"UP AND DOWN IN LONDON TOWN."
The young gentlemen proceeded the same afternoon to Maidenhead, and
passed the night as guests of Pennyston Powney, Esquire, a friend of
Lord George's, at his fine seat south of that place. The next day they
proceeded slowly, in order to enjoy the beautiful prospects along the
Thames; Dick marking his progress Londonward by each milestone,
beginning at Maidenhead Bridge with the twenty-fifth.
In Buckinghamshire the road became more and more alive with coaches. At
Slough, Dick would have liked to turn southward to Windsor Castle and
Eton College, of which edifices he had enjoyed the splendid view from
Salt Hill; or northward to Stoke Pogis churchyard, where Gray composed
his Elegy and was buried; but his lordship desired to arrive in London
that evening. So Dick was content with what glimpses he got of the high
white Castle, along a good part of the road. Into Middlesex rolled the
chaise, crossing Hounslow Heath and passing there many sheep but no
highwaymen; on by noble parks and residences, to Brentford, Dick
feasting his eyes on what he could see of distant Richmond with its hill
and terrace, and of Kew with its royal gardens and its favorite palace
of George III., then reigning.
The numerous carriages, the stage-coaches with passengers inside and on
top, and the other signs of nearness to a great city, increased as they
bowled through Turnham Green and Hammersmith, whence there were houses
on both sides all the way to Kensington. A great smoky mass ahead had
now resolved itself distinctly into towers, domes, and spires, and, for
watching each feature as it separately disclosed itself, Dick well nigh
missed the verdant charms of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, on the
left. At last they were rattling along Piccadilly, passing Green Park on
the right, and getting a partial view of St. James's and the other
ordinary-looking palaces in that direction. And presently, as Lord
George wished his arrival in London to be for a day unknown, and as his
house in Berkeley Square was occupied by his uncle's family, they turned
through the Haymarket to Charing Cross, and thence into the Strand,
where they were finally set down at the White Hart Inn, near the new
church of St. Mary-le-Strand and the site of the bygone May-pole.
After supper, while his lordship kept indoors, Dick went out
sightseeing; strode blithely up the lamp-lit Strand, with its countless
shops lettered all over with tradesmen's signs; through Temple Bar, and
along Fleet Street, with its taverns, coffee-houses, courts, and
tributary streets; up Ludgate Hill to St. Paul's, which he walked
around; returning over his route, and then making a shorter excursion,
to see the theatres of Drury Lane and Covent Garden; all this with no
adventure that need here be related.
The next day, his lordship took fine lodgings in Bond Street, near
Hanover Square, and insisted that Dick remain his guest until the latter
should hear from Cumberland,--Dick allowing his lordship to remain under
the belief that the Cumberland from which he came was of England, and
that he had been a great loser of valuables and money by the supposed
defection of his servant at the time he was left for dead in the road.
Dick's second evening in London was passed at Covent Garden Theatre,
where he saw, and was dazzled by, "The Duenna," that brilliant comic
opera of serenading lovers in Seville, by the clever young Mr. Sheridan,
which, first brought out in the previous November, was still the most
popular piece in the company's list. The next day, Sunday, going for
that purpose to the church of St. Clement Danes, Dick saw the great and
bulky Doctor Johnson himself, and was duly impressed.
On Monday he took what he had left of his Bath winnings to a tailor's
shop, and spent the greater part of them for a new black suit for full
dress; and that evening he went with Lord George to a ridotto, in the
vicinity of St. James's, Lord George having previously got tickets.
Not choosing to venture in a minuet, Dick imitated many of the impudent
young beaux of the splendid company, walking through the gaily decorated
room, and staring unreservedly at whatever lady's face, beneath its
cushioned tower of powdered hair, attracted him. By the time the
country-dances had begun, he had made up his mind which one of all the
faces most rivalled the blazing candle-lights themselves. Its possessor
was young, tall, well filled out, and of a dashing and frivolous
countenance. Having learned by observation that the custom in London
differed not from that in Bath, Dick went confidently up and begged to
have the honor of dancing with her.
