THE ABDUCTION
The chair swung past the grotesque wooden structure of Temple Bar and
along Fleet Street in the deepening dusk of that summer evening, and
this being the normal way it should have taken there was so far nothing
to alarm its occupant. But as its bearers were about to turn to the
right, to plunge into the narrow alley leading down to Salisbury Court,
a man suddenly emerged from that black gulf to check their progress.
The man was Holles, who had gained the place ahead of them.
“Back!” he called to them, as he advanced. “You cannot pass. There is
a riot down there about a plague-stricken house which has been broken
open, and the pestilence is being scattered to the four winds. You
cannot go this way.”
The bearers halted. “What way, then?” the foremost inquired.
“Whither would you go?” the man asked him.
“To Salisbury Court.”
“Why, that is my way. You must go round by the Fleet Ditch, as I must.
Come, follow me.” And he went ahead briskly down Fleet Street.
The chair resumed its way in the altered direction. Miss Farquharson
had leaned forward when it halted to hear what was said. She had
observed no closed house in the alley upon coming that way some hours
ago in daylight. But she saw no reason to doubt the warning on that
account. Infected houses were, after all, growing common enough by now
in London streets, and she was relieved that the closing of the theatre
was to permit her own withdrawal into the country, away from that
pestilential atmosphere.
She sat back again with a little sigh of weariness, and in silence
suffered herself to be borne along.
But when they came to the Fleet Ditch, instead of turning to the right
her bearers kept straight on, following ever in the wake of that tall
cloaked man who had offered to conduct them. They were halfway over
the bridge before Miss Farquharson became aware of what was happening.
She leaned forward and called to them that they were mistaking the
way. They took no more heed of her than if they had been stone-deaf,
and trudged stolidly onward. She cried out to them more loudly and
insistently. Still they took no notice. They were across the bridge,
and swinging away now to the right towards the river. Miss Farquharson
came to the conclusion that there must be some way back of which she
was not aware, and that some good reason inspired their guide. So, for
all that she still accounted it strange that the chairmen should have
been so deaf to her commands, she allowed them now to proceed without
further interference. But when far from finding any way to recross
the ditch, the chair suddenly turned to the left in the direction of
Baynard’s Castle, her bewilderment suddenly redoubled.
“Stop!” she called to them. “You are going the wrong way. Set down the
chair at once. Set down, I say!”
They heeded her as little as before. Not only did they press steadily
onward, but they even quickened their pace, stumbling over the rough
cobbles of the street in the darkness that pervaded it. Alarm awoke in
her.
“Nathaniel,” she called shrilly, leaning forward, and vainly seeking to
grasp the shoulder just beyond her reach. “Nathaniel!”
Her alarm increased. Was this really Nathaniel or was it some one else?
There was something sinisterly purposeful in the stolid manner in which
the fellow plodded on unheeding. The tall man ahead who led them,
little more than a dark outline now, had slackened his step, so that
the chair was rapidly overtaking him.
She attempted to rise, to force up the roof of the chair, to thrust
open the apron in front of her. But neither yielded to her exertions.
And in the end she realized that both had been fastened. That made an
end of any doubt with which she may still have been deluding herself.
She yielded to terror and her screams for help awoke the silent echoes
of the street. The tall man halted, turned, rapped out an oath, and
authoritatively commanded the men to set down. But even as he issued
the order the flare of a link suddenly made its appearance at the
corner of Paul’s Chains, and in the ring of yellow light it cast they
could discern the black outlines of three or four moving figures. Light
and figures paused a moment there, checked by the girl’s cries. Then
abruptly they flung forward at clattering speed.
“On! On!” Holles bade the chairmen curtly, and himself went forward
again, the chair now following with Miss Farquharson steadily shrieking
for help and beating frenziedly upon roof and apron.
She, too, had seen those Heaven-sent rescuers rushing swiftly to meet
them, and she may have caught in the torchlight the livid gleam of
swords drawn for her deliverance.
