“To Saturday’s work! A straight eye and a firm hand!” he cried. “Drink man, drink! For a hunting we will go, and a hunting we will go! And if we don’t flush the game at Turnham Green, call me a bungler!”
I heard one of the elder men protest, with something between a curse and a groan, that the fool would proclaim it at Charing Cross next; but, thinking only to be gone (and the man being so drunk that it was evident resistance would but render him more obstinate, and imperil my skin), I took the cup and drank, and gave it back to him. By that time two or three of the more prudent — if any in that company could be called prudent — had risen and joined us; who when he would have given another toast, forced him away, scolding him soundly for a leaky chatterer, and a fool who would ruin all with the drink.
Freed from his importunities, I waited for no second permission; but got me out and down the stairs. At the foot of which the landlord’s scared face and the waiting, watching eyes of the drawers and servants, who still lingered there, listening, put the last touch to the picture of madness and recklessness I had witnessed above. Here were informers and evidences ready to hand and more than enough, if the beggars in the street, and the orange girls, and night walkers who prowled the market were not sufficient, to bring home to its authors the treason they bawled and shouted overhead.
The thought that such rogues should endanger my neck, and good, honest men’s necks, made my blood run cold and hot at once; hot, when I thought of their folly, cold, when I recalled Mr. Ashton executed in ‘90 for carrying treasonable letters, or Anderton, betrayed, and done to death for printing the like. I could understand Ferguson’s methods; they had reason in them, and if I hated them and loathed them, they were not so very dangerous. For he had disguises and many names and lodgings, and lurked from one to another under cover of night; and if he sowed treason, he sowed it stealthily and in darkness, with all the adjuncts which prudence and tradition dictated; he boasted to those only whom he had in his power, and used the like instruments. But the outbreak of noisy, rampant, reckless rebellion which I had witnessed — and which it seemed to me must be known to all London within twenty-four hours — filled me with panic. It so put me beside myself, that when the girl who had employed me on that errand met me in the street, I cursed her and would have passed her; being unable to say another word, lest I should weep. But she turned with me, and keeping pace with me asked me continually what it was; and getting no answer, by-and-by caught my arm, and forced me to stand in the passage beyond Bedford House and close to the Strand. Here she repeated her question so fiercely — asking me besides if I were mad, and the like — and showed herself such a termagant, that I had no option but to answer her.
“Mad?” I cried, passionately. “Aye, I am mad — to have anything to do with such as you.”
“But what is it? What has happened?” she persisted, peering at me; and so barring the way that I could not pass.
“Could you not hear?”
“I could hear that they were drinking,” she answered. “I knew that, and therefore I thought that you should go to them.”
“And run the risk?”
“Well, you are a man,” she answered coolly.
At that I stood so taken aback — for she spoke it with meaning and a sort of sting — that for a minute I did not answer her. Then, “Is not a man’s life as much to him, as a woman’s is to her?” I said with indignation.
“A man’s!” she replied. “Aye, but not a mouse’s! I will tell you what, Mr. Taylor, or Mr. Price, or whatever your name is — —”
“Call me what you like!” I said. “Only let me go!”
“Then I will call you Mr. Craven!” she retorted bitterly. “Or Mr. Daw in Peacock’s feathers. And let you go. Go, go, you coward! Go, you craven!”
It was not the most gracious permission, and stung me; but I took it sullenly, and getting away from her went down the passage towards the Strand, leaving her there; not gladly, although to go had been all I had asked a moment before. No man, indeed, could have more firmly resolved to wrench himself from the grasp of the gang whose tool this little spitfire was; nor to a man bred to peaceful pursuits (as I had been) and flung into such an imbroglio as this — wherein to dance on nothing seemed to be the alternative whichever way I looked — was it a matter of so much consequence to be called coward by a child, that I must hesitate for that. Add to this, that the place and time, a dingy passage on a dark night with rain falling and a chill wind blowing, and none abroad but such as honest men would avoid, were not incentives to rashness or adventure.
And yet — and yet when it came to going, nullis vestigiis retrorsum, as the Latins say, I proved to be either too much or too little of a man, these arguments notwithstanding; too little of a man to weigh reason justly against pride, or too much of a man to hear with philosophy a girl’s taunt. When I had gone fifty yards, therefore, I halted; and then in a moment, went back. Not slowly, however, but in a gust of irritation; so that for a very little I could have struck the girl for the puling face and helplessness that gave her an advantage over me. I found her in the same place, and asked her roughly what she wanted.
“A man,” she said.
“Well,” I answered sullenly, “what is it?”
“Have I found one? that is the question,” she retorted keenly. And at that again, I could have had it in my heart to strike her across her scornful face. “My uncle is at least a man.”
“He is a bad one, curse him!” I cried in a fury.
She looked at me coolly. “That is better,” she said. “If your deeds were of a piece with your words you would be no man’s slave. His least of all, Mr. Price!”
“You talk finely,” I said, my passion cooling, as I began to read a covert meaning in her tone and words, and that she would be at something. “It comes well from you, who do his errands day and night!”
“Or find someone to do them,” she answered with derision.
“Well, after this you will have to find someone else,” I cried, warming again.