She flashed on him a quick, all-comprehensive look of scrutiny, then
bowed with a gracious smile, and gave him her hand. During the dance,
Dick made use of every possible occasion to comment jocularly upon
passing incidents and persons, and the lady invariably answered with a
smile or a merry remark, so that Dick was soon vastly pleased with his
partner and himself.
After the dance, having led her to a seat, and as she would have no
refreshments brought, he stood chatting with her. Lord George came up
and greeted both, and continued talking to them familiarly, assuming,
from the fact of her having granted Dick a dance in a public assembly,
that they already knew each other. In the course of the talk, Lord
George frequently addressed Dick by his name, and the lady by hers, so
that, before long, Mr. Wetheral and Miss Mallby were so addressing one
another. It developed, through Lord George's inquiries after her family,
that her father was Sir Charles Mallby, of Kent, whose town house was in
Grosvenor Square.
While the three were talking, Dick noticed an elegantly dressed young
gentleman standing near, who regarded them with a peculiarly sullen
expression.
"Why does that gentleman look at us so sourly?" asked Dick, innocently,
of Lord George.
"La!" said Miss Mallby, smiling, and coloring. "Tis Lord Alderby."
Lord George smiled, and proposed that Dick should come with him to meet
somebody or other; whereupon the two gentlemen, one of them very
reluctantly, left Miss Mallby, who was then immediately joined by the
surly-looking Lord Alderby.
"They've had a lovers' quarrel," explained Lord George to Dick, "which
accounts for her comporting herself so amiably to us. Her gaiety with
other gentlemen this evening has turned Alderby quite green with
jealousy. Now that we have left the way open for him, he'll humiliate
himself as abjectly as he must, for a reconciliation. Egad, what a thing
it is to be the slave of an heiress!"
"Why," said Dick, his spirits suddenly damped, "I flattered myself her
amiability to me was on my own account."
"Oh," said his lordship, with an amused look that escaped Dick, "so
that's how the wind blows! Well, who knows but you are right? She may
have tired of Alderby's sulks. 'Tis a rich prize, by Jove,--the Lord
knows how many thousand a year! We shall certainly call at Grosvenor
Square to-morrow."
What young man can honestly blame Dick for clinging to the belief that
the radiant Miss Mallby's graciousness to him had another cause than the
wish to pique Lord Alderby; or for supposing himself equal to the role
of a lord's rival for the love of a great heiress? The romantic notion
that love levels all, was no new one in Dick's time, and had often been
exemplified. To win fortune by marriage was then held to be an entirely
honorable act, calling for no reproach. Dick had no intention of
deceiving the lady. But he would wait until her love was certainly his,
before disclosing who and what he was. Once his, her love would not be
altered by the unimportant circumstances that he was an American and
penniless. Splendid was the future of which Dick dreamed that night,--a
future of fair estates and great city residences, of coaches and
footmen, of fine clothes, card playing, music, and dancing.
He went with Lord George in the latter's coach, the next afternoon, to
the Grosvenor Square house; was graciously received by Miss Mallby's
mother, on his lordship's account; met a great number of young beaux and
a few modish ladies, drank tea, won some money at one of the card
tables, and departed with his friend, having had very little of the
heiress's society to himself.
As they were entering their own coach, they saw Lord Alderby get down
from his; he bowed to Lord George, but bestowed on Dick a swift look of
pretended contempt, though it showed real hostility.
"Miss Mallby must have praised you to Alderby last night," said Lord
George, lightly.
That evening Wetheral and Lord George stayed late at a fashionable
tavern in Pall Mall, their party having increased to a numerous and
merry one. Finally it was joined by no other than Lord Alderby himself,
with whom came a thin, middle-aged Irish gentleman addressed as captain
and wearing a cockade in his hat. Neither of these newcomers had much to
say for awhile. Presently the talk fell upon the American war, and an
argument arose as to whether General Howe's evacuation of Boston was to
be accounted a British defeat. The name of cowards being applied to the
Americans, Dick broke out with the assertion that, to his personal
knowledge, Americans had given as convincing proofs of courage as he had
ever seen or heard of as coming from Englishmen.
