IN WHICH I RECEIVE A COMMISSION AND SUFFER A CHECK
The execution of my design was precipitated by a certain accident which
at that time befell me, and was by me regarded as happy or untoward,
according as I dwelt upon the recognition of merit it implied, or upon
the delayed return which it necessitated, to my intercourse with Idonia
Avenon.
It happened then, that about eight or nine days after that riotous
siege of Petty Wales, I was at work upon my high stool in Chequer Lane,
where I was deeply engaged in computing the value of the several shares
the merchants of our Company were willing to take, upon charter party
with the owners of a certain ship called _The Saracen's Head_, Captain
Spurrier, that was about to set forth upon a voyage into Argiers, and
thereafter, unless otherwise ordered, yet further to the eastward.
Being so occupied as I say, there entered the counting-house a servant
of Sir Edward Osborne's that desired of Mr. Procter to tell him whether
one Denis Cleeve were there in that place; to which he answering that
he was, and that I was the man he inquired after, the servant saluted
me very properly and bade me go with him to the Governor's, that is, to
Sir Edward Osborne's, who expected me at his house.
Marvelling what this should intend, I nevertheless made haste to follow
the servant, and was soon after ushered into a great chamber,
wainscoted very high up with walnut-wood, and with a table at one end
of it, whereon was a woollen cloth spread, very rich, and having the
coat and crest of the knight's family woven into the midst of it.
About the walls were hung many fair pictures, all of men save one,
which was of a maid of about ten years, that had a very winsome smiling
face and clustered curls about it. In this chamber I was left alone to
wait for some small space, when after there came in to me Sir Edward,
very gravely, together with his secretary, who straight sat him down at
the table and mended his pen.
Upon their entering I did my courtesy, which the merchant quietly
received, and then, motioning me to a chair, immediately commenced:
"I have sent for you, Mr. Cleeve," said he, sitting down also, "because
I have had a good report of you from him in whose charge you work, Mr.
Procter, who moreover hath made the addition that you are of a spirit
somewhat higher than seemeth necessary a scrivener should have, they
being for the most part a mild and inoffensive sort of men--what say
you, Mr. Secretary?"
The man of the pen seemed greatly taken aback at this direct challenge
to his manhood, and could but stammer out that secretaries were
doubtless more faithful than arrogant, stealing at the same time such a
spleenful look upon me as I thought he would have sent his quill and
ink-horn after it.
"Faithful--ay," said Master Osborne, with a little smile about the
eyes, "but nowise arrogant. I hope you be not arrogant either, Mr.
Cleeve," he added, fixing his gaze upon me.
"I hope not, sir," said I, "nor think I am not either, for, as Mr.
Procter hath often told me, there is nothing checks a man's pride like
the book-keeping, that makes him put down a thing on both sides an
accompt in a just balance; which pride forbids a man to do."
"It is as you say," cried the Governor, mighty pleased, "and you answer
well. But now tell me--and it is necessary you should deal with me
openly--do you truly love your ledger?"
I thought upon this question a few moments ere I replied that I could
not say I loved it, but that I thought it a necessary book; that I
sometimes found a singular delight in the pursuing of the intricacies
of some great reckoning, but that I hated the casting of page upon page
of moneys, which seemed to make a miser of my head though I was none by
my pocket. In fine, that I honoured accountancy as a servant but could
not live with it as a friend.
The merchant listened with no small amusement until I had done, and
then sat still, dallying with a packet of papers he had on the table
before him, from which at length he took one, and, running his eyes
over it carelessly, said--
"Upon what task were you engaged when I sent for you hither?"
I said, upon the business of the apportioning the affreightment of the
_Saracen's Head_.
"Know you aught of the Captain of that barque?" said he.
"It is one Master Spurrier," I said, "a Harwich man, that was one time
Captain of the _Crane_, a ship of the Queen's."
He nodded the while I spoke, as having knowledge of these particulars
already; and then demanded whether I were advised of how he came to
leave Her Majesty's service, which I had not, and said so.
"Give him the Testament, Mr. Secretary," said the Governor, and made
him propose the oath to me that whatsoever I now heard I should be
secret in and faithful to all just commands laid upon me to fulfil
them. Which done, he leaned back in his deep chair and said--
"Mr. Cleeve, I am about to put into your hands a commission that may
carry with it some difficulty and more danger, from neither of which
have I any fear that you will anyways shrink. But there needeth more
yet than either courage or a common promptness to this affair, wherein
must be used an aptitude to see without seeming to do so, and to assume
such a negligence of behaviour as none that watches you (for you shall
be watched) may perceive you be attentive to aught beyond your proper
and understood duties." He paused awhile, and I was glad of this
respite, for my heart was beating so high that I could scarce conceal
my agitation. Nevertheless I had commanded myself before he renewed
his discourse.
