“The saints wot! A warning letter is sent to my Lord Monteagle, and whereto it may grow—Hie you to White Webbs when morning breaketh, with all the speed you may, and tell Mr Catesby of this. I fear—I very much fear all shall be discovered.”
“It’s that rascal Tresham!” cried Winter. “He was earnest to have his sister’s husband warned, and said he would not pluck forth not another stiver without our promise so to do.”
“Be it who it may, it may be the ruin of us.”
“God forbid! I will be at White Webbs with the dawn, or soon after.”
Before it was light the next morning Winter was on horseback, and was soon galloping through the country villages of Islington, Holloway, and Hornsey, on his way to Enfield Chase. In the depths of that lonely forest land stood the solitary hunting-lodge, named White Webbs, which belonged to Dr Hewick, and was let in the shooting season to sportsmen. This house had been taken by “Mr Meaze” (who was Garnet) as a very quiet locality, where mass might be said without being overheard by Protestant ears, and no inconvenient neighbours were likely to gossip about the inmates. In London, Garnet was a horse-dealer; at White Webbs he was a gentleman farmer and a sportsman. Here he established himself and somebody eke, who has not yet appeared on the scene, and whom it is time to introduce. And I introduce her with no feeling save one of intense pity, as one more sinned against than sinning—a frail, passion-swayed, impulsive woman, one of the thousands of women whose lives Rome has blighted by making that sin which was no sin, and so in many instances leading up to that which was sin—poor, loving, unhappy Anne Vaux.
The Hon. Anne Vaux was a younger daughter of William Lord Vaux of Harrowden, and Elizabeth Beaumont, his first wife. Like many another, she “loved one only, and she clave to him,” whose happy and honourable wife she might have been, had he been a Protestant clergyman instead of a Jesuit priest. That Anne Vaux’s passionate love for Garnet was for the man and not the priest, her own letters are sufficient witness, and Garnet returned the love. She took a solemn vow of obedience to the Superior of the Jesuit Mission in England, in order that she might be with him where he was, might follow his steps like a faithful dog, that his people should be her people, and his God her God. But where he died she could not die. To “live without the vanished light” was her sadder destiny.
At White Webbs, she passed as Mrs Perkins or Parkyns, a widow lady, and the sister of Mr Mease. She received numerous visitors, beside Mr Mease himself,—Catesby, who does not appear to have assumed any alias, Mr and Mrs Brooksby (the latter of whom was Anne’s sister Eleanor), Tresham, the Winters, and two dubious individuals, who passed under the names of Robert Skinner and Mr Perkins. The former was accompanied by his wife, real or professed; the latter professed to be a brother-in-law of “Mrs Perkins,” and is described as “of middle stature, long visage, and somewhat lean, of a brown hair, and his beard inclining to yellow,”—a description which suits none of the conspirators whose personal appearance is known.
At White Webbs, accordingly, Thomas Winter alighted, and broke in on the party there assembled, with the startling news that—
“All is discovered! There is a letter sent to my Lord Monteagle, and our action is known.”
The party consisted of Anne Vaux, Fawkes, the Brooksbys, and Catesby, who had presented himself there a few days before, with the avowed object of joining the royal hunting-party at Royston the next day, but in the morning resolving to “stay and be merry with his friends,” he settled down comfortably, sent his man for venison, and took his ease.