"Courage is like many other things," put in Lord Alderby, not looking at
Dick, yet speaking with a quiet sneer; "people are apt to set up as
judges of if, who never practise it themselves."
A surprised silence fell over the company.
"If you mean that remark for me, sir," said Dick, as soon as he could
command his voice, "I am ready to let you judge of my practice, whenever
and wherever you choose!"
"Without knowing very well who you are, sir," replied Lord Alderby, who
was thickly built and below middle height, but all the more arrogant in
his tone for that, "I believe there is a difference in rank between us,
which forbids my giving your courage an opportunity."
"Perhaps there is a difference of courage itself, as well!" snapped out
Dick.
"I take that, gintlemen," put in the Irish captain, who, it was plain,
had been brought in by Lord Alderby for precisely what he now proceeded
to do, "as a reflection on the opinion of ivery man that knows what my
Lord Alderby's courage is. And, as I'm one of thim min, and seeing
there's no difference of rank bechune this gintleman and me, I offer
him here ivery opportunity he may require for the dishplay of courage."
"And I take your offer," cried Dick instantly. "I've no scruples about
difference in rank, and I'm willing to fight anybody, high or low,--even
a hired lickspittle that takes up gentlemen's quarrels for pay! Lord
Alderby can tell you where I lodge; he knows where he can find that
out!"
Lord Alderby indeed found that out,--not from Miss Mallby, but through
his valet, who knew Lord George Winston's. And next day, to Bond Street,
came Captain Delahenty's challenge in regular form. Lord George, who
never concerned himself about his rank, or let it affect his doings,
readily consented to serve Dick in the business; and so, on the
following morning, at dawn, Dick found himself in Hyde Park, about to
undertake his first duel.
He had chosen to fight with swords, the blade being the weapon in whose
use he most desired practice. In his shirt-sleeves, with that acquired
serenity which comes of the mind's forcing itself not to contemplate the
peril at hand, he stood under a tree at one end of a clear space, while
his antagonist, seconded by an old faded beau, emerged from a hackney
coach and got himself ready. The men fought in the centre of the clear
space. Dick began defensively, but he had not parried more than three
of the captain's thrusts, till he perceived that the enemy was shaky
with liquor. Dick therefore waited only until the other's panting
indicated failing wind. Then he suddenly pressed matters, with such
accuracy and persistence that the whole thing was over in a
minute,--Dick putting on his waistcoat and frock, with Lord George's
assistance, and Captain Delahenty on the ground with a wounded shoulder
that the surgeon was pronouncing likely to heal in a month or six weeks.
Dick drove back to Bond Street in great elation, eager for more duels.
Lord Alderby's state of mind towards Dick was not sweetened by this
occurrence, as was shown by his lordship's ill-sustained pretence of
ignoring Dick's presence when next the two were in the same company.
This happened to be in a clubhouse in St. James's Street, Dick's name
having been written down there by Lord George, to whom he had
satisfactorily accounted for his ignorance of London and of London
society. Chance brought Lord Alderby and Dick to the same card table,
and not as partners. His lordship soon had his revenge, and a far
greater one than he thought it to be, for Dick, playing on after first
losses, in the confidence that fortune would serve him as usually, lost
his every guinea. He would have staked the few loose shillings he still
had left, but that the largeness of the bets would have made such a
proposition ridiculous. He went home to Bond Street in a kind of
consternation, faced by the reality that he was a pauper in London, and
that luck had turned against him. Now that he had tasted the life of
pleasure, poverty seemed not again endurable. Yet he braced himself to
consider what was to be done.
Now that he had no money worth mentioning, the hospitality he received
from Lord George was to Dick nothing else than charity. To continue
accepting it would make his situation soon insupportable. He quickly
took his resolution. He must fall back to a lower sphere, where a
shilling was worth something, and recoup himself; that done, he would
emerge again into the world to which Lord George had introduced him.
So, the next morning, pretending he had found at a lawyer's office in
Chancery Lane a letter from his people, Dick told Lord George he must
leave London immediately. Then, having sent for a hackney coach and
taken a very friendly farewell of his lordship, he was driven to the
starting-place of the Manchester stage. Being set down there, he
hastened afoot, with his baggage, in search of cheap lodgings. These he
presently found at a widow's house in George Street, which ran from the
Strand towards the Thames. He engaged a room at sixteen shillings a
week.
