CHAPTER XXIX
What the girl answered I did not catch, for as she raised her headagain to reply, my ear caught the sound of rising danger. Ferguson wasspeaking, his words, no longer coherent, a mere frothing of oaths andcalling of hideous fates on his head if he had ever betrayed, if hehad ever sold, if he had ever deceived, now ran in a steady current ofwrathful denunciation. And the men listened; he had their ears again;he was no longer on his trial. Afterwards I learned that while myattention was astray with the women. Smith, by stating what I hadstated to him--namely, that the Secretary had used Ferguson as theintermediary through whom to warn Berwick--had confirmed the plotter'sstory, and at a stroke had restored his position. Whereon, full ofspite, and desperately certain that however exposed he lay on othersides I at any rate knew enough to hang him, the wretched man had sethimself anew to compass my destruction. Deterred neither by the checkhe had received, nor by the gloomy looks of the conspirators, whoresponded but sluggishly to his appeal, he drove home again and again,and with wild words and wilder oaths, the one point on which herelied, the one point that was so dear to him that he could notunderstand their hesitation.
"Waste of time?" he cried. "We would be better employed looking toourselves and slipping away to Romney, would we? But you are fools!You are babes! There is the evidence that can swear to you all! Thereis the evidence keen to do it! There is the evidence in your hands!And you will let him escape?"
"There is evidence without him," said King sulkily. "Where isPrendergast?"
"Oh, he is honest."
"But where is he? And where is Porter?"
"Where is Sir John Fenwick for that matter?" replied the man who hadanswered for Prendergast. "He is too high and mighty to mix with us,and will only eat the chestnut when we have got it out of the fire.For that matter, where are Friend and Parkyns? They are not here."
"Pshaw!" Ferguson cried, in a rage at the digression. "Why will you bethinking of them? Cannot you see that they are tainted, they are init? They cannot if they will! And they are gentlemen besides, and notdirty knaves like this fellow."
"For the matter of that," said Cassel, bluntly, "Preston was a lord.But he sold Ashton."
The words brought a kind of cold breath of suspicion into the room, atthe chill touch of which each looked stealthily at his neighbour, asif he said, "Is it he? Or he?" Ferguson seeing on this that he madelittle progress, and that the men, though they looked at mevengefully, were not to be kindled, grew furious and more furious, andbegan to storm and rave. But Charnock in a moment cut him short.
"Mr. Ferguson is so far right," said he, "that if we let this persongo to perfect his evidence against us, we shall be very foolish.Clearly, it is to set a premium on treason."
"Then let Mr. Ferguson deal with him," Cassel answered, curtly. "He ishis man, and it is his business. I don't lay a hand on him, and thatis flat."
"Nor I! Nor I!" cried several, with eagerness. God knows if theythought in their hearts to curry favour with me.
"You are all mad!" Ferguson cried, beating the air.
"And you are a coward!" Cassel retorted. "I'd as soon trust him asyou. If you are taken you'll peach, Ferguson! G-- ---- you! I know youwill. You will peach! You are as white-livered a cur as ever lived!"
Then, seeing them divided, and the most bloody-minded of them--forsuch Cassel had been a short time before--taking up my cause, Ithought that for certain the bitterness of death was past; and I tookcourage, discerning for the first time solid land beyond the deeps andblack suffocating fears through which I had passed. For the first timeI allowed my thoughts to dwell on the future, and myself to hope andplan. But the warm current of returning life had scarcely coursedthrough my veins and set my heart beating, before Charnock's coldvoice, taking up the tale, smote on my ear, and in a moment dashed myjubilation. There was that in his tone gripped my heart afresh.
"Peace, man," he said. "Peace! Is this a time to be bickering? Let usbe clear before we separate, what is to be done with this man. For mypart, I am not for letting him go."
"Nor I," said Smith, speaking almost for the first time.
The others, lately so hot and impassioned, looked at the speakers andat one another with a sort of apathy.
Only Ferguson cried violently, "Nor I, by----! Nor I. We are many, andwhat is one life?"
"Quite so, Mr. Ferguson," Charnock retorted. "But will you take thelife?"
The plotter drew back as he had drawn back before. "It is everybody'sbusiness," he muttered.
"Then will you take part in it? You are the first to condemn. Will yoube one to execute?"
Ferguson moistened his lips with his tongue, and, swallowing with aneffort, looked shiftily at me and away again. The sweat stood on hisface. For me, I watched him, fascinated; watched him, and still he didnot answer.
