The odd and unexpected glimpse of generosity which the King had
allowed to escape him, in his interview with the Duke, somewhat
lessened the fears I must otherwise have entertained at that moment.
To which must be added that I am one of those who, when violence and
physical danger are not in question, retain a fair mastery of their
minds. Nevertheless, I am free to confess that as I went forward, I
wished myself anywhere else in the world, and would have sacrificed
half my remaining economies to be seated, pen in hand, and obscurely
safe, in Mr. Brome's room.
But the thing took a turn which relieved me when I least expected it.
As I approached, the chagrin in the King's face gave place to a look
of surprise; and that again, but more slowly, to one of intelligence.
"Ah! _Je me trompais!_" he muttered rapidly. "What did you say his
name was?"
"Price," the Duke answered, continuing to glower at me.
"Price? _Ah, cela va sans dire!_ But--he is a cadet--a dependent? He
is in some way connected--how do you say it--related to your family!"
"To mine, sir!" the Duke exclaimed in a voice of the utmost
astonishment; and he drew himself up as if the King had pricked him.
"_N'est-ce pas ca?_" his Majesty replied, looking from one to the
other of us. "Yet he has so much a look of you that it might be
possible in some lights to take him for your grace, were he
differently dressed!"
The Duke looked purely offended. "Your Majesty is under a strange
misapprehension," he said, very stiffly. "If this person resembles
me--of which I was not aware--I know nothing of the cause; and the
likeness for what it is worth, must be accidental. As a fact, I never
saw him but once before in my life, sir, and that perfectly by
chance." And he very briefly related the circumstances under which we
came together.
The King listened to the story, but as if he scarcely believed it; and
he smiled when the Duke came to tell how he allowed me to escape.
Then, "And you have never seen him from that day to this?" he said
incredulously.
"Never!" said the Duke, positively. "But it is not my intention to
lose sight of him again."
"Ah?" the King said.
"I have not told you, sir, all that happened," the Duke continued,
reading, I think, the King's thoughts, "But briefly. Mr. Ferguson, who
has come to be little short of a madman, drew a pistol on me at the
close of our interview; and but for his friend here--who had been
placed to listen, but at that broke from his place of hiding and
knocked up the muzzle, so that it exploded harmlessly--I should have
come off ill."
"And I not much better," the King said, nodding and looking grave.
"You are unhurt."
"Yes, sir."
"Well, that puts another face on it; and if you are retaining him
beside you, what he has now heard will be of the less importance. Hark
you, my friend," he continued, addressing me, "can you keep your mouth
shut?"
I said humbly that I could and would.
"Then, _Taisez! Taisez!_" he answered emphatically. "And take this
letter to Hogsden Gardens to Bishop Lloyd's. See Bishop Lloyd and put
it in his hands. Say nothing, give no message, but go to your master's
in St. James's Square. Will you seal it, Duke, with a plain seal?
Good. And go you out, man, by the way you came in, and answer no
questions. And now for the council and the warrants, my lord. We have
lost too much time already!"
To say that I went from the presence without knowing how I did it, and
when I reached the courtyard had no more idea how I had gained it, or
by what staircase I had descended, than if I had been blind, is but
the truth; nor is it to be wondered at when the amazing thing which
had happened to me is in the least degree taken into consideration. In
truth I walked on air and saw nothing, I was so deeply overjoyed; and
though it is certain that as I went out I met one and another, passed
the sentries, and ran the gauntlet of curious eyes--for who that quits
a court escapes that ordeal?--I was no more conscious of the
observations made upon me, or the surprise I excited as I went by,
than if I had really walked in the clouds. Issuing from the gates I
took by instinct rather than design the road to London, and hugging to
my breast the letter which the King--the King!--had entrusted to me,
made the best of my way towards Tyburn.
I had been wiser had I gone by the other road through the village and
taken the first coach I found; there are commonly one or two at
Kensington waiting to carry passengers to London. But in the fluster
of my spirits, I did not measure the distance I had to go, or the time
I should consume in walking. My main anxiety for the moment was to be
alone; alone, and at leisure to probe my fortune and success, and
appreciate both the relief and the good luck I had compassed. I could
have sung as I walked; I could have skipped and danced; and a gleam of
sunshine breaking the March sky, and gilding the leafless arms of the
trees and the flat green pastures that border the road north of Hyde
Park, I was moved to raise my hat and look upwards and reverently
thank Providence for this wonderful instance of its goodness, which I
had not had the heart to do for some time.
