He was so righteously indignant at the presumption of which I had been guilty in attacking the family that, though it was his own indiscretion that had led me to the point, I made haste to mutter an apology, and doing this with the better grace for the remembrance that Smith was now powerless and his wicked plans abortive, I contrived presently to appease him. But the ferment which the discovery I had made wrought in my spirits moved me to escape as quickly as possible to my room, there to consider at leisure the miserable position in which, but for Smith’s timely capture, I must have found myself.
A suspicion of the truth I had entertained before; but this certainty that the man I was to be trepanned into personating was my benefactor, and that in the plot his own mother was engaged, filled me with as much horror, when I considered the necessity of complying under which I might have lain, as thankfulness when I reflected on the escape I had had. Nor did these two considerations, overwhelming as they may well appear, account for all the agitation I was experiencing. Mr. Martin, in speaking of Madame Monterey’s origin, had mentioned Hertfordshire; and the name, bringing together two sets of facts hitherto so distant in my mind that I had never undertaken to connect them, had in a flash presented Smith and madame in their true colours. Why I had not before associated the Smith I now knew with that Templar Smith whom I darkly remembered as Jennie’s accomplice in my early trouble; why I had not recognised in the woman’s coarsely handsome features the charms that thirteen years before had fired my boy’s blood and brought me to the foot of the gallows, is not more difficult to explain than why this one mention of Hertfordshire sufficed to raise the curtain; ay, and not only to raise it, but to set the whole drama so plainly before me that I could be no wiser had I followed every scene in madame’s life, and, a witness of her shameful débût under Smith’s protection, her seduction of my lord and her period of splendour, had attended her in her final declension when, a discarded mistress, she saw no better alternative than a marriage with her former protector.
How greatly this identification of the two conspirators increased, as well as the loathing in which I held their schemes, as my relief upon the reflection that those schemes were now futile, I will not say. Suffice it that the knowledge that, but for Smith’s arrest, I must have chosen between playing the basest part in the world and running a risk whereat I shuddered, filled me with thankfulness immeasurable, a thankfulness which I did not fail to pour out on my knees, and which was in no degree lessened by a shuddering consciousness that in that dilemma, had Providence not averted it, I might have — ay, should have — played the baser part!
No wonder that a hundred harrowing recollections crowded on my mind, or that under the pressure of these the tumult of my spirits became so powerful that I presently seized my hat, and hastily escaping from the house, sought in rapid movement some relief from the unpleasant retrospect. Crossing the Green Park, I chose a field path that led by the Pimlico marshes to Fulham; and gradually the songs of the larks and the spring sunshine — for the day was calm and serene — leading my mind into a more cheerful groove, I began to dwell rather on the fact of my escape than on the crime from which I had escaped, and contemplating the secure career that now lay in view before me, I was not long in seeing that thankfulness should be my strongest feeling. Turning my back on Smith and his like, I began to build my house again; saw a smiling wife and babes, and days spent between my home and my lord’s papers; and then a green old age and slippered feet tottering through the quiet shades of a library. Before I turned I had roofed the house with an honourable headstone, and felt the tears rise in generous sympathy with the village assembled to do the old man honour.
In a word, tasting the full relief of emancipation, I became so gay and lightsome that even the smoke and din of London, when I re-entered it, failed to subdue the unusual humour. I could have sung, I could have laughed aloud. Let the dead past bury its dead! For Ferguson, Smith, the Monterey — a fig! Who had come off best after all? And of their fine plottings and contrivings what had been the upshot? They had failed and I had triumphed; they were prisoners, I was free and safe.
Near the garden-wall of Buckingham House there was a bear dancing, and a press of people round it. I stayed to watch, and in my mood, found the fun so much to my taste that I threw the man a penny and went on laughing. A little further, by the edge of the lake, was a man with a barrow and dice — then a novelty, though now so prevalent that at the last sessions, I am told, the thing was presented for a nuisance. I stood here and saw a man lose, and in the exaltation of my spirits, pushed him aside and laid down a shilling, and won, and won again — and again; whether the cog failed or the truckster who owned the barrow thought me a good bait. Either way I took up my winnings with an air and hectored away as good a bully as another; placed for the moment so far above myself and common modesty, that I wondered whether I should ever sink back into the timid citizen, or feel my eyes drop before a bravo’s.