The widow had a grown-up son employed by a mercer in the Strand, and
from him Dick learned where to dispose of clothes most profitably, the
son giving the name of a salesman in Monmouth Street, and adding, "Be
sure, tell him 'twas I recommended you to him." Dick parted first with
the new black suit he had so recently bought, and so found himself
comparatively well in fund for his present station.
Not finding his landlady's son a companion to his taste, and not making
any acquaintances in the various coffee-houses, taverns, and
eating-houses that he now frequented in and about Fleet Street and the
Strand, he became afflicted with loneliness. A mere unnoticed mite among
thousands, and utterly ignored by the hastening multitude, he sent his
thoughts from the vast and crowded city, back to the bleak Maine
wilderness, and he had a kind of homesick longing for the hearty
comradeship of the time of freezing and starving there.
One evening, determined to enliven himself and have another fling at
pleasure at any cost, he went to Westminster Bridge afoot, and thence by
boat up the Thames, to Vauxhall. He had no sooner paid his shilling, on
entering the garden, than his spirits began to rise. The sound of the
orchestra and of singers, heard while he passed by the little groves and
the statues, brought back his zest for gay life, and this was redoubled
as he came into the brilliantly lighted space around the orchestra,
where the small boxes on either side were filled with people who sat
eating or drinking at the tables, and where the walks were thronged with
pleasure-seekers of every rank. He sat down on an empty bench in one of
the boxes, thinking to drink a bottle of wine and listen to the music.
Before the waiter had brought the wine, a gaily dressed young woman,
handsome enough in her powder and paint, came with almost a rush to the
vacant place at his side, and said, with a bold smile, "My dear sir, I
can't endure to see so pretty a gentleman drink alone! I'm going to keep
you company."
Dick, having inspected the amiable creature in a glance, was nothing
loath. So the waiter, having brought the wine, was sent for an
additional glass, and then again for eatables. Dick's companion proved
so agreeable that he soon ordered more wine and presently forgot the
music in contemplating her charms, her air of piquant impudence, her
affectations, and the shallow smartness of her talk. He was so
entertained by her that, when the night was late, on arriving with her
at Westminster Bridge, he took a hackney coach and accompanied her
to her lodgings, which, to his astonishment, were in the quite
respectable-looking house of a hosier in High Holborn.
At his frank expression of surprise, she seemed huffed; wondered why
she should not be supposed to live like any other lady, and said it was
nobody's business if she chose now and then to go out for an evening of
pleasure in a free and easy manner. Her ruffled feelings were soon
smoothed down, however, and when Dick left her it was with an
appointment to take her to the next Hampstead Assembly.
This Vauxhall incident cost Dick so much of the money got from the sale
of his new suit that he was soon fain to visit the Monmouth Street
dealer again, this time carrying the gamekeeper's suit and wearing that
bestowed on him by the whimsical gentleman met at Taunton. For both
these suits, the shopkeeper gave him a sum of money and a very plain
blue frock, a worn white waistcoat, and a pair of mended black breeches.
Thus Dick left the shop in vastly different attire from that in which he
had entered it, and when he returned to his lodging the change made his
landlady's son gape with wonder.
Before Dick had made up his mind as to how he should rebuild his
fortunes, he received one afternoon a visitor in a hackney coach, who
was none other than the companionable young lady of Vauxhall, to whom he
had made known his place of residence. Her errand now was to learn why
he had failed to keep his engagement for the Hampstead Assembly. She
did not stay long to reproach him, for no sooner had she taken note of
his cheapened appearance, and made sure that it came from necessity,
than she swept out of his room and back to the coach, on the pretence of
being offended at the broken appointment.