"I have received intelligence but two days since, from Her Majesty's
principal Secretary, that there be in this realm a sort of dissatisfied
men that, taking advantage of our present dissensions with Spain, and
hoping to secure to themselves an infamous benefit by the same, have
privily made offer of their services to our enemy, as to discover the
nature of our defences and extent of our preparedness to war. So much
is certainly known, and many names of such spies are set down. But, as
is always found in these devil's hucksterings, there is as it were a
frayed edge and doubtful margin of disloyalty, upon which a man may
stand in question how to appraise it; and of this quality is our Master
for this voyage, I mean Captain Spurrier. Something that the Governor
of Biscay hath let fall (that lies now in the Tower) inclines their
lordships of the Council to attach this Spurrier instantly for a
traitor; but yet they would not altogether so, hoping as well for
absolute proof of his villainy as that, by our apparent slackness, he
may be led to betray to one supposed his ordinary companion, the full
scope and ambit of his dealings; which being (to use the figure) noted
in our chart as shoals, we may circumvent them and come safe to harbour.
"I design, therefore, that you go supercargo of the goods of this
vessel, that is to sail from the Pool in a week's time, and mark each
particular accident of the voyage, as what ships spoken, and what
course taken, together with the customary behaviour of the Captain, and
with whom of the officers he chiefly consorts. If he have any books or
papers you may overlook their general tenour but not handle them, for
sometimes they be traps set for that very purpose. At Argiers, if you
get so far and be not, as I suspect you will be, waylaid by some
Spanish ship of war, you may send me word; but yet either way, observe
your man closely; to whom, so far as may be possible, you shall make
yourself necessary. I say no more. It may happen that my advice shall
receive supplement from Her Majesty's Council, to whom I have already
given in your name as the agent I think likeliest to their occasions;
who on their part received it very well, knowing your father for an
honourable man and a loyal gentleman."
The Governor rose from his place, and, bowing slightly, went from the
chamber, leaving me alone with his secretary, who, with less courtesy
than I thought he might have showed, instructed me in the customary
duties of a supercargo, and further bade me apply to him for whatever
money would be necessary for clothing and the rest, as well as arms,
with which I was now wholly unprovided.
In conclusion he warned me to be discreet, wagging his head three or
four times as he said it, I suppose for my better apprehension of his
meaning.
"Oh, I warrant you, Mr. Secretary," said I, "I will not write my
suspicions, nor speak them in soliloquy, nor yet clap my ear to the
keyhole, unless I see cause."
"I have a mind to clap my cane to your worship's jolthead," quoth the
secretary, "until you see a thousand stars."
No sooner were we parted (friends enough) and I in the street, than the
desire to see Idonia and bid her bless me to my sea-faring, came so hot
upon me as I made off directly to the thieves' lane of Petty Wales, and
neglecting all discretion, scrupled not to enter it publicly. But the
door by which I had formerly gained ready admittance was now closed,
and so strongly barred that I knew at the first glance 'twas impossible
of access; while the one small window beside it was likewise shuttered
up and made firm. I rapped twice or thrice as loud as I dared, but
none answering, I went away at length, exceeding downcast. On the day
following I came again; and the day after that too; but was still
repulsed by the defences that I supposed the thieves, and perhaps Skene
too, had raised against any attacks of the soldiery, or of the
populace, that were full as formidable as any army, and more cruel
because without discipline. Meanwhile the day nearly approached when
our barque was to set sail, and I with my secret strange commission to
go with her. I had writ a large letter to my father at Tolland, in
which I made mention of this voyage, begging him to remember me in his
prayers, and promising him withal, that I would not run into
unnecessary dangers, nor yet (as some have done) be so busy in my
office as to smell out treasons where none was meant. As to the nature
of my trust I could not deal explicitly with him, because of the oath I
was bound by, but I gave him to understand that our cargo of woollen
stuffs was the least part of my care, and whether safe in the hold, or
at the first occasion to be made jettison of, my owners would (I
thought) require no particular account of it at my hands. With the
writing of this, and one visit I was called upon to pay to my lords of
the Council, in which I met with more great men and ran into a thicker
mist of wisdom than hath been my fortune either before or since; with
these matters (I say) I eked out my waiting time heavily enough, for I
was necessarily released from my daily attendance at the
counting-house, having besides much to see to in the getting of such
clothing and arms as the crabbed secretary thought necessary to my
equipment.