They were a party of three gentlemen lighted by a link-boy, on their
homeward way. They were young and adventurous, as it chanced, and very
ready to bare their blades in defence of a lady in distress.
But it happened that this was a contingency for which Holles was
fully prepared, one, indeed, which he could not have left out of his
calculations.
The foremost of those hastening gallants was suddenly upon him, his
point at the level of the Colonel’s breast, and bawling dramatically:
“Stand, villain!”
“Stand yourself, fool,” Holles answered him in tones of impatient
scorn, making no shift to draw in self-defence. “Back--all of you--on
your lives! We are conveying this poor lady home. She has the plague.”
That checked their swift advance. It even flung them back a little,
treading on one another’s toes in their sudden intimidation. Brave
enough against ordinary men and ordinary lethal weapons, they were
stricken with instant panic before the horrible, impalpable foe whose
presence was thus announced to them.
Miss Farquharson, who had overheard the Colonel’s warning and perceived
its paralyzing effect upon those rescuers whom she had been regarding
as Heaven-sent, leaned forward, in frenzied fear that the trap was
about to close upon her.
“He lies! He lies!” she shrieked in her terror. “It is false! I have
not the plague! I have not the plague! I swear it! Do not heed him,
sirs! Do not heed him! Deliver me from these villains. Oh, of your
charity, sirs ... in God’s name ... do not abandon me, or I am a lost
woman else!”
They stood at gaze, moved by her piteous cries, yet hesitating what to
believe. Holles addressed them, speaking sadly:
“She is distraught, poor soul. Demented. I am her husband, sirs, and
she fancies me an enemy. I am told it is a common enough state in
those upon whom this terrible disease has fastened.” It was a truth of
which all London was aware by now that the onslaught of the plague was
commonly attended by derangement of the mind and odd delusions. “And
for your governance, sirs, I should tell you that I greatly fear I am,
myself, already infected. I beg you, then, not to detain me, but to
stand aside so that we may regain our home before my strength is spent.”
Behind him Miss Farquharson continued to scream her furious denials
and her piteous entreaties that they should deliver her.
If they still doubted, yet they dared not put their doubts to the test.
Moreover, her very accents by now in their frenzy seemed to confirm
this man’s assertion that she was mad. A moment yet those rescuers
hung there, hesitating. Then suddenly one of them surrendered to his
mounting fear and horror.
“Away! Away!” he cried, and, swinging round, dashed off down the
street. His panic communicated itself instantly to his fellows, and
they went clattering after him, the link-boy bringing up the rear, his
streaming torch held high.
Aghast, spent by her effort, Miss Farquharson sank back with a moan,
feeling herself exhausted and abandoned. But when one of the chairmen,
in obedience to an order from the Colonel, pulled the apron open, she
at once leapt up and out, and would have gone speeding thence but that
the other bearer caught her about her slender body, and held her firmly
whilst his fellow wound now about her head a long scarf which Holles
had tossed him for the purpose. That done, they made fast her hands
behind her with a handkerchief, thrust her back into the chair, and
shut her in.
She sat now helpless, half-choked by the scarf, which not only served
to muffle her cries, but also blindfolded her, so that she no longer
knew whither she was being conveyed. All that she knew was that the
chair was moving.
On it went, then away to the left, and up the steep gradient of Paul’s
Chains, and lastly to the right into Knight Ryder Street. Before a
substantial house on the north side of this, between Paul’s Chains and
Sermon Lane, the chair came to a final standstill and was set down. The
roof was raised and the apron pulled open, and hands seized upon her to
draw her forth. She hung back, a dead weight, in a last futile attempt
at resistance. Then she felt herself bodily lifted in strong arms, and
swung to a man’s shoulder.
Thus Holles bore her into the house, wherein the chair, the poles
having been removed, was also presently bestowed. The Colonel turned
to the right of the roomy hall in which two silent figures stood
at attention--Buckingham’s other two French lackeys--and entered
a moderate-sized square chamber, sombrely furnished and sombrely
wainscoted from bare floor to whitened ceiling. In the middle of the
room a table with massive corkscrew legs was laid for supper, and on
its polished surface gleamed crystal and silver in the light from
the great candle-branch that occupied its middle. The long window
overlooking the street was close-shuttered, the shutters barred. Under
this stood a daybed of cane and carved oak, furnished with velvet
cushions of a dull wine colour. To this daybed Holles conveyed his
burden. Having set her down, he stooped to remove the handkerchief that
bound her wrists.