Alas, in a moment, quantum mutatus ab illo! At the corner of the Cockpit, towards Sion House, I met Matthew Smith.
I had no doubt. I knew all in an instant, and turned sick. He was free, alone, walking with his head high and an easy gait. Worse, he saw me; saw how I cowered and shrank into myself, and became another man at sight of him!
Slackening his pace as he came up, he halted before me, with that quiet devil’s grin on his face. “Well,” he said, “how are you, Mr. Price? I was looking for you.”
“For me?” I muttered. “I thought — I heard — that you were arrested.”
“A mistake!” he answered, continuing to smile. “A mistake! Some other Smith.”
“And you were not arrested?” I whispered.
“Oh, I was arrested!” he answered jauntily. “And taken to the Secretary. And of course released. There! you have it all.”
I uttered an exclamation; two words wrung from me by despair.
Thereat, and pretending to misunderstand me. “You thank God? Very kind of you, Mr. Price,” said he grinning. “Like master, like man, I see. The Duke was kindness itself. But I must be going.” And then, arresting himself in the act of leaving me, “You have heard,” he continued, “that the poor devil Charnock stands his trial to-morrow? Porter is an evidence, and by Monday the parson will swing. It should be a warning to us,” he continued, shaking his head with a smile that chilled the marrow in my bones, “what company we keep. A rascal like Porter might see you or me in the street — and swear to us. Ha! Ha! It sounds monstrous odd, but so it might be. But by-by, Mr. Price. I must not keep you.”
CHAPTER XXXIV
The state in which I crawled back to the house after this encounter maybe conceived but not described. From an exaltation of mind to which the epithet delirious might be applied with propriety, I fell in an instant to a depth of abjectness as monstrous as my late felicity, but more real and reasonable. All the things, on my escape from which I had been congratulating myself, now lay before me, and formed a vista as gloomy as the point to which it tended was dreadful. To be a slave to the woman and man who had ruined my youth; to live outwardly at ease, while inwardly devoured by daily and hourly terror; to hang between the choice of danger or baseness, comfort or treachery; to discern in my own destruction or my patron’s the inevitable ending; beyond all, to foresee that I should choose the evil and eschew the good, and to wish it otherwise and be powerless to change it — these things, and particularly the last, filled me with anticipations of misery so great that I rolled on my bed, and cursed Providence and my fate; and next day went down so pale, and ill, and woe-begone that the servants took note of it.
“Pheugh, Mr. Price,” said Martin, “you might be Charnock himself, or Keyes, poor devil! You could not look more like hanging! What is it?”
I muttered that I was not well.
“It is Keyes I am sorry for,” continued the steward, who was taking his morning draught, “if so be they go to the end with him. I have heard of a master given up by his servant, but never before of a servant
hung on his master’s evidence — and his master the one that drew him into it! Hang Captain Porter, say I! A fine Captain!”
“Oh, they will let the poor devil live,” said another.
“Keyes?”
“Ay.”
“Not they!” said Mr. Martin with great appearance of wisdom. “He was in the Blues, do you see, my man, and if it spread there? No, he will swing. He will swing for the example. Don’t you think so, Mr. Price? You are in there with my lord, and should know.”
But I muttered something and escaped, finding solitude and my own reflections as tolerable as their gossip. A little later, my lord, sending for me, kept me close at work until evening; which was so far fortunate, as the employment, by diverting my thoughts, helped to lift me out of the panic into which I had fallen. True, the news that the three conspirators were found guilty and were to die the following Monday, exactly as Smith had foretold, threw me again into the cold fit, and heralded another night of misery. But as it is not possible for mortals to lie long under the same peril without the sense of danger losing its edge, in three days I began to find life bearable. The stateliness of the household, the silence and books that surrounded me, the regular hours and steady employment soothed my nerves; and Smith making no sign, and nothing occurring to indicate that he meant to keep his word or summon me to fulfil mine, I lulled myself into the belief that all was a dream.