Well, walking thus very disconsolate one evening upon the Bridge, where
I had been concerned with a certain armourer there to buy my new sword
and hangers, whom should I light upon but, Master Andrew Plat, the
lyrick poet? At least by the back I judged it to be him, for he looked
another way, and was, I soon perceived, about the game he had so
decried to me as a nefarious pursuit and never by him followed, namely
stealing; for he stole silk goods from one of the open stalls that are
here set up; the which he so skilfully accomplished as I saw he was no
freshman, but rather an exhibitioner and graduated master.
"Your Spring hath issued into a passing fruitful Summer," I said very
low in his ear, "and I think you did well to leave your lyricks for
this art, and the thankless Apollo for thieving Mercury."
He leapt about with a white face, gasping.
"I have stolen nothing in the world," said he.
"No? Then come with me, Master Poet, for I must learn this way of
getting stuff that is neither paid for nor yet stolen," and taking him
under the arm I carried him with me at a great pace along the Bridge,
pausing not till we were come near to the end of Thames Street, and in
full view of the watch set about the battered door of Skene's house.
"I go no further this way," cried Plat, struggling to get free.
"We have nothing to fear, friend, being honest men."
"Loose me, I say."
"On conditions I will."
"Ah--conditions?"
"That you admit me to your house."
"Never! Besides I have no house. I am homeless and destitute, master;
indeed I am in bitter want."
"I will mend that," said I, and drew forth a gold piece from the pouch
at my belt. "But now, ponder the alternatives well, and as you choose,
so shall it be yours to have. Either you grant me presently the
liberty of that part of Petty Wales which you were used to inhabit, and
take this noble for your pains, or else I will hale you to yonder
watch, and denounce your theft of those silks you have about you."
He shivered throughout at my proposals, and after hung as limp upon my
arm as a drenched clout.
"If I should do as you desire, good master," said he, in a voice I
could scarce hear for its thinness, "our Captain would kill you out of
hand."
"Forewarned is forearmed," said I. "Your next reason?"
"That the place is locked."
"Otherwise I should have had no need of you. The next?"
"Oh," he wailed pitifully, "do not drive me thus, master. I dare not
obey you."
"Forward then with a good heart," said I cheerfully, and bore him a
further ten paces down the street.
"Stay, stay," cried the poet, "I yield, I capitulate, I open the gates
... and now give me my gold."
I did so, and released him, when, cautioning me to be silent, he left
the street by a certain byway, and threading such devious passages as
in the growing darkness I could scarce distinguish to follow him by, he
led me on, up and down, through courts and alleys, beneath penthouse
roofs and neglected arches, until I came near to doubting his good
faith and was about to use my old device of retaining his allegiance at
the sword's point, when he came out suddenly into the lane, at the
opposite end to that I had before entered it from Tower Hill; and so
stood still before the secret low door. In the little light there was
(for the lane was lit by no lantern nor lamp of any sort) I could not
see whether the door was still barricaded, but judged it to be so by
Mr. Plat's climbing up about a fathom's height of the naked wall,
setting his feet within some shallow crevices he knew of, but I could
not perceive, until he made his standing sure, when, he giving a little
strange cry like a bird's, immediately a stone of the wall seemed to be
removed, some three spans' breadth, and into the opening thus made Plat
incontinently disappeared. I was mad to be fooled thus, for I
questioned not but he would now leave me to shift for myself: when with
an equal suddenness his head was thrust forth again, and he said--
"If you list you may mount up hither, though I warn you a second time,
that all here within, me only excepted, be ungodly thieves, pilferers,
cut-throat knaves, railers against the State, having no honesty nor
purpose to do well, illiterate, owning no government, lawless, base men
that acknowledge no merit of authors nor rules of prosody, ignorant
beasts, amongst whom I, a singular sweet singer, remain until a better
fate calls me hence to crown me with never-fading bay and myrtle," and
so, without more ado, he went away from the aperture, which
nevertheless he left open, as he had promised; but whither he went I
know not, for I did not see him after, nor have I come by his published
poems that were to render him immortal.
I gazed after him a great while, as in doubt whether he would return,
but then shifting my new sword behind me, I addressed myself to the
ascent of the wall, which, after much scraping of my flesh, and one or
two falls headlong, I surmounted, and had my hands fast upon the nether
edge of the vent. It was but a brief while ere I had drawn myself up
and scrambled through; when I found I stood in a narrow and void
chamber, very foul and ill-smelling, from which I was glad enough to be
gone.