It was a compassionate act, for he knew that the pinioning must be
causing pain by now to her arms. Under the broad brim of his hat, his
face, moist from his exertions, gleamed white, his lips were tightly
compressed. Hitherto intent upon the accomplishment of the business as
he had planned it, he had given little thought to its ugly nature. Now
suddenly as he bent over this figure, at once so graceful, so delicate
and frail, as a faint sweet perfume that she used assailed his nostrils
conveying to his senses a suggestion of her daintiness and femininity,
disgust of the thing he did overwhelmed him, like physical nausea.
He turned away, to close the door, tossing aside his hat and cloak, and
mopping his brow as he went, for the sweat was running down him like
basting on a capon. Whilst he was crossing the room she struggled to
her feet, and her hands being now at liberty she tugged and tore at
the scarf until she loosed it so that it slipped down from her face
and hung in folds about her neck and shoulders above the line of her
low-cut, modish bodice.
Erect there, breathing hard, her eyes flaming, she flung her words
angrily at the tall loose-limbed figure of her captor.
“Sir,” she said, “you will let me depart at once, or you shall pay
dearly for this villainy.”
He closed the door and turned again, to face her. He attempted to
smother in a smile the hangdog expression of his countenance.
“Unless you suffer me to depart at once, you shall....”
There she paused. Abruptly she broke off, to lean forward a little,
staring at him, her parted lips and dilating eyes bearing witness to an
amazement so overwhelming that it overrode both her anger and her fear.
Hoarse and tense came her voice at last:
“Who are you? What ... what is your name?”
He stared in his turn, checking in the very act of mopping his brow,
wondering what it was she saw in him to be moving her so oddly. Where
she stood, her face was more than half in shadow, whilst the light of
that cluster of candles on the table was beating fully upon his own. He
was still considering how he should answer her, what name assume, when
she startled him by sparing his invention further trouble in the matter.
“You are Randal Holles!” she cried on a wild, strained note.
He advanced a step in a sort of consternation, breathless, some sudden
ghastly emotion tearing at his heart, eyeing her wildly, his jaw
fallen, his whole face livid as a dead man’s.
“Randal Holles!” she repeated in that curiously tortured voice. “You!
You of all men--and to do this thing!”
Where there had been only wild amazement in her eyes, he beheld now a
growing horror, until mercifully she covered her face with her hands.
For a moment he copied her action. He, too, acting spasmodically,
covered his face. The years rolled back; the room with its table laid
for that infamous supper melted away to be replaced in his vision by a
cherry orchard in bloom, and in that orchard a girl on a swing, teasing
yet adorable, singing a song that brought him, young and clean and
honourable, hastening to her side. He saw himself a lad of twenty going
out into the world with a lady’s glove in his hat--a glove that to this
day he cherished--bent upon knight-errantry for that sweet lady’s sake,
to conquer the world, no less, that he might cast it in her lap. And he
saw her--this Sylvia Farquharson of the Duke’s Theatre--as she had been
in those long-dead days when her name was Nancy Sylvester.
The years had wrought in her appearance a change that utterly disguised
her. Where in this resplendently beautiful woman could he discover the
little child he had loved so desperately? How could he have dreamt of
his little Nancy Sylvester transformed into the magnificent Sylvia
Farquharson, whose name he had heard used as a byword for gallantry,
lavishness, and prodigality, whose fame was as widespread and
questionably lustrous as that of Moll Davies or Eleanor Gwynn?
He reeled back until his shoulders came to rest against the closed
door, and stared and stared in dazed amazement, his soul revolted by
the horror of the situation in which they found themselves.
“God!” he groaned aloud. “My Nan! My little Nan!”