"Just so," said Charnock, at last. "You will not. And that being so,is there anyone else who will? If not, what is to be done?"
"Put him in a lugger," Keyes cried, "at the bridge; and bymorning----"
"He wall be taken off at the Nore," Cassel answered scornfully. "Andyou too if you think to get off that way. There are more Billops inthe Pool than the Billop who gave up Ashton."
"Gag him and leave him here."
"And have him found by the messengers to-morrow morning?" Casselanswered. "As well and better, call a chair, and pay the chairmen, andbid them take him to the Secretary's office with our compliments."
"Well, if not here, in one of the other pens. Ferguson knows plenty."
The woman who had come in with Smith laughed. "That might answer," shesaid, "if his sweetheart were not here. Do you think she would leavehim to starve?"
There was a general stir and muttering as the men turned to the girl."Pooh," said one, "it is Ferguson's girl."
"And your spy's sweetheart," the woman repeated.
The girl lifted her head and showed the room a face pale, weary, anddull-eyed. "He is nothing to me," she said.
And the men would have believed her; but the woman, with a swift,cat-like movement, seized her wrist and held it. "Nothing to you, mygirl, isn't he?" she cried. "Then you have the fever or the small-poxon you! One, two, three----"
Her face flaming, the girl sprang up and snatched away her hand.
The woman laughed--and how I hated her! "He is nothing to you, isn'the?" she said in a mocking tone. "Yet what will you not give me tosave him, my chick? What will you not give me to see him safe out ofthis house? What----?"
"Peace, peace!" cried Charnock. "Time is everything, and we arewasting it. Unless we would be taken, every man of us, we should behalf-way to Romney Marsh by morning."
"Will you leave him to me!" said Smith suddenly.
"Leave him?"
"Ay. Or better, let me have two minutes' talk with him here, and if hecomes to my way of thinking, I will answer for him."
"Answer for him?" cried Ferguson, with a sneer. "If you answer for himno better than I did, you will give us small surety."
"Ay, but I am not you, Mr. Ferguson," Smith retorted, in a tone ofcontempt, whereat the older man writhed impotently.
"This person--Mr. Taylor or Mr. Price--or whatever his name is--knowsme and that what I say I do."
"Well, do--what you like with him," Charnock answered peevishly, "sothat you stop his mouth."
To my great joy the other men assented in the same tone, being glad tobe rid of the burden. It may seem strange to some that those who hadprepared an hour before to take my life, should now be as ready to letme go; but there are few men who are eager to take life in cold blood,and kill a man as they would a sheep. Moreover, in favour of thesemen--on whose memory the Assassination Plot has cast obloquy notaltogether deserved, since few of them were assassins in the strictsense, and the worst of all, Ferguson, escaped his just fate--in theirfavour I say, it is to be observed that the fact which they designed,however horrid in the eyes of good citizens, and certainly not to bedefended by me, was not in their sight so much a m
urder as an act ofprivate warfare carried into the enemy's country. So fully I ampersuaded was this the case, that had it been a question of stabbingthe King in the back, or shooting him from a window, I believe not onewould have volunteered. Let this stand to their credit: to the creditof men whom I saw and have described at their worst, drunken,reckless, ill-combined, and worse governed; whose illegal design hadit been accomplished, must have postponed the Protestant succession inthese realms; but who, misguided and betrayed as they were by leadersmore evil than themselves, evinced some spark of chivalry in theirlives--for all did it in a measure for a cause--and in theirsufferings a fortitude that would have become better men and a noblereffort.
So much of them. One released my hands, and another at Smith's requestfound him a light; and my new protector bidding me follow him, andleading the way upstairs to the bare room at the back whence I hadbroken out, those we left were deep in muttered plans and whisperingsof the Marsh, and Hunt's house, and Harrison's Inn at Dimchurch,before we were out of hearing.
Smith's first act, when we reached the room above, was to close thedoor upon us. This done, he set his candle on the floor--whence itsflame threw dark wavering outlines of our figures on the ceiling--andmoved to the hearth. Here, while I stared, wondering at his silence,he searched for some spring or handle, and finding it, caused a largepiece of the wainscot to fall out and reveal a cavity about three feetdeep and six long. He beckoned me to bring the candle and look in, andsupposing it to be a secret way out, I did so. However, outlet therewas none. The place was nothing more than a concealed cupboard.
