What the girl answered I did not catch, for as she raised her head
again to reply, my ear caught the sound of rising danger. Ferguson was
speaking, his words, no longer coherent, a mere frothing of oaths and
calling of hideous fates on his head if he had ever betrayed, if he
had ever sold, if he had ever deceived, now ran in a steady current of
wrathful denunciation. And the men listened; he had their ears again;
he was no longer on his trial. Afterwards I learned that while my
attention was astray with the women. Smith, by stating what I had
stated to him--namely, that the Secretary had used Ferguson as the
intermediary through whom to warn Berwick--had confirmed the plotter's
story, and at a stroke had restored his position. Whereon, full of
spite, and desperately certain that however exposed he lay on other
sides I at any rate knew enough to hang him, the wretched man had set
himself anew to compass my destruction. Deterred neither by the check
he had received, nor by the gloomy looks of the conspirators, who
responded but sluggishly to his appeal, he drove home again and again,
and with wild words and wilder oaths, the one point on which he
relied, the one point that was so dear to him that he could not
understand their hesitation.
"Waste of time?" he cried. "We would be better employed looking to
ourselves and slipping away to Romney, would we? But you are fools!
You are babes! There is the evidence that can swear to you all! There
is the evidence keen to do it! There is the evidence in your hands!
And you will let him escape?"
"There is evidence without him," said King sulkily. "Where is
Prendergast?"
"Oh, he is honest."
"But where is he? And where is Porter?"
"Where is Sir John Fenwick for that matter?" replied the man who had
answered for Prendergast. "He is too high and mighty to mix with us,
and will only eat the chestnut when we have got it out of the fire.
For that matter, where are Friend and Parkyns? They are not here."
"Pshaw!" Ferguson cried, in a rage at the digression. "Why will you be
thinking of them? Cannot you see that they are tainted, they are in
it? They cannot if they will! And they are gentlemen besides, and not
dirty knaves like this fellow."
"For the matter of that," said Cassel, bluntly, "Preston was a lord.
But he sold Ashton."
The words brought a kind of cold breath of suspicion into the room, at
the chill touch of which each looked stealthily at his neighbour, as
if he said, "Is it he? Or he?" Ferguson seeing on this that he made
little progress, and that the men, though they looked at me
vengefully, were not to be kindled, grew furious and more furious, and
began to storm and rave. But Charnock in a moment cut him short.
"Mr. Ferguson is so far right," said he, "that if we let this person
go to perfect his evidence against us, we shall be very foolish.
Clearly, it is to set a premium on treason."
"Then let Mr. Ferguson deal with him," Cassel answered, curtly. "He is
his man, and it is his business. I don't lay a hand on him, and that
is flat."
"Nor I! Nor I!" cried several, with eagerness. God knows if they
thought in their hearts to curry favour with me.
"You are all mad!" Ferguson cried, beating the air.
"And you are a coward!" Cassel retorted. "I'd as soon trust him as
you. If you are taken you'll peach, Ferguson! G-- ---- you! I know you
will. You will peach! You are as white-livered a cur as ever lived!"
Then, seeing them divided, and the most bloody-minded of them--for
such Cassel had been a short time before--taking up my cause, I
thought that for certain the bitterness of death was past; and I took
courage, discerning for the first time solid land beyond the deeps and
black suffocating fears through which I had passed. For the first time
I allowed my thoughts to dwell on the future, and myself to hope and
plan. But the warm current of returning life had scarcely coursed
through my veins and set my heart beating, before Charnock's cold
voice, taking up the tale, smote on my ear, and in a moment dashed my
jubilation. There was that in his tone gripped my heart afresh.
"Peace, man," he said. "Peace! Is this a time to be bickering? Let us
be clear before we separate, what is to be done with this man. For my
part, I am not for letting him go."
"Nor I," said Smith, speaking almost for the first time.
The others, lately so hot and impassioned, looked at the speakers and
at one another with a sort of apathy.
Only Ferguson cried violently, "Nor I, by----! Nor I. We are many, and
what is one life?"
"Quite so, Mr. Ferguson," Charnock retorted. "But will you take the
life?"
The plotter drew back as he had drawn back before. "It is everybody's
business," he muttered.
"Then will you take part in it? You are the first to condemn. Will you
be one to execute?"
Ferguson moistened his lips with his tongue, and, swallowing with an
effort, looked shiftily at me and away again. The sweat stood on his
face. For me, I watched him, fascinated; watched him, and still he did
not answer.