When I descended a little to earth--a step which was hastened by a
flash of recollection that showed me Ferguson's niece waiting at
Clerkenwell Gate, a little figure, forlorn and desolate, yet with eyes
of wrath and a face puckered with determination--when I came I say a
little to myself and to think of Hogsden Gardens, and remembered that
it lay on the farther side of town by Bunhill Fields, I was already at
Tyburn turning; and it seemed to be no longer worth while to ride. The
day was on the wane, and the road thence to St. Giles's Pound was
lively with persons come out to take the air, through whom I threaded
my way at a good pace, and coming to Holborn without mishap, turned up
Cow Lane, and so got speedily to Smithfield, and across the market to
Long Lane, knowing my way so far without having need to ask.
Here, however, I took sudden fright. My mind, which as I walked had
been busy with the girl and the steps I should take to find her--if
indeed I wished to find her, about which I was puzzled, the
surrounding circumstances being so different--was invaded by the
notion that I had been long on the road. To this was added next moment
the reflection that messengers sent to arrest the Duke could by taking
a coach forestall me. The thought threw me into a hot fit, which
increased on me when I considered that I did not know the remainder of
the road, and might waste much time in tracing it. Naturally my first
impulse in this strait was to seek a guide; but Long Lane by
Smithfield is only one degree better than Whetstone Park, and I shrank
from applying to the sots and drabs who stood at the doors and
corners, or lounged out of the patched windows, and, lazily or rudely,
watched me go by.
In this difficulty, and growing the more diffident and alarmed the
more slowly I walked, I looked about eagerly for some person, of
passable aspect, of whom I could enquire. I saw none, and my uncertain
glances and loitering steps were beginning to draw on me advances
and an attention that were anything but welcome, when, reaching a
corner where an alley, now removed--I think it was then called Dog
Alley--runs out of Long Lane, I saw a man, decently habited, come out
of a house a little way down the alley. He closed the door sharply
behind him, and, as I looked, went off in the opposite direction.
Here was my opportunity. Without losing a moment I ran after him, and
he, hearing my steps, turned; and we came face to face. Then, when it
was too late to retreat, I saw with unutterable dismay that the man I
had stopped was no stranger, but the person who had dressed me up the
night before and taken me to the mysterious house in the suburbs; the
man called Smith whom I had first seen under the Piazza in Covent
Garden, and again in Ferguson's room.
To come face to face with anyone of the gang with the knowledge that I
had but now left the palace after informing against them was of itself
enough to make my knees tremble under me. But of this man, though his
civil treatment had been in pleasant contrast to Ferguson's brutality,
I had conceived an instinctive dread, based as much on his silence and
reserve and a sort of strict power with which I credited him, as on
his contemptuous treatment of my tyrant. In a word, had I come on
Ferguson himself I could scarcely have been more overcome.
On hearing my footsteps he had turned on me very sharply, with the air
of a man who had no mind to be followed, and no taste for followers.
But on seeing who it was his face grew light and he whistled his
surprise. "I was on my way to you," he said, "and here you are. That
is good luck. I suppose Ferguson sent you?"
"No," I stammered, avoiding his eyes, and wondering, with inward
quakings, what was going to happen to me. "I--I lost my road."
"Oh!" said he, and looked keenly at me. "Lost your road, did you?
Well, it was very much to the purpose, as it happened. May I ask where
you were going?"
I shifted my feet uneasily. "To Bunhill Fields," I said, naming the
first place of which I could think.
"Ah!" he answered, with apparent carelessness, and though it seemed
scarcely possible he should fail to observe the heat and disorder into
which his presence had thrown me, he made no sign. "Well, you are not
far out," he continued, "and I will come with you. When you have done
your errand we will talk over my business. This way. I know this end
of the town well. And so it was not Ferguson," he added with a sharp
look at me, "who sent you after me?"
"No," I said.
"Nor his errand that brought you here?"
"No," I said again, my mouth dry. "And I need not give you the trouble
to come with me. I shall be taking you----"
"Out of my way? Not at all," he answered briskly. "And it is no
trouble. Come along, my friend."
