The "peculiar tea" was gunpowder, the "lawn" or "meadow" was a plot—of grass, and the whole was the Gunpowder Plot, which, though it went off very badly at the time, caused an explosion from which the country has not yet quite recovered. Notwithstanding the solution of the mystery, no steps were taken to bring the matter, to an issue, and Fawkes was permitted to be at large about town, paying his diurnal visits to the cellar without attracting the observation of anyone. Tresham and Winter talked the matter over in Lincoln's Inn Fields, or wandered amid the then romantic scenery of Whetstone Park, to consult on the scheme and its probable completion. The timid Tresham proposed flight, but his fellow conspirators, who were not so flighty, resolved on persevering, and the intrepid Fawkes kept up a regular Cellarius, * by dancing backwards ana forwards about the cellar.
* We may as well state, for the benefit of that posterity
which this work will reach and the Cellarius will not, that
the Cellarius is a dance fashionable in the year 1847, when
this history was written.
The shilly-shallying of all parties with respect to the gunpowder conspiracy is one of the most remarkable features of the period when it occurred; for we find the plotters, with detection staring them in the face, adhering to their old haunts, while the intended victims though made aware of the plot, were as tardy as possible in taking any steps to baffle it. Fawkes continued his visits to the cellar just as confidently as ever; and one would think that ultimately detection was the object he had in view for he lurked about the premises with such obstinate perseverance that his escape was impossible. At length Suffolk, the Lord Chamberlain, took Monteagle down to the House the day before the opening of Parliament, to see that all was right, and they occupied themselves for several hours in looking under the seats, unpicking the furniture of the throne to see if anyone was concealed inside, and searching into every hole and corner where a conspirator was not likely to secrete himself. Having taken courage from the fact of there being no signs of danger, they determined to go down stairs into the cellar, under pretence of stopping up the rat-holes—for even in those early days rats found their way into the House—and they had no sooner opened the door than they saw in one corner a round substance, which they at first took for a beer barrel. They approached it with the intention of giving it a friendly tap, when the supposed barrel rose up into the height of a water-butt.
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Suffolk instantly got behind Monteagle, who stood trembling with fear, when the phantom cask assumed the form of a "tall, desperate fellow," who proved to be Fawkes, and the Chamberlain, affecting a careless indifference, demanded his "name, birth, and parentage." Guido handed his card, bearing the words G. Fawkes, and announced himself as the servant of Mr. Percy, who carried on a trade in coals, coke, and wood, if he could, in the immediate neighbourhood. "Indeed," said Suffolk, "your master has a tolerably large stock on hand, though I think there is something else screened besides the coals, which I see around me." Without adding another word, he and Monteagle ran off, and Fawkes hastened to acquaint Percy with what had happened.
Poor Guido seems to have formed a most feline and most fatal attachment to the place, for nothing could keep him out of the cellar, though he knew he was almost certain of being hauled unceremoniously over the coals, and he went back at two in the morning to the old spot, with his habitual foolhardiness. He had no sooner opened the door than he was seized and pinioned, without his opinion being asked, by a party of soldiers. He made one desperate effort to make light of the whole business, by setting fire to the train, but he had no box of Congreves at hand, and he observed, with bitter boldness, in continuation of a pun which he had made in happier days, that he had at last found his match and lost his Lucifer. Poor Guy Fawkes, having been bound hand and foot, was taken on a stretcher to Whitehall, having been previously searched, when his pocket was found filled with tinder, touch-wood, and other similar rubbish. Behind the door there was a dark lanthorn, or bull's-eye, that had cowed the soldiers at first glance, by its glazed look, but it seemed less terrible on their walking resolutely up to it. Fawkes was taken to the king's bedroom, at Whitehall, and though his limbs were bound and helpless, he spoke with a thick, bold, ropy voice that terrified all around him. His tones had become quite sepulchral, from remaining so long in the vault, and when asked his name, he scraped out from his hoarse throat the words "John Johnson," which came gratingly—as if through a grating——on the ears of the bystanders. He announced himself as John the footman to Mr. Percy, and he threw himself into an attitude—which was rather cramped by his pinions—which he found anything but the sort of pinions that would enable him to soar into the lofty regions of romance to which he had aspired. He nevertheless boldly announced his purpose, with the audacity of a stage villain; and with that sort of magnanimity which lasts, on an average, about five minutes in the guilty breast, he refused to disclose the names of his accomplices.
One of the Scotch courtiers, who had a natural feeling of stinginess, asked how it was that Fawkes had collected so many barrels of gunpowder, when half the quantity would have done. Upon which Fawkes replied, that his principal had desired him to purchase enough to blow the Scotch back to Scotland. "Hoot, awa, mon!" rejoined the Scot; "but ken ye not that ye might have bought half the powder, and put the rest of the siller in your pocket?" Fawkes sternly intimated that though he would have blown up the Parliament, he would not defraud his principal. "Hoot, mon!" cried the Scotchman, who loved his specie under the pretence of loving his species, and who, it is probable, belonged to the Chambers; "Hoot, mon!" he whined, "dinna ye ken that there are times when you mun just throw your preencipal overboard?" *