On leaving the house, she was seen by the landlady's son, who came to
Dick presently, with a grin, and remarked that Sukey Green had become a
great lady since she had ceased to walk the Strand of nights. On
inquiring, Dick learned that his visitor was well known by sight to the
landlady's son as having been, not many weeks before, one of the
countless frail damsels infesting the sidewalks of the town after
nightfall. Some turn of fortune had taken her from her rags and a hole
in Butcher Row to the fine clothes and comfortable lodgings she now
possessed, instead of to the Bridewell or the river or a pauper's grave,
as another turn might have done. Perhaps she had but returned to the
condition from which she had fallen.
Dick soon had fallen fortunes of his own to think of. He knew not how to
attempt to make his money multiply; or rather he devised in his mind so
many methods that he could not confine his thoughts to any one of them.
Thus rendered inert by his very versatility, he saw his money go for
mere necessities, and at last he had to seek still cheaper lodgings,
which he found in Green Arbor Court, a place redeemed in his eyes by the
fact that Oliver Goldsmith had once lived there.
It was not a locality designed to increase his cheerfulness. He had a
narrow, bare room, high up in a dirty, squalid house; from his window he
could see old clothes flying from countless windows and lines; and the
sounds most common to his ears were the voices of washerwomen laughing
or quarrelling and of children shouting or squalling. Not far in one
direction was Newgate Prison, and not far in another was that of the
Fleet.
In going to Fleet Street, he had to descend Breakneck Stairs,--which
numbered thirty-two and were in two steep flights and led him to the
edge of Fleet Ditch,--traverse a narrow street, and go through Fleet
Market. This was a route that Dick often took, for he preferred still to
dine in and about Fleet Street, though no longer at the Grecian
Coffee-house or Dick's or the Mitre Tavern, to all which places he
had resorted while lodging in George Street, but at the cheaper
places,--Clifton's Eating-house, in Butcher Row, for one. Sometimes his
meal consisted solely of a pot of beer at the Goat Ale House in Shire
Lane. He fell at last to the down-stairs eating-houses, where his
table-mates were hackney coachmen, servants poorly paid or unemployed,
and poverty-stricken devils and unsuccessful rascals of every sort. It
was here that his fortune took an upward course again.
Appealed to, one day, in a low tavern, to settle a card dispute between
two bloated, sore-faced fellows who had come to the point of accusing
each other of being, one a footpad and the other a grave robber, Dick
acted the umpire to the satisfaction of both, and then went on to do a
few astonishing things with their cards. Others in the tavern gathered
round him, until presently, seeing the crowd and the interest both
increasing, Dick observed that his time was valuable and that he could
not afford to show any more skill for nothing. But the body-stealer
refused to receive the dirty cards handed back to him by Dick, and the
footpad speedily took up a collection, with such a "money-or-your-life"
air that a hatful of greasy coins was soon raised to induce Dick to go
on with his tricks. As many of these tricks were of old Tom's invention,
they differed from those with which the London scamps were familiar.
The footpad and the resurrectionist now persuaded Dick to go to another
tavern, where they opened the way for his apparently extemporaneous
performances, and where they raised good sums for him. He wondered at
first at the zeal with which they worked to enrich him, but he presently
saw that they, pretending to be chance observers, were quietly making
bets with other spectators on the results of certain of his card
manipulations. He thereupon left off, and escaped from this undesired
partnership. But he now engaged an honest, impoverished hack writer,
whom he met in an eating-cellar, to sit at tavern tables with him and
appear an interested observer of his card tricks, enlist the crowd's
attention, and suggest the inevitable passing around of the hat. This
combination continued for a week, during which time the low taverns were
visited in succession, from Whitefriars to St. Catherine's, from
Cripplegate to Southwark. Dick's earnings consisted only of what the
spectators willingly gave for their amusement, but at the week's end
that amount sufficed for the purchase of a good suit of clothes at a
tailor's in the Strand, and for another purpose besides, which Dick,
once more clad like a gentleman, speedily set out upon.
He went boldly back to Pall Mall, ran across several acquaintances to
whom Lord George Winston had made him known, and got one of them to
introduce him to a certain respectable-looking house in Covent Garden;
and in that house, whose interior showed an activity not promised by its
outside, he won at faro an amount that filled every other player at the
table with resentful envy. When he left, he felt himself again a made
man; his pockets were heavy with money.