But scarce had I gone forth into the passage beyond, when I heard such
a tumult and angry debate of voices as remembering Plat's assertion of
the Trappist silence that was in this house enjoined upon pain of death
I could not but suppose some very especial cause to have hurried the
thieves into so presumptuous an offence. It was now altogether night
within the building, and with these stifled cries sounding in my ears,
and execrations of men I knew to be desperate villains, I confess my
heart quailed within me and my strength all leaked away, so that I
could not even fly by the way I had come, but stood with my back to the
wall, sweating and staring, with never a thought but to remain
unperceived. Of the fashion and plan of the house I was perfectly
ignorant, having but once before been within it, and then trusting to
another to guide me through its secret recesses; yet I remembered that
there was somewhere that great wide staircase which Plat had said was
the common room and meeting-place of the thieves, where they transacted
their affairs and shared their food and treasure. 'Twas, then, with a
clutch of horrid surprise that I now saw, low down before me, a sort of
men bearing lanterns that issued from the shadows, and began to scale
the stairs; for by the uncertain light I could both distinguish them
and that I myself was standing in one of the open galleries that
surrounded the stairhead and overlooked the body of the hall. But no
sooner had I understood this, than any further discovery was thwarted
by a man's brushing past me in the dark, so close I could hear him
fetch his breath, and instantly upon that there followed the click of a
snaphance.
"Stay there, you creeping lice!" he said, speaking in a cool middle
voice, "or I will shoot you down, man by man, where you stand."
At this unlooked-for interruption, the men upon the stair came to a
sudden stand, while some that had advanced higher than the rest, fell
back, so that all hung crowded together, their lanterns raised and
their eyes seeking upward for the man that held them at bay. I have
never seen so dastardly and scarce human visages as they showed, some
with bleared eyes and matted hair, others dark and vengeful, their
brows and cheeks scarred with wounds or open sores. Here a man went
half-naked like a savage Indian; there one wore a ragged coat guarded
with silver; all were armed, though with such a hazardous sort of
weapons, that but for the assured skill and practice with which they
wielded them, one might have dared oppose the whole rout single-handed.
But in their hands these weapons seemed proper as claws to beasts, or
tushes to a wild boar, and instinctively, as the man raised his pistol,
I drew my sword from the sheath. The noise I made attracted the man's
attention to me, and he would perhaps have spoken, had not the
bloodthirsty rout, recking no further opposition, sprung forward again.
"Hold, I say," cried the man, and this time with a dreadful menacing
vehemence. "I am your Captain, and you know me well. Another step,
and there's a soul writhing in hell. Back, go, you and your eggers-on!
I understand this business, as I understand too who 'twas inflamed you
to mutiny."
"You took my wife, you scum!" shouted a great fellow clad in a
shipman's garb, that held a rust-bitten cutlass in his hand, and
struggled forward through the press.
"Ay, did I, Jack?" quoth the Captain satirically, "but 'twas to provide
you with another bride, a bonny lass that the Churchmen say we shall
all embrace by turns. 'Tis that world-old witch I mean, named Death,"
and at the word, he discharged his piece full in the other's blotched
face, and laid him bleeding on the topmost stair.
A great hush came over the mutineers when they saw this deed, that
moreover so sickened me that I had already raised my sword to stab the
murderer in the back and have done with him, when the thieves suddenly
broke with a yell of defiance and charged upward in the mass. What I
would have done had I had longer to deliberate I know not, but in
default of any counsel to direct me, I sprang into action on the side
of the very man I had intended to slay, and shoulder to shoulder with
him, fought down those ghastly cruel faces and reaching hands.
It was soon enough over. They were no match against the arms we used,
and the Captain calmly loading and discharging his piece, the while I
kept the stairhead clear with my sword, we made them give back foot by
foot, until at length each was scrambling to be the hindmost, and even
used his knife upon his companion in the urgency of his retreat. All
the lanterns were out now, save one that a dead man held in his stark
and upraised hand; and by that light the Captain wiped his smoking
barrel clean.
"It is well concluded," said he, "and I thank you for your help, young
sir."
I said nothing, so deeply did I loathe him.
"We must be gone," he said, "and that quickly. The watch is up, and
the whole place will be searched before dawn. They will be caught like
rats in a drain," he added softly, drawing in his breath. "Follow me."
He led me to the room I had left, and helped me to get through the hole
in the masonry, after which he followed me.
"This way," said he, and took me through the lane until he came onto
Tower Hill, when, skirting the precincts of the Tower, we crept
unchallenged through the postern in the wall and turned down a narrow
cart-way to the eastward, I beside him, but neither speaking one word,
until after an hour or more, with waiting and going forward, we got to
Wapping a little ere daybreak, to a desolate mean tavern of shipmen
close beside the river, which we entered without question, for none
seemed to be stirring; and here, in the filthy guestroom, the Captain
flung himself down.
"A good night's work, master," said he, grinning, "in which you did
your part so well that it grieves me much to name you my prisoner."