Yet I was very far from being happy: to be that, with such apprehensions as never quite left me, was beyond my philosophy. And I had rude awakenings. One day it was the execution of Charnock, King, and Keyes at Tyburn, followed by the hawking of their last dying speeches and confessions in the streets, that jogged me out of my fancied security, and sent me sick and white-faced from the windows. Another it was the sentence on Sir John Friend and Sir William Perkins, the two elderly citizens whom I had twice seen among the plotters, and never without wondering how they came to be of the gang. A little later, three more suffered, and again the Square rang with the shrill cries of the chapmen who peddled their last speeches from door to door. Against all these Captain Porter and a man commonly called “Scum Goodman,” both participes criminis, and persons of the most infamous character, bore witness; their evidence being corroborated by that of a man of higher standing, Mr. Prendergast. Whether they could not prove against Cassel and Ferguson, or reasons of State intervened, these, with several of their fellows, lay in prison untried; a course which, in other circumstances, might have involved the Government in obloquy. But so keen at this time was the general feeling against the plotters, and so high the King’s popularity that he might have shed more blood had he chosen. Here, however, the executions stopped; and his Majesty showing mercy if not indulgence, the hue and cry, despite the popular indignation, gradually slackened until it was restricted to Sir John Fenwick, who was believed to be still in hiding in the country, and on whose punishment the King was reported to be firmly set.
How deeply these events and rumours, which formed the staple of conversation during the summer of ‘96, troubled my existence, I leave to the imagination; provising only that in proportion to the outward quiet of my life was the power to agitate which they exerted.
Moreover, there were times when a terror more substantial trespassed on my peace. One day going hastily into the hall I found the servants all peeping, Mr. Martin holding open the door, a dozen faces staring curiously in from the sunshine of the Square, and my lord standing, very stiff, on the threshold of his room, while in the middle of the floor stood a scowling man, flashily dressed.
The Duke was speaking when I appeared. “At the office, sir,” I heard him say. “You misunderstood me. I can see you there only.”
“Your Grace is hard on me,” the man muttered with a glance that would be rebellious, and was hang-dog. “I have done the King good service, and this is the way I am requited. It is enough — —”
“It is more than enough. Captain Porter,” my lord said, quietly taking him up. “At the office, if you please. This house is for my friends.”
“And the King’s friends? They may shift for themselves?” the wretch — who even then wore finery bought with blood — cried bitterly.
“The King is served in many ways,” my lord answered with a fine air of contempt. “Martin, the door! And remember, another time I am not within to Captain Porter. At three in the office, sir, if you please.”
The man slunk away at that; but as he passed through the doorway, I heard him mutter that when Sir John Fenwick was taken he would see; and that proud as some people were now, they might be glad to save their necks when the time came. He passed out of sight then, and hearing my lord speak, I turned, and saw Matthew Smith, whom I had not before noticed, waiting on him with a letter. The Duke, pausing on the threshold of the library, broke the seal, and ran his eye over the paper.
“I will send an answer,” he said, “later in the day. Or — —” and he looked up quickly. “Are you returning, sir?”
“If your Grace pleases.”
“It shall be ready then by two o’clock,” my lord answered stiffly. “Good-morning.”
“Good-morning, your Grace.”
And my lord went in. The colloquy had been of the slightest; but I had noted that my patron’s tone, when he spoke to Smith, was guarded and civil, if distant, and that through the few formal words they had exchanged peered a sort of understanding. This shook me; and when Smith turned to me, a faint sneer on his lips, and told me that I was a bold man, my heart was water. He was at home here as everywhere; what could I do against him?
“Do you understand, Mr. Price?” he repeated. “Or are you a bigger fool than I take you for?”
“Why?” I stammered.
