If, a few minutes before, I had thought myself the most unlucky of men
and placed by that which had already happened beyond fear or
misfortune, I knew better when I saw that sight from the window; and
fell back into the darkness, as if even from the road and through the
panes Ferguson's eyes must discover me. Ignorant whether the room in
which I stood contained anything to shelter me, or barewalled must of
necessity discover me to the first person who entered with a light, my
natural impulse, when the moment of panic passed, was to escape from
it.
But it was not easy to do this in haste. By the time that, trembling
in every limb, I had groped my way into the passage, the key was
turning in the lock of the outer door, and I saw myself within an
arm's length of capture. This so terrified me that I sprang
desperately for the staircase, but stumbled over the lowest step, and
fell on my knees with a crash that seemed to shake the walls. For a
moment the pain was so sharp that I could only lie where I fell; nor
when, spurred by the imminence of the danger, I had got to my feet,
could I do more than crawl up the stairs and crouch down on the
landing, a little to one side, and out of eye-shot from below.
Willingly now, in return for present safety, would I have forgiven
Fortune all her past buffets; for if Ferguson came up, as I thought
him sure to come up, I was lost; since I could neither retreat without
noise, nor if I could, knew where to hide. In this extremity, my heart
beating so thickly that I could scarcely listen, and thought I must
choke, I was relieved to hear Ferguson--after spending what seemed to
me to be an age, striking flint and steel in the passage--go grumbling
into the lower room, whence a glimmer falling on the wall of the
passage told me that he had at last succeeded in procuring a light.
It was no surprise to me as I sweated and cringed in my hiding-place,
to learn that he was in the worst of tempers. I heard him swear--as I
supposed--at the open shutter; then, almost before I had thanked
Providence for present safety, he was out again in the passage. I made
no doubt that he was going to ascend now, and I gave myself up for
lost. But instead, he stood and called "Mary! Mary! Do ye hear, you
hussy? If ye are hiding above there, it will be the worse for you, ye
d----d baggage! Come down, d'ye hear me?"
Surely now, I thought, getting no answer, he would come up, and my
heart stood. But it seemed he called only to make sure, and not
because he thought that she was above; for he went back into the lower
room, and I heard him moving to and fro, and going about to light a
fire, the crackling of which gave an odd note of cheerfulness in the
house. I was beginning to weigh the possibility of slipping by the
half-open door, on the chance of finding the outer door unfastened;
and with this in view, had risen to my feet, when a key again grated
in the lock, and supposing it to be Smith, I returned to my former
position.
Had it been Smith, it would have been some comfort to me; for I
thought him more prudent if no less dangerous than the plotter, and I
fancied that I had more to fear from one than from two. But the step
that entered was lighter than a man's, while Ferguson's greeting told
the rest and made the situation clear.
"Ha, you are here at last, are you!" he cried with an angry oath. "Did
you want me to break every bone in your body, lass, that you stayed
out till now, and I to have the fire to light? You should have a
pretty good tale to tell or have kept clear of this! D'ye hear me?
Speak, you viper, and don't stand there glowering like a wood-cat!"
"I am here now," was the answer. My heart leapt, for the voice was
Mary's; the tone, sullen and weary, I could understand.
"Here now!" he retorted. "And that is to be all, is it? Perhaps, my
girl, I will presently show you two minds about that. Where is the
baggage?"
"It is not here."
"Not here?" he cried.
"No," she answered.
"And why not, you Jezebel?"
"You need not misname me," she answered coolly. "I was followed and
could not come here; and I could not carry it about with me all day.
And I could not send it, for there was no one here to take it in. It
is at the Spread Eagle in Gracechurch Street, to go by tomorrow's
waggon to Colchester. That is what I told them, but it can be fetched
away to-morrow."
"If I did not think you were a big liar, girl?" he answered
doubtfully; but I knew by his tone that he believed her.
"You may think what you like," she replied.
"And how do you think I am to do for to-night?" he answered
querulously.
"You must do as you can," she said. "You have your Hollands, and I
have brought some bread and meat."
"It is a dog's life," he said, with a snarl.
"It is the life you choose," she retorted sharply.
"_Peste!_" he answered after a pause of sheer astonishment at her
audacity. "What is it to you, you slut?"
"Why, a dog's life too! and not of my choice!" she cried passionately,
her voice breaking. "What am I better, as I live, than an orange girl
in the streets? What do I get, and walk the pavement on your errands
night and day? What do I get? And always hiding and sneaking, hiding
and sneaking! And for what?"
"For your living, yon beggarly baggage!" he roared. "Who feeds you and
clothes you, you graceless hussy? Who boards you and lodges you, and
finds you in meat and malt, you feckless toad? You shameless----"
"Ay, call names!" she answered bitterly--and it was not hard to
discern that she was beside herself with the long sick waiting and the
disappointment. "It is what you are good for! It is all that your
plots end in! Call names, and you are happy! But I am tired, and tired
of it, I tell you. I am tired of bare boards and hiding, and all for
what? For those that, when you have brought them back, you will be as
fierce to oust as you are now to restore! And shameless it is you call
me?" she continued with feverish rapidity. "Shameless? Have you not
sent me out into the streets a hundred times, and close on midnight,
and not a thought or care what would happen to me so long as your
letter went safe? Have you not sent me where to be taken was to be
jailed and whipped, and not a thought of pity or what a life it was
for a girl? Have you not done this and more?" she continued,
breathless with passion. "And more? And yet you take praise for
feeding me! And call me graceless and shameless----"
She paused and gave him room to speak, but though he put on a show of
bluster it was evident her violence alarmed him. "Odd's name, and what
is all this?" he said. "What ails the girl? What has set you up now,
you vixen?"