I dared say no more, nor show farther reluctance; and so, with feet
like lead and eyes roving furtively for a way of escape, I turned and
went with him. Nay, it was not my feet only that were weighted; the
letter, and my consciousness of it, lay so heavy on my mind that it
was like lead in the pocket.
I was indeed in a strait now! And in one so difficult I could discern
no way out of it; for though I could in part, and in part only,
command my countenance, I failed absolutely to command my thoughts,
which did nothing but revolve tumultuously about the words, "What am I
to do? What am I to do?" words that seemed written in red letters on
my brain. Only one thing was clear to me in the confusion, and that
was the urgent necessity I lay under of hiding my errand, the
disclosure of which must carry with it the disclosure of the place
whence I came and the company I had been keeping. With time to think
and coolness to distinguish I should doubtless have seen the
possibility of announcing my errand to the Duke, yet laying it on
Ferguson's shoulders; but pushed for time and unable at a pinch to
weigh all the issues, I could form no determination, much less one
leading to so daring a step. After one denial, that is.
In the meantime we moved on; and at first my companion seemed to be
unconscious of my sluggish pace and my perturbation. But presently I
felt rather than saw that from minute to minute he glanced at me
askance, and that after each of these inspections he laughed silently.
The knowledge that I lay under this observation immeasurably increased
my embarrassment. I could no longer put a fair face on the matter, but
every time he looked at me looked away guiltily, unable to support his
eyes. This presently grew so insupportable that to escape from my
embarrassment I coughed and affected to choke.
"You have a cold, I am afraid," he said, scarcely concealing the sneer
in his tone. "And yet you look warm. You must have walked fast, my
friend?"
I muttered that I had.
"To overtake me, perhaps! It was good of you," he said in the same
tone of secret badinage. "But we are here. What part of the Fields do
you want? Whitecross Street?"
"No," I muttered.
"Then it must be Baxter's Rents."
"No."
"Bunhill Row?"
"No."
"No? Well, there is not much else here," he said; and he shrugged his
shoulders, "except the Fields and the burial-ground. Your business
does not lie with the latter, I suppose?"
"No," I said faintly. And we stood.
At another time I must have shuddered at the dreary expanse on this
uttermost fringe of the town that stretched before us under a waning
light; an expanse of waste land broken only by the wall of the
burial-ground, or the chimney of a brick-kiln, and bordered, where its
limits were visible, by half-built houses, and squatter huts, and vast
piles of refuse. Ugly as the prospect was, however, and far from
reassuring to the timorous, I asked nothing better than to look at it.
and look at it, and continue to look at it. But Mr. Smith, who did not
understand this mood, turned with an impatient laugh.
"I suppose that you did not come here to look at that," said he.
Like a fool I jumped at the absurd, the flimsy pretext.
"Yes," I said. "I--I merely came to take the air."
The moment the words were spoken I trembled at my audacity. But he
took it better than I expected, for he merely paused to stare at me,
and then chuckled grimly.
"Well," he said, "then, now that you have taken the air let us go
back. Have you anything to object to that, Mr. Taylor?"
I could find nothing.
"I will come with you," he continued. "I want to see Ferguson, and we
can settle my business there."
But this only presented to me a dreadful vision of Ferguson, released
from his bonds, and mad with rage and the desire to avenge himself;
and I stopped short.
"I am not going there," I said.
"No? Then where, may I ask, are you going?" he answered, watching me
with a placid amusement, which made it as clear as the daylight, that
he saw through my evasions. "Where is it my lord's pleasure to go?"
"To Brome's, in Fleet Street," I said hoarsely. And if he had had his
back to me at that instant, and I a knife in my hand, I could have run
him through! For as I said it, and he with mocking suavity assented,
and we stepped out together to return the way we had come through Long
Lane--over which the sky hung low in a dull yellow haze, the last of
the western light--I had a swift and stinging recollection of the King
and my lord, and the letter, and the passage of time; and could have
sprung from his side, and poured out curses on him in the impotence of
my rage and impatience. For the hour of grace which the King had
granted was gone, and a second was passing, and still the letter that
should warn the Duke of Berwick lay in my pocket, and I saw no chance
of delivering it.
That Smith discerned the chagrin which this enforced companionship
caused me--though not the ground of it--was as plain as that the fact
gave him pleasure of no common kind. I had no longer such a command of
my features that I could trust myself to look at him; but I was
conscious, using some other sense, that he frequently looked at me,
and always after these inspections, smiled like a man who finds
something to his taste. And I hated him.