“Why? Why, to push in on Porter after that fashion,” he muttered under his breath — for Martin was making towards us. “Lucky he did not recognize you and denounce you! For a groat he would do it — or to spite the Duke! Take care, man,” he continued seriously, “if you do not want to join Charnock, whose head is in airy quarters to-night.”
This left me the prey of a new terror; for remembering that I had once seen Porter at Ferguson’s lodging, I could not shut my eyes to the reasonableness of the warning. I saw myself beset by dangers on that side also, went for a time on eggs, and trembled at every sound; indeed, for a full fortnight I never passed the threshold — excusing myself on the ground of vertigo, if ordered to go on errands. In the course of that fortnight I had a thousand opportunities of contrasting the quiet in which I lived, behind the dull windows of the great house, with the dangers into which I might at any moment be flung; and if any man ever repented of anything, I repented of my lack of candour respecting Smith. From time to time I saw him pass — grim, reserved, a walking menace. When he looked up at the windows, I read mastery and a secret knowledge in his eye; while the way in which he went and came, free and unquestioned, was itself a monition; was it to be wondered that I feared this man, who, while Charnock’s head mouldered on a spike on Temple Bar, and Friend and Perkins passed to the gallows, walked the Strand, and lounged in the Mall, as safe in appearance as my lord himself?
I knew that at any moment he might call upon me to fulfil my word. Whether in that case, the demand being such as to allow me leisure to forecast the consequences, I should have complied, or taking my courage in my hands, have thrown myself on my lord’s indulgence, I cannot now say; for in the issue a sudden and unforeseen shifting of scene prevented my calculations, and hurried me onwards, whether I would or no.
It happened, I have said, suddenly. One afternoon there came a great bustle in the Square; and who should it be but the Countess, my lord’s mother, come to visit him in her coach-and-six, with such a paraphernalia of gentlewomen and negro pages, outriders, and running footmen, as drew together all the ragamuffins from the mews, and fairly brought back King Charles’s days. As the great coach, which held six inside, swung and lumbered to a stand at the door, I saw a painted face, with bold black eyes, glaring from the window
, cheek by jowl with a parrot and three or four spaniels; and I waited to see little more, a single glance sufficing to certify me that this was the same lady to whose house Smith had taken me. Smith was in attendance on her, and a gentleman in a plain black suit and wig — who was a Papist priest if I ever saw one — and Monterey, and two or three other gentlewomen; and, as I had no mind to be recognised by these, or for that matter, by their mistress, I made haste to retire behind the flock of servants whom Martin had marshalled in the hall to do the honours.
My lord went out to the coach and brought the Countess in, with a great show of reverence; and for three-quarters of an hour they were closeted together in his room. I took advantage of this to retire upstairs, and had been wiser had I stayed there, or better still, slipped out at the back. But a craving came on me to see Monterey again, and with the knowledge I now had, ascertain if she really was my old mistress. This drew me to the hall again, where, the crowd being great, and the servants taken up with teasing the Countess’s parrot and blackamoors, I managed to avoid observation, and at the same time see what I wanted. The woman who had once been all the world to me — and of whom I could not now think without a tender regret, directed, not to her, but to the state of blissful, dawning passion, of which she had been the cause, and whereof no man is twice capable — was still handsome in a coarse fashion, and when seen at a distance. I could not deny that. But if I desired revenge, I had it; for not only was her complexion gone, so that her good looks vanished when the viewer approached, but her lips had grown thin, and her face hard, with the indescribable hardness which speaks of past sin long grown bitter — and an hourly, daily recognition that the wage of sin is death.
Presently, while Mr. Martin was pressing his civilities on her, and I, from a corner near the door through which I had let Mary escape, was curiously reading her countenance, the door of my lord’s room opened, and the Countess came out, supported on the one side by the Duke’s arm, on the other by her great ebony cane. The servants hurried to form two lines; and I suppose curiosity led me to press nearer than was prudent, or her eyes were of peculiar sharpness; or perhaps she looked for me, and had I not been there would have called for me. At any rate, she had not moved three steps towards her coach before her gaze, roving along the line of servants, alighted on me; and she stood.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 283