THE PLACE WAS NOTHING MORE THAN A CONCEALED CUPBOARD]
"Well?" he said, when he had moved the candle to and fro that I mightsee the better--his face the while wearing a smile that caught andheld my gaze. "Well? what do you think of it, Mr. Taylor?"
I did not understand him, and I said so, trembling.
"It is a tolerable hiding-place?" said he.
I nodded; to please him I would have said it was a palace.
"And not a bad prison?"
I nodded again; staring at him, fascinated. I began to understand.
"And a grave?"
I shuddered. "What do you mean?" I muttered.
"Lay a man in there, bound hand and foot, and gagged; what would youfind in a year's time, Mr. Price? Not much."
I stared at him.
"If they knew of that downstairs," he continued, stopping to snuff thecandle with his fingers, then looking askance at me, "would they useit, I wonder? Would they use it? What do you think, Mr. Price?"
Again I made no answer.
"Shall I tell them?" said he easily.
"What--what do you want?" I whispered hoarsely.
"That is better," said he, nodding. "Well, to be candid, almostnothing. Two pledges. First, that you will give no evidence againstanyone here. That of course."
I muttered assent. I was ready to promise anything.
"And secondly, that you will, when I call upon you, do me a littlefavour, Mr. Price. It is a small matter, a trifle I asked you at mylady's house three days back. Promise to do that for me, as and when Idemand performance, and in ten minutes from this time you shall leavethe house, safe, free, and unhurt."
"I promise," I said eagerly. "I promise honestly!"
But even while I spoke--this seemed to be the strangest of all thethings that had happened to me that night, that this man should thinkit worth while to pledge me under such circumstances, or value at agroat a promise so given. For the pledge was a pledge to do ill, andas soon as he and the other conspirators were laid by the heels or hadfled the country, what sanction remained to bind me? I saw that as Ispoke, and promised--and promised. And would have promised fiftytimes--with the reservation that I did so under force _majeure_. Whowould not have done the same, being in my place?
But I suppose I answered too quickly to please him, and so he read mythoughts, or he had it in his mind from the first to read me a lesson,for the words were scarcely out of my mouth before he slid his handinto his breast with the ugliest smile I ever saw on a man's face; andhe signed to me to get into the cupboard. "Get in," he said, betweenhis closed teeth; and then when, terrified by the change in him andthe order, I began to back from it, "Get in!" he said, in a voice thatset me shaking; "or take the consequences. Do you hear me? I am noFerguson to threaten and no more."
I dared resist no longer, and I crawled in, trembling and praying himnot to shut me in--not to shut me in.
"Lie down!" he said, gloating on me with cruel eyes, and his handstill in his breast.
I lay down, praying for mercy.
"On your back! On your back!" he continued. "And your hands by yoursides. So! That is better. Now listen to me, Mr. Price, and think onwhat I say. When you want to be laid out for good as you are laidout now, when you are ready for your coffin and shroud--and theworms--then break your promise to me, for coffin and shroud and wormswill be ready. Think of that--think of that and of me when thetemptation comes. And hark you, you fancy," he went on, fixing hiseyes on mine, "and you count on it, that I shall be taken with theothers, or escaping shall be where you need not fear me. Don't deceiveyourself. If a week hence I am in prison, take that for a sign, andplease yourself. But if I am free, obey, obey--or God help you!"
I know not how to describe with any approach to fidelity the peculiareffect which words apparently so simple had on me, or the terror, outof all proportion to the means chosen--for he spoke without oath,violence, or passion--into which they threw me, and which was very farfrom passing with the sound. I had feared Ferguson, but I feared thisman more, a hundred times more! And yet I can give no reason, adduceno explanation, save that he spoke quietly, and so seemed to mean alland something beyond what he said. The plans for deceiving him andbreaking my word which I had entertained a moment before melted intothinnest air while I lay and sweated in my narrow berth, not daring tomove eye or limb until he gave me leave.
And he, as if he knew how fear of him grew on me under his gaze--or insheer cruelty, I know not which--kept me there, and sat smiling andsmiling at me (as the devil may smile at some dead man passed beyondredemption)--kept me there God knows how long. But so long, and tosuch purpose, that when at length he bade me rise, and looking closelyinto my face, nodded, and told me I might go--nay, later than that,when he had led me downstairs and opened the door for me, andsupported me through it--for in the cold air I staggered like adrunken man--even then, I say, so heavy was the spell of fear laidon me, and such his power, I dared not move or stir until he hadtwice--smiling the second time--bidden me go. "Go, man," said he, "youare free. But remember!"