange! Drink, man, or you are no friend
of ours, but a snivelling, sneaking, white-faced son of a Dutchman
like your master! So drink, and----Eh, what is it? What is the
matter?"