How long with these feelings I could have borne to go with him, or
what I should have done in the last resort had he continued the same
tactics, remains unproved; for at the same corner half-way down Long
Lane, where I had first espied him, he paused. "I want to go in here,"
he said coolly. "I need only detain you a moment, Mr. Taylor."
"I will wait for you," I muttered, tingling all over with sudden hope.
While he was inside I could run for it.
"Very well," he said. "This way."
I fancied that he suspected nothing, and that perhaps I had been wrong
throughout; and overjoyed I went with him to the door of the house
from which I had seen him emerge; my intention being to begone hotfoot
the instant his back was turned. The house was three-storied high,
narrow and commonplace, one of a row not long built, and but partially
inhabited. Apparently he was at home there, for taking a key from his
pocket, he opened the door; and stood aside for me to enter.
"I will wait," I muttered.
"Very well. Yon can wait inside," he answered.
If I had been wise I should have turned there and then, in the open
street, and taking to my heels have run for my life and stayed for
nothing. But, partly fool and partly craven, clinging to a hope which
was scarcely a belief, that when he went upstairs or into another
room, I might stealthily unlatch the door and begone, I let myself be
persuaded; and I entered. The moment I had done so, he whipped out the
key and thrusting the door to with his shoulder, locked it on the
inside.
Then the man threw off all disguise. He turned with a laugh of triumph
to where I stood trembling in the half-dark passage. "Now," he said,
"we will have that letter, if you please, Mr. Taylor. I have a fancy
to see what is in it."
"The letter!" I faltered.
"Yes, the letter!"
"I have no letter," I said.
"Tut-tut, letter or no letter, out with it! Do you think I could not
see you touching your breast every half minute, to make sure that you
had it safe--and not know what was in the wind! You are a poor
plotter, Mr. Taylor, and I doubt if you will ever be of any use to me.
But come, out with it! Unless you want me to be rough with you. Out
with whatever it is you have there, and no tricks!"
He had a way with him when he spoke in that tone, not loudly but
between his teeth, his eyes at the same time growing towards one
another, that was worse than Ferguson's pistol; and I was alone with
him in an empty house. Some, who would have done what I did, may blame
me; but in the main the world is sensible, and I shall forfeit no
prudent man's esteem when I confess that, after one attempt at evasion
which he met by wrenching my coat open, and thrusting me against the
wail so violently that my head spun again, I gave up the letter.
"I warn you! I warn you!" I cried, in a paroxysm of rage and grief.
"It is for the Duke of Berwick, and if you open it----"
"For the Duke of Berwick?" he answered, pausing and gazing at me with
his finger on the seal. "Why, you fool, why did you not tell me that
before? From whom? From that scum, Ferguson?"
"From the Duke of Shrewsbury," I cried, rendered reckless by my rage.
"What?" he cried, in a voice of extraordinary surprise.
[Illustration: "NOW WE WILL HAVE THAT LETTER, IF YOU PLEASE"]
"From the Duke of Shrewsbury," I repeated; thinking that he had not
understood me.
"My God!" he said, with a deep breath. "And have I caught the fox at
last!"
"You are more likely to be caught yourself!" I answered, furiously.
Nevertheless, his words were a puzzle to me; but his tone of slow
growing, almost incredulous triumph told something. Taking very little
heed of me, and merely signing to me to follow him, he sprang up the
stairs, and opening a door led the way into a back-room bare and
miserable, but lighted by the last yellow glow of the western sky. It
was possible to read here, and without a moment's hesitation he broke
the seal of the letter, and tearing the packet open, read the
contents.
That the perusal gave him immense satisfaction his face, which in the
level light, cast by the window, seemed to gleam with unholy joy, was
witness, no less than his movements. Flourishing the letter in
uncontrollable excitement he twice strode the floor, muttering
unformed sentences. Then he looked at the paper again and his jaw
fell. "But it is not his hand!" he cried, staring at it in very plain
dismay. And then recovering himself afresh, "No matter," he said. "It
is his name, and the veriest fool would have used another hand. Is it
yours? Did you write it, blockhead?"
"No," I said.
"No! But now I think of it--thousand devils, how came you by it? By
this--eh?" he rapped out. "This letter? What d----d hocus pocus is
here? What have you to do with the Duke of Shrewsbury, that he makes
you his messenger?"