“Ah, if you would keep your word!” she cried in a different tone, clapping her hands softly, and peering at me. “If you would keep your word.”
Seeing more clearly than ever that she would be at something, and wishing to know what it was, “Try me,” I said. “What do you mean?”
“It is plain,” she answered, “what I mean. Carry no more messages! Be sneak and spy no longer! Cease to put your head in a noose to serve rogues’ ends! Have done, man, with cringing and fawning, and trembling at big words. Break off with these villains who hold you, put a hundred miles between you and them, and be yourself! Be a man!”
“Why, do you mean your uncle?” I cried, vastly surprised.
“Why not?” she said.
“But — if you feel that way, why do his bidding yourself?” I answered, doubting all this might be a trap of that cunning devil’s. “If I sneak and spy, who spies on me, miss?”
“I do,” she said, leaning against the wall of Bedford Garden, where one of Heming’s new lights, set up at the next corner, shone full on her face. “And I am weary of it.”
“But if you are weary of it — —”
“If I am weary of it, why don’t I free myself instead of preaching to you?” she answered. “First, because I am a woman, Mr. Wiseman.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” I retorted.
“Don’t you?” she answered bitterly. “Then I will tell you. My uncle feeds me, clothes me, gives me a roof — and sometimes beats me. If I run away as I bid you run away, where shall I find board and lodging, or anything but the beating? A man comes and goes; a woman, if she has not someone to answer for her, must to the Justice and then to the Round-house and be set to beating hemp; and her shoulders smarting to boot. Can I get service without a character?”
“No,” I said, “that is true.”
“Or travel without money?”
“No.”
“Or alone — except to Whetstone Park?”
“No.”
“Well, it is fine to be a man then,” she answered, leaning her little shawled head farther and farther back against the wall, and slowly moving it to and fro, while she looked at me from under her eyelashes, “for he can do all. And take a woman with him.”
I started at that, and stared at her, and saw a little colour come into her pale face. But her eyes, far from falling under my gaze, met my eyes with a bold, mischievous look; that gradually, and as she still moved her head to and fro, melted into a smile.
It was impossible to mistake her meaning, and I felt a thrill run through me, such as I had not known for ten years. “Oh,” I said at last, and awkwardly, “I see now.”
“You would have seen long ago if you had not been a fool,” she answered. And then, as if to excuse herself she added — but this I did not understand— “Not that fine feathers make fine birds — I am not such a fool myself, as to think that. But — —”
“But what?” I said, my face warm.
“I am a fool all the same.”
Her eyes falling with that, and her pale face growing to a deeper colour, I had no doubt of the main thing, though I could not follow her precise drift. And I take it, there are few men who, upon such an invitation, however veiled, would not respond. Accordingly I took a step towards the girl, and went, though clumsily, to put my arm round her.
But she pushed me off with a vigour that surprised me; and she mocked me with a face between mischief and triumph; a face that was more like a mutinous boy’s than a girl’s. “Oh, no,” she said. “There is a good deal between this and that, Mr. Price.”
“How?” I said shamefacedly.
“Do you go?” she asked sharply. “Is it settled? That first of all, if you please.”
As to the going — somewhere — I had made up my mind long ago; before I met her, or went into the Seven Stars, or knew that a dozen mad topers were roaring treason about the town, and bidding fair to hang us all. But being of a cautious temper, and seeing conditions which I had not contemplated added to the bargain, and having besides a shrewd idea that I could not afterwards withdraw, I hesitated. “It is dangerous!” I said.
“I will tell you what is dangerous,” she answered, wrathfully, showing her little white teeth as she flashed her eyes at me, “and that is to be where we are. Do you know what they are doing there — in that house?” And she pointed towards the Market, whence we had come.
“No,” I said reluctantly, wishing she would say no more.
“Killing the King,” she answered in a low voice. “It is for Saturday, or Saturday week. He is to be stopped in his coach as he comes from hunting — in the lane between Turnham Green and the river. You can count their chances. They are merry plotters! And now — now,” she continued, “do you know where you stand, Mr. Price, and whether it is dangerous?”
“I know” — I said, trembling at that bloody design, which no whit surprised me since everything I had heard corroborated it— “I know what I have to do.”
“What?” she said.
“Go straight to the Secretary’s office,” I said, “and tell him. Tell him!”
“You won’t do it,” she answered, “or, at least, I won’t.”
“Why?” I asked, atremble with excitement.
“Why?” she echoed, mocking me; and I noticed that not only were her eyes bright, but her lips red. “Why, firstly, Mr. Price, because I want to have done with plots and live honestly; and that is not to be done on blood-money. And secondly, because it is dangerous — as you call it. Do you want to be an evidence, set up for all to point at, and six months after to be decoyed to Wapping, dropped into a dark hold, and carried over to France?”
“God forbid!” I said, aghast at this view of things.
“Then have done with informing,” she answered, with a little spurt of heat. “Or let be, at any rate, until we are safe ourselves and snug in the country. Then if you choose, and you do nothing to hurt my uncle — for I will not have him touched — we may talk of it. But not for money.”