The night was well advanced when he issued from the gambling-house,
enjoying the relief and the fresh air after the excitement and heat of
the rooms. He walked to the Strand and turned towards Temple Bar,
intending to sup at the Turk's Head Coffee-house. When he reached the
Strand end of Catherine Street, he was accosted, with more than ordinary
importunity, by one of the most miserable-looking of the frail creatures
that walked the street there. As he was in the act of avoiding her, she
called out his name in sudden recognition, and he then knew her as the
gay young woman of High Holborn whom he had met at Vauxhall.
Struck with pity to see in so sad a plight a person recently so
prosperous, he could not but walk along with her to hear her story. She
had lost the means of support that had enabled her to live in a good
neighborhood and flaunt her finery at Vauxhall, Ranelagh, and the
Hampstead Assembly. She lodged no longer in High Holborn, nor even in
Butcher's Row; in fact, she knew not where she was to pass that night.
She showed, through all her cast-down demeanor, a decided reawakening of
regard for Dick, and even hinted, after they had talked for some time,
that her loss of favor had arisen from her acceptance of his escort from
Vauxhall. So Dick gave her a few shillings for her immediate
necessities, and told her to call at his lodging in Green Arbor Court on
the morrow, when they would discuss what might be done for her. It was
at her own suggestion that his residence was selected as the place of
meeting.
But, on the morrow, she did not call at the appointed time. So Dick went
out to attend to business of pressing importance, which was no other
than to buy a new black suit and other necessaries. In the afternoon he
went to Pall Mall and renewed acquaintances, saying he had returned to
London the day before yesterday. Pumping a young gentleman whom he knew
to be on close terms with the Mallby family, he learned that the
dazzling heiress was still in town and that a place had been taken for
her for that night's performance at the little theatre in the Haymarket.
Dick hastened to secure a seat as near as possible to the box in which
Miss Mallby was to be.
In the evening, which was that of Wednesday, July 10, attired in his
best, Dick occupied a seat in the pit, in the midst of a crowded
audience, and had the satisfaction of seeing not only the heiress, but
also their Majesties, George III. and Queen Charlotte, who both laughed
immoderately at Mr. Foote as "Lady Pentweazle,"--especially when he
appeared under a vast head-dress filled with feathers, in exaggeration
of the reigning mode.
It was some time before Dick's admiring gaze held the attention of Miss
Mallby, which it caught while she scanned the crowded house from her
box; and some time after that before she recalled who he was. But when
she did recognize him, it was with a smile so radiant that Lord Alderby,
then standing at her side, turned quite red and pale successively, and
glared at Dick with a most deadly expression. In response to a slight
movement of her fan, Dick forced his way to her, between acts, and had a
brief chat about the audience, the weather, his supposed absence from
town, Lord George Winston, and such matters, which in themselves
certainly contained nothing to warrant the mischievous smiles on her
part, and the languishing glances on his, that accompanied the talk.
Any one but Dick and Lord Alderby could have seen that the lady's sole
motive was a desire to keep his lordship jealous. But Dick took all
signs as they appeared on the surface, and when he left the playhouse it
was with a flattering delusion that her hopes of seeing him soon again
were from the heart. He did not observe that Lord Alderby, before
handing Miss Mallby into her coach, pointed him out to a footman and
hurriedly whispered some instructions.
Dick went on air to his room in Green Arbor Court,--for he intended to
retain his lodging there until he should find a residence perfectly to
his taste. He laughed to think of a gentleman of his figure coming home
to Green Arbor Court, and wondered whether such contrast was typical of
any one's else career, as it was of his.
The next day, to his astonishment,--for he supposed the Vauxhall girl to
be the only outside person knowing where he lived,--he received in his
wretched room a visit from a man dressed like a servant but evidently
horrified at the rickety surroundings. This person, being assured by
Dick that the latter was Mr. Richard Wetheral, handed him a letter, and
fled forthwith. The letter, on clean plain paper, and in an ill-formed
but fine feminine hand, read thus:
"HOUNERD SIR:
"I mak bolde to tell you for heavings sak taike outher lodgings
and do not go neer them wch you now live att--tis a qestchun of
life or Deth and sure do not go neer them at nite, this nite above
all--do not waite a minute but take outher wons att wonse--from
Won that noes and wch deesirs you noe harm yr respeckfull an
dutyfull servt."
