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.