Those words “safe and snug,” telling of a prospect that at that moment seemed of all others the most desirable in the world, dwelt so lovingly on my ear, that in place of hesitation I felt only eagerness and haste.
“I will go!” I said.
“You will?” she said.
“Yes,” I answered.
“And — —”
“And what?” I said, wondering.
She hesitated a moment, and then, “That is for you to say,” she replied, lowering her eyes.
It is possible that I might not have understood her, even then, if I had not marked her face, and seen that her lips were quivering with a sudden shyness, which words and manner in vain belied. She blushed, and trembled; and, lowering her eyes, drew forward the shawl that covered her head, the street-urchin gone out of her. And I, seeing and understanding, had other and new thoughts of her which remained with me. “If you mean that,” I said, clumsily, “I will make you my wife — if you will let me.”
“Well, we’ll see about it, when we get to Romford,” she answered, looking nervously aside, and plucking at the fringe of the shawl. “We have to escape first. And now — listen,” she continued, rapidly, and in her ordinary voice. “My uncle is removing to-morrow to another hiding-place, and I go first with some clothes and baggage. He will not flit himself till it is dark. Do you put your trunk outside your door, and I will take it and send it by the Chelmsford waggon. At noon meet me at Clerkenwell Gate, and we will walk to Romford and hide there until we know how things are going.”
“Why Romford?” I said.
“Why anywhere?” she answered, impatiently.
That was true enough; and seeing in what mood she was, and that out of sheer contrariness she was inclined to be the more shrewish now, because she had melted to me a moment before, I refrained from asking farther questions; listening instead to her minute directions, which were given with as much clearness and perspicuity as if she had dwelt on this escape for a twelvemonth past. It was plain, indeed, that she had not fetched and carried for the famous Ferguson for nothing; nor watched his methods to little purpose. Nor was this all: mingled with this display of precocious skill there constantly appeared a touch of malice and mischief, more natural in a boy than a girl, and seldom found even in boys, where the gutter has not served for a school. And through this again, as through the folds of a shifting gauze, appeared that which gradually and as I listened took more and more a hold on me — the woman.
Yet I suppose that there never was a stranger love-making in the world; if love-making that could be called wherein one at least of us had in mind ten thoughts of fear and death for one of happiness or love; and a pulse attuned rather to the dreary drip of the wet eaves about us, and the monotonous yelp of a cur chained among the stalls, than to the flutter of desire.
And yet, when, our plan agreed upon, and the details settled, we turned homewards and went together through the streets, I could not refrain from glancing at my companion from time to time, in doubt and almost incredulity. When the dream refused to melt, when I found her still moving at my elbow, her small shawled head on a level with my shoulder — when, I say, I found her so, not love, but a sense of companionship and a feeling of gratulation that I was no longer alone, stole for the first time into my mind and comforted me. I had gone so many years through these streets solus et caelebs, that I pricked my ears and pinched myself in sheer astonishment at finding another beside me and other feet keeping time with mine; nor knew whether to be more confounded or relieved by the thought that of all persons’ interests her interests marched with mine.
CHAPTER XX
The clocks had gone midnight, when I parted from Mary at the door of the house and groped my way upstairs to my room; where, throwing off my clothes I lay down, not to sleep, but to resolve endlessly and futilely the plans we had made, and the risks we ran and the thousand issues that might come of either. Cogitation brought me no nearer to a know
ledge of the event, but only heated my brain and increased my impatience; the latter to such a degree that with the first light I was up and moving, and had my trunk packed. Nor did I fail to note the strange and almost incredible turn which now led me to look for support in my flight to the very person whose ominous entrance twenty-four hours earlier had forced me to lay aside the thought.
Long before it could by any chance be necessary I opened my door, and softly carrying out my box, placed it in a dark corner on the landing. After this a great interval elapsed, during which I conjured up a hundred mischances. At length I heard someone afoot opposite; and then the stumbling tread of a porter carrying goods down the stairs. About eleven I ventured to peep out, and learned with satisfaction that the trunk had vanished; it remained therefore for me to do the same. Bestowing a last look on the little attic which had been my home so long, and until lately no unhappy home, I took up my hat and cloak; and making sure for the fiftieth time that I had my small stock of money, hidden in my clothes, I opened the door, and stealing out, stood a minute to listen before I descended.
I heard nothing to alarm me; yet a second later I shrieked in affright, and almost sank down under the sudden grip of a hand on my shoulder. The hand was Ferguson’s; who listening, at my chamber door, had heard me move towards it, and flattened himself against the wall beside it; and so, being in the dark corner farthest from the staircase, had eluded my notice. He chuckled vastly, at his cunning, and the fright he had given me, and rocking me to and fro, asked me grimly what I had done with my fine clothes and my wig.
“Ay, and that is not all,” he continued. “I shall want to know a little more about that matter, my friend. And mind you, Mr. Price, the truth! The truth, or I will wring this tender ear of yours from your head. For the present, however, that matter may wait. I shall have it, when I want it. Now I have other work for you. Come into my room.”
“I am going to the tavern,” I said desperately. And I hung back. “Afterwards, Mr. Ferguson, I will — —”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 272