"You!" she cried vehemently. "You and your trade!"
"Well," he said, with a sort of sullen reasonableness, "and what is
the matter with the trade? What is wrong with the trade, I say? I'll
tell you this, my lass, you would live badly without it."
"I would live honestly," she cried. "And as my father lived!"
"You drab!" he cried. "Leave that alone."
At that, and when judging from the tone of his voice I expected him to
break out with fresh oaths and curses, there was instead an
astonishing silence, which fell for me at an unlucky moment, for
forgetting, in my desire to see as well as hear, the risk I ran, I had
crept down the stairs, and now lacked but a pace of seeing into the
room. The noise ceasing, I dared neither take that step nor retreat;
and it was only when the silence had continued so long that curiosity
overcame fear, that I ventured the advance, and looking in, saw that
the girl, her fire and fury gone, was leaning against the wall beside
the hearth, her face averted; while Ferguson himself, in an attitude
of dejection scarcely less marked, stood near her, his head bowed and
his blood-shot eyes fixed on the fire.
"Ay, he lived honestly, your father," he muttered at last. "It is
true, my lass. I grant it. But he had a fair wind, had Alan, and a
short course; and if he had lived to be sixty, God knows! We are what
we are made. I mind him well, and the burn we fished and the pickle
things we took out, and your mother that played with us in her cutty
sark, and not a shoe between us nor a bodle of money; but the green
hills round us, and all we knew of the world that it lay beyond them.
And that was all your father ever knew, my lass. And well for him! Ay,
well for him! But woe's me, and woe to the man who took my living, and
woe to the evil King!"
His voice was beginning to rise; in a moment he would have reached his
usual pitch of denunciation, of which even now some of his many
writings afford a pale reflection; but at the word _King_ there came a
sharp knocking at the door, and he paused. For me, I turned in a
panic, and, heedless what noise I made, hurried up the stairs. The
steps creaked under me, but fortunately the knocking was repeated so
quickly and persistently that it covered the sound of my flight; and
before I had more than ensconced myself in the old place, Ferguson,
doubtless in obedience to some signal, was at the door and had opened
it.
Immediately half-a-dozen men poured noisily in, breathing hard and
growling in low tones, and passed into the room below. But until the
outer door was closed and secured, nothing I could catch, though fear
sharpened my ears, was said. Then, as Ferguson went in after them, one
of the newcomers raised his voice in answer to a question, and cried
with a rattling oath, "What is up? What is up, old fox? Why, all is
up! And we'll all swing for it before the month is over, if we cannot
clear out to-night! You are a clever one, Mr. Ferguson, but you are
caught this time, with better men. God! if I had the sneak here that
peached on us, I would cut his liver out! I would----"
Two or three voices joined in to the same tune and drowned his words,
one asking where Prendergast was, another where Porter was, a third
indulging in threats so horrid and blasphemies so profane that I
turned cold where I crouched. I began to understand what had happened,
and my situation; but that nothing might be spared me Ferguson, in a
quavering voice that proved all was news to him, asked again what was
the matter.
"The Blues are moved," cried three or four at once. "They were
marching out when we left. The guards at Kensington are doubled, and
the orders for the King's hunting to-morrow are cancelled. They were
hurrying to and fro calling the Council when we came away, and
messengers were beginning to go round the taverns."
"And they have seized the horses at the King of Bohemia's Head," added
another, "so they know a lot."
"But is it--certain?" Ferguson asked, with a break in his voice.
"Ay, as certain as that we shall hang if we do not get over!" was the
brutal answer.
"And the Captain?"
"I have been at his lodgings. He has not been heard of since noon. He
ordered his horse then and they say took the road; and hell to it, if
that is so, he is half way to France by this! And safe! Safe, you
devils, and we are left here caught like rats!"
"Ay, we'll go farther than France!" one shrieked. "As for me I am off.
I shall----"
"No, by God, you don't!" cried another; and flung himself, as it
seemed to me, between him and the door. "You don't go and sell the
rest of us, and save your own neck. You----"
"Where is Porter?" a third struck in.
"And Prendergast?"
"They are not here! Nor Sir William! Nor Friend! So what is the good
of talking like that?"
"He will make a fat hang, will Sir William!" said one, with a mad
laugh that died in his throat. "It will cure his gout."
At that, one of the others cried with furious oaths for liquor; and I
judged that Ferguson gave them of his Hollands. But it was little
among so many, and was gone in a moment, and they calling for more.
"There is a keg upstairs," said he. "In the back-room. But get it for
yourselves. You have hung me. To think that I should have played the
game with such fools."
They laughed recklessly, a savage note in their voices. "Ay, you
should have stuck to your pen, old fox," one cried. "Then it was only
the printer hung. But we'll drink your health before you swing. Up,
Keyes, and fetch the stuff. It may be bad, but we'll drink to the
squeezing of the rotten orange once more; if it be the last toast I
drink!"