"Just so," said Charnock, at last. "You will not. And that being so,
is there anyone else who will? If not, what is to be done?"
"Put him in a lugger," Keyes cried, "at the bridge; and by
morning----"
"He wall be taken off at the Nore," Cassel answered scornfully. "And
you too if you think to get off that way. There are more Billops in
the Pool than the Billop who gave up Ashton."
"Gag him and leave him here."
"And have him found by the messengers to-morrow morning?" Cassel
answered. "As well and better, call a chair, and pay the chairmen, and
bid them take him to the Secretary's office with our compliments."
"Well, if not here, in one of the other pens. Ferguson knows plenty."
The woman who had come in with Smith laughed. "That might answer," she
said, "if his sweetheart were not here. Do you think she would leave
him to starve?"
There was a general stir and muttering as the men turned to the girl.
"Pooh," said one, "it is Ferguson's girl."
"And your spy's sweetheart," the woman repeated.
The girl lifted her head and showed the room a face pale, weary, and
dull-eyed. "He is nothing to me," she said.
And the men would have believed her; but the woman, with a swift,
cat-like movement, seized her wrist and held it. "Nothing to you, my
girl, isn't he?" she cried. "Then you have the fever or the small-pox
on you! One, two, three----"
Her face flaming, the girl sprang up and snatched away her hand.
The woman laughed--and how I hated her! "He is nothing to you, isn't
he?" she said in a mocking tone. "Yet what will you not give me to
save him, my chick? What will you not give me to see him safe out of
this house? What----?"
"Peace, peace!" cried Charnock. "Time is everything, and we are
wasting it. Unless we would be taken, every man of us, we should be
half-way to Romney Marsh by morning."
"Will you leave him to me!" said Smith suddenly.
"Leave him?"
"Ay. Or better, let me have two minutes' talk with him here, and if he
comes to my way of thinking, I will answer for him."
"Answer for him?" cried Ferguson, with a sneer. "If you answer for him
no better than I did, you will give us small surety."
"Ay, but I am not you, Mr. Ferguson," Smith retorted, in a tone of
contempt, whereat the older man writhed impotently.
"This person--Mr. Taylor or Mr. Price--or whatever his name is--knows
me and that what I say I do."
"Well, do--what you like with him," Charnock answered peevishly, "so
that you stop his mouth."
To my great joy the other men assented in the same tone, being glad to
be rid of the burden. It may seem strange to some that those who had
prepared an hour before to take my life, should now be as ready to let
me go; but there are few men who are eager to take life in cold blood,
and kill a man as they would a sheep. Moreover, in favour of these
men--on whose memory the Assassination Plot has cast obloquy not
altogether deserved, since few of them were assassins in the strict
sense, and the worst of all, Ferguson, escaped his just fate--in their
favour I say, it is to be observed that the fact which they designed,
however horrid in the eyes of good citizens, and certainly not to be
defended by me, was not in their sight so much a murder as an act of
private warfare carried into the enemy's country. So fully I am
persuaded was this the case, that had it been a question of stabbing
the King in the back, or shooting him from a window, I believe not one
would have volunteered. Let this stand to their credit: to the credit
of men whom I saw and have described at their worst, drunken,
reckless, ill-combined, and worse governed; whose illegal design had
it been accomplished, must have postponed the Protestant succession in
these realms; but who, misguided and betrayed as they were by leaders
more evil than themselves, evinced some spark of chivalry in their
lives--for all did it in a measure for a cause--and in their
sufferings a fortitude that would have become better men and a nobler
effort.
So much of them. One released my hands, and another at Smith's request
found him a light; and my new protector bidding me follow him, and
leading the way upstairs to the bare room at the back whence I had
broken out, those we left were deep in muttered plans and whisperings
of the Marsh, and Hunt's house, and Harrison's Inn at Dimchurch,
before we were out of hearing.
Smith's first act, when we reached the room above, was to close the
door upon us. This done, he set his candle on the floor--whence its
flame threw dark wavering outlines of our figures on the ceiling--and
moved to the hearth. Here, while I stared, wondering at his silence,
he searched for some spring or handle, and finding it, caused a large
piece of the wainscot to fall out and reveal a cavity about three feet
deep and six long. He beckoned me to bring the candle and look in, and
supposing it to be a secret way out, I did so. However, outlet there
was none. The place was nothing more than a concealed cupboard.