He bent his brows on me, and I knew that I had never been in greater
danger in my life. Yet something of evil came to me in this extremity.
Comprehending that if I said I came from Kensington I might expect the
worst, I lied to him; yet used the truth where it suited me. "The Duke
came to Ferguson's," I said.
"To Ferguson's?" he answered, staring at me.
"Yes, and bade him get that to the Duke, for his lodging was known and
warrants would be out."
Smith clapped his hands together softly. "What!" he cried. "Is he in
it as deep as that? Oh, the cunning! Oh, the cunning of him! And
I to be going to all this trouble, and close on despair at that!
And--Ferguson gave you the letter?"
"They both did."
"That old fox, too! And I was beginning to think him a bygone! Yet he
beats us all! he beats us all! Or he would have beaten us if he
had not trusted this silly. But I am forgetting. The Duke must be
warned--if he has not started. When was this given to you, Mr. Trusty
Taylor?"
"Two hours ago," I said, sullenly.
I was pleased to see that that alarmed him. "You fool!" he said, "why
did you not tell me at once what you had got, and whither you were
going? If the Duke is taken it will lie at your door. And if he is
saved, it will be to my credit."
"I will come with you," I said, plucking up a spirit as I saw him
about to leave.
"No, you will not," he answered, drily. "I am much obliged to you, but
I prefer to gain the credit and tell the tale my own way. You will
stay here, Mr. Taylor, and when the Duke is away I'll come and release
you. In the meantime I would advise you to keep quiet. Hoity-toity,
what is this?" he continued, as in my despair I tried to push by him,
"Go back, you fool, or it will be the worse for you. You are _not_
going out."
And, resisting all my appeals and remonstrances, he thrust me forcibly
from the door; and whipping outside it, locked it on me. In vain I
hammered on it with my fist and called after him, and threatened him.
He clattered unheeding down the stair, and I heard the house-door
slammed and locked. I listened a moment, but all remained quiet; and
then, wild with rage, I turned to the window, thinking that by that
way I might still escape. Alas, it looked only into a walled yard, and
was strongly barred to boot.
God knows I thought myself then the most unlucky of men; a man ruined
when on the point of a great and seemingly assured success. I flung
myself down in my despair, and could have dashed my head against the
boards. But presently, in the midst of my bewailing myself, and when
the first convulsive fit of rage was abating, a new thought brought me
to my feet in a panic. What if Smith, before he returned, fell in with
Ferguson? The meeting was the more probable, inasmuch as, if Ferguson
succeeded in freeing himself, he was as likely to hasten to the Duke
of Berwick to warn him as to do anything else. At any rate I was not
inclined to sit weighing the chances nicely, but hastening frantically
to the door, I tried it with knee and shoulder. To my joy it yielded
somewhat; on which, throwing caution aside, I drew back and flung
myself against it with all my weight. The lock gave way, and the door
flying open, I came near to falling headlong down the stairs.
Still, I had succeeded. But I soon found that I was little nearer
freedom than before. The passage was now dark, and the house-door,
when I found my way to it, resisted all my efforts. This drove me to
seek another egress, which it was far from easy to find. At length,
and by dint of groping about, I hit on a door which led into a
downstairs room; it was unlocked and I entered, feeling before me with
my hands. The darkness, the silence of the empty house, and my hurry,
formed a situation to appal the boldest; but I was desperate, and
extending my arms I trod cautiously across the room to where the
window should be, and sought for and found the shutters. I tried the
bar, and to my joy felt it swing. I let it down softly and dragged the
shutters open, and sweating at every pore, saw through the leaded
panes the dark dull lane outside, with a faint light from a
neighbouring window falling on the wall opposite.
[Illustration: I SAW A MAN HAD COME TO A STAND BEFORE THE DOOR]
I was seeking for a part of the window that opened, and wondering
whether, failing that, I should have the courage to burst the casement
and run for it, when a step approaching along the lane set my heart
beating. The step came nearer and paused, and peering out, my face
nearer the glass, I saw a man had come to a stand before the door. I
looked, and then, to say that my knees quivered under me but faintly
expresses the terror I felt! For as the man moved he brought himself
within the circle of light I have mentioned, and at the same time he
raised his face, doubtless after searching in his pocket for the key;
and through the glass my eyes met those of Ferguson.