Dick was completely puzzled. What danger could he be in, through
remaining at his present abode? Who could be his unknown warner? Not the
Vauxhall girl, for she had written her name for him on a card, and this
was not her handwriting. The quality and cleanliness of the paper
indicated a person living in good case,--perhaps a maid-servant in some
fine house. Then he recalled the face of the man who had brought the
letter, and whom, at the moment, he had thought he had seen somewhere
before. Recollecting singly each incident of his life in London, he at
last located the man's face. It was that of a footman at the Mallbys'
house in Grosvenor Square. But what maid-servant in that house could
have noticed Dick? Indeed, what person in that house had done so but
Miss Mallby herself? So the heiress, to avoid discovery in the matter,
might have caused her maid to send the warning. Now what possible danger
to Dick could Miss Mallby be aware of, save one that Lord Alderby might
have threatened or planned? But would Lord Alderby have informed her of
such plans? Perhaps so, in a moment of anger, as men will anticipate the
pleasure of revenge, by announcing that revenge in advance; perhaps not.
If not, one or two of his lordship's servants would probably have been
in his confidence, and thus the cat might have been let out of the bag
to one of Miss Mallby's maids. So Dick concluded that, if he was in any
danger, it must be from Lord Alderby, his only powerful enemy. But he
resolved to disdain the warning, nevertheless, and he went forth to look
in a leisurely way for suitable lodgings, as he had intended to do,
though he would not move into them for two or three days.
But he wasted the day in riding about London, viewing things he had not
seen before. In the evening the whim seized him to go to Ranelagh. It
was not until late at night, when he turned from Fleet Street, through
the market, that he thought of the morning's warning. He felt a
momentary tremor, so dark and deserted was the narrow street leading to
Breakneck Stairs. But he braced himself within, and strode along with
apparent blitheness; yet he could not help thinking that Breakneck
Stairs would be an excellent place for an attack by his enemies. Peering
forward in the darkness, he turned from the border of Fleet Ditch, and
mounted the first steps. At the side of the stairs, there ascended a row
of houses, all now in deep shadow.
He had reached the landing between the two flights, without incident,
when suddenly from the shadow at the side a dark lantern was flashed
upon his face, and out rushed three or four burly figures. "Heave the
spalpeen down the shtairs!" cried a voice from the shadow,--a voice that
Dick instantly recognized as Captain Delahenty's, and from which he knew
the attack was indeed at Lord Alderby's instigation.
The men were armed with bludgeons, and three rushed upon Dick at once.
But he had no mind to make his bed in Fleet Ditch; hence he met the
middle rascal with a violent kick in the belly, and, getting instantly
between the other two, shot out both arms simultaneously, clutching at
their throats. But now the captain and one other man rushed out from
the shadow, and Dick thought all was up.
Suddenly there came a cry from the top of the stairs, "Hold off, that
man belongs to us!" There followed a flashing of other lanterns, and a
scuffle of footsteps down from the top. In another moment, Dick's first
assailants were resisting this new force, who had fallen upon them with
bludgeons. A sharp, quick fight, in which Dick himself took no part
whatever, left the newcomers in possession of the landing and of him,
while Captain Delahenty and his gang were carrying their broken heads
rapidly down the stairs and off towards Fleet Market.
"I thank you for the rescue," said Dick to the stalwart leader of the
victorious party, as that leader held up a lantern before Dick's face.
"You may call it a rescue, if you like," growled the leader, "but some
would rather die in a street brawl than swing at Tyburn. Edward Lawson,
otherwise known as Captain Ted," and the man, who had pronounced these
names in an official manner, waited as if for Dick to answer to them.
"If you mean that you take me for a person of that name," said Dick, "I
have to tell you that you are disappointed."