[Illustration: THE PLACE WAS NOTHING MORE THAN A CONCEALED CUPBOARD]
"Well?" he said, when he had moved the candle to and fro that I might
see the better--his face the while wearing a smile that caught and
held my gaze. "Well? what do you think of it, Mr. Taylor?"
I did not understand him, and I said so, trembling.
"It is a tolerable hiding-place?" said he.
I nodded; to please him I would have said it was a palace.
"And not a bad prison?"
I nodded again; staring at him, fascinated. I began to understand.
"And a grave?"
I shuddered. "What do you mean?" I muttered.
"Lay a man in there, bound hand and foot, and gagged; what would you
find in a year's time, Mr. Price? Not much."
I stared at him.
"If they knew of that downstairs," he continued, stopping to snuff the
candle with his fingers, then looking askance at me, "would they use
it, I wonder? Would they use it? What do you think, Mr. Price?"
Again I made no answer.
"Shall I tell them?" said he easily.
"What--what do you want?" I whispered hoarsely.
"That is better," said he, nodding. "Well, to be candid, almost
nothing. Two pledges. First, that you will give no evidence against
anyone here. That of course."
I muttered assent. I was ready to promise anything.
"And secondly, that you will, when I call upon you, do me a little
favour, Mr. Price. It is a small matter, a trifle I asked you at my
lady's house three days back. Promise to do that for me, as and when I
demand performance, and in ten minutes from this time you shall leave
the house, safe, free, and unhurt."
"I promise," I said eagerly. "I promise honestly!"
But even while I spoke--this seemed to be the strangest of all the
things that had happened to me that night, that this man should think
it worth while to pledge me under such circumstances, or value at a
groat a promise so given. For the pledge was a pledge to do ill, and
as soon as he and the other conspirators were laid by the heels or had
fled the country, what sanction remained to bind me? I saw that as I
spoke, and promised--and promised. And would have promised fifty
times--with the reservation that I did so under force _majeure_. Who
would not have done the same, being in my place?
But I suppose I answered too quickly to please him, and so he read my
thoughts, or he had it in his mind from the first to read me a lesson,
for the words were scarcely out of my mouth before he slid his hand
into his breast with the ugliest smile I ever saw on a man's face; and
he signed to me to get into the cupboard. "Get in," he said, between
his closed teeth; and then when, terrified by the change in him and
the order, I began to back from it, "Get in!" he said, in a voice that
set me shaking; "or take the consequences. Do you hear me? I am no
Ferguson to threaten and no more."
I dared resist no longer, and I crawled in, trembling and praying him
not to shut me in--not to shut me in.
"Lie down!" he said, gloating on me with cruel eyes, and his hand
still in his breast.
I lay down, praying for mercy.
"On your back! On your back!" he continued. "And your hands by your
sides. So! That is better. Now listen to me, Mr. Price, and think on
what I say. When you want to be laid out for good as you are laid
out now, when you are ready for your coffin and shroud--and the
worms--then break your promise to me, for coffin and shroud and worms
will be ready. Think of that--think of that and of me when the
temptation comes. And hark you, you fancy," he went on, fixing his
eyes on mine, "and you count on it, that I shall be taken with the
others, or escaping shall be where you need not fear me. Don't deceive
yourself. If a week hence I am in prison, take that for a sign, and
please yourself. But if I am free, obey, obey--or God help you!"
I know not how to describe with any approach to fidelity the peculiar
effect which words apparently so simple had on me, or the terror, out
of all proportion to the means chosen--for he spoke without oath,
violence, or passion--into which they threw me, and which was very far
from passing with the sound. I had feared Ferguson, but I feared this
man more, a hundred times more! And yet I can give no reason, adduce
no explanation, save that he spoke quietly, and so seemed to mean all
and something beyond what he said. The plans for deceiving him and
breaking my word which I had entertained a moment before melted into
thinnest air while I lay and sweated in my narrow berth, not daring to
move eye or limb until he gave me leave.
And he, as if he knew how fear of him grew on me under his gaze--or in
sheer cruelty, I know not which--kept me there, and sat smiling and
smiling at me (as the devil may smile at some dead man passed beyond
redemption)--kept me there God knows how long. But so long, and to
such purpose, that when at length he bade me rise, and looking closely
into my face, nodded, and told me I might go--nay, later than that,
when he had led me downstairs and opened the door for me, and
supported me through it--for in the cold air I staggered like a
drunken man--even then, I say, so heavy was the spell of fear laid
on me, and such his power, I dared not move or stir until he had
twice--smiling the second time--bidden me go. "Go, man," said he, "you
are free. But remember!"