"Oho!" was the answer. "That game ain't worthy of you, captain! But if
you wish to play it out, you can play it out in Bow Street, and at the
Old Bailey after that. I arrest you, Edward Lawson, commonly called
Captain Ted, on a charge of highway robbery. Here's the warrant, which
God knows I've carried around long enough! You know the usual formality,
captain."
And at this the bewildered Dick unresistingly saw himself seized by
his arms, while another of the constables--for constables these
were--adorned him with a pair of handcuffs. He was then marched back to
Fleet Street--for it appeared he was no common prisoner, for the nearest
roundhouse--and thence, by way of the Strand and other familiar
thoroughfares, to a building in Bow Street, celebrated for the fact that
Fielding wrote "Tom Jones" therein.
But another Fielding presided there now. Dick received free lodging till
morning, and then he was escorted to the court-room close at hand, to
take his turn as one among a crowd of anxious wretches of both sexes,
who stood in a railed enclosure at one side of a vacant space, before
the table at which sat the grave magistrate in all the vestments and
solemnity of his office. To Dick's amazement, he beheld in an opposite
railed space certain faces with which he was acquainted,--those of his
George Street landlady's son, the Monmouth Street shopman to whom he had
sold the clothes, and the Vauxhall girl. Dick wondered what the whole
business meant, and what it would lead to. At last his turn came.
The magistrate glanced at him indifferently, and addressed him coldly,
in a few words whose meaning Dick did not take pains to gather. Then a
clerk at the table read monotonously a long document, wherein it
appeared that a number of people had sworn to certain occurrences,
which, as far as Dick could see, did not concern him in the least;
namely, that Moreton Charteris, gentleman, of Bloomsbury Square, had
been robbed of money, valuables, and wardrobe, early in the previous
February, by a highwayman who had stopped his coach near Turnham Green;
that a woman who had quarrelled at Reading with one Edward Lawson, known
as Captain Ted, knew the said Lawson to have been the robber of Mr.
Charteris, and, on her threatening to inform against him, to have fled
towards Bath in one of the stolen suits of clothes; and that Mr.
Charteris's servant had, in June, recognized one of the stolen suits in
a Monmouth Street shop.
And now the shopkeeper in the witness box identified that suit as the
one so recognized, and Dick as the man who had sold it; and from further
testimony Dick could infer that the servant's discovery had sent Bow
Street runners to the shopman, who had referred them for information
regarding Dick's whereabouts to the landlady's son, who in turn had
sent them to the Vauxhall girl; and that through her treachery they had
learned his place of lodging. In fact, that grateful creature had stood
in wait with the constables at the head of Breakneck Stairs, and
announced, when his first assailants' lantern had lit up his features,
that he was the man the constables wanted. She had, though, kept out of
his sight, from a greater sense of shame than many of her class would
have shown. As for the attack by the Delahenty party, it had been as
great a surprise to the waiting constables as to Dick.
And now Dick was hastily identified by two bold-looking women, as the
aforesaid Edward Lawson, otherwise Captain Ted. He remembered that the
whimsical gentleman met at Taunton had resembled him, and he perceived
now, considering the danger of being betrayed by the woman quarrelled
with, and of being far sought by the Bow Street men, why that gentleman
had taken the caprice of exchanging good clothes for bad. In putting
this and that together, as he stood in the dock, Dick lost track of the
court's proceedings, and it came like a sudden blow when he saw Sir John
Fielding gaze hard upon him, and heard Sir John Fielding commit him, as
Edward Lawson, to the jail of Newgate, there to be kept in custody until
he should be brought forth to stand his trial!
To Newgate, to await trial for highway robbery, the penalty of which
was death by hanging; readily identified as the guilty man by those who
would stick to their oath; unable to prove by any person in England that
he was not that man, for all his acquaintances had been made since the
exchange of clothes,--a pleasant series of thoughts to keep the
adventurous Master Dick company in the hackney coach that rattled
him swiftly away from the Bow Street court to the great, vile,
many-chambered stone cage where such gallows-birds as Master Jack
Sheppard and Monsieur Claude Duval had lodged before him! And if those
thoughts were not enough, there was that of the cart-ride out Holborn to
Tyburn tree, a picturesque ending for a journey over so many hills and
so far away!