In such a case delays are dangerous, as the good Sir Hugh found, for Parry, whose vagaries had alarmed some of those connected with the dangerous plot, having been met with in Stratford, and then followed to Clopton, was lured into a secret appointment and put to silence with at least half a dozen wounds; and the whole affair in a few short hours after was in progress of being fully divulged. Of this, however, Sir Hugh was not likely to become acquainted, till the news reached him in an unpleasant shape. The circumstance of a man having been killed just without the town was by no means an uncommon event; and as Martin had failed in tracing Parry, and Father Eustace's return was delayed, except that there was a degree of mystery attached to the appearance and disappearance of the visitor, in a few days the circumstance was almost forgotten.
Meantime, whilst, with swift passage, events were hastening onwards, and which were to involve some of the dramatis personæ of our story in the perils and miseries of life, how calmly and how treacherously flowed on the even tenor of their hours. Mischief, as we have seen, was afoot; a secret society, consisting of one or two dangerous fanatics, resident in the county of Warwick, an Irish gentleman of rank, and several other desperadoes, had met, as we have before hinted, at one of the low hostels in the town of Stratford, and which locality they had chosen for some reason best known to themselves.
These men, involved in a desperate enterprise, and sworn to devote themselves to death one by one, till they had achieved it, whilst they sought to increase the number of their associates, found danger even in the overzeal—the frenzied enthusiasm—of one of their own instruments, whilst another was about to prove false and betray them; nay, at the very moment when, like the alchemist of old, their toils were to be rewarded with progression, the vessel containing the elixir was to burst, and destroy all within its influence.
These emissaries were at work in various directions,—secretly, stealthily. They had friends in France, in Spain, in Italy, in Flanders even; the day and the hour at which the first attempt was to be made was fixed; the very hooftreads of the horse which carried the unscrupulous Neville towards his design, in imagination, were counted by them; whilst he who was then, as his associates supposed, hastening towards this purpose, from a sudden change having taken place in his before desperate fortunes, was indeed posting to London; not, as he had sworn, in order to make essay upon the life of Elizabeth, but to betray the whole plot to the council, to aggrandize himself, and give to the gibbet and the executioner's knife, his sometime friends.
And such are the inscrutable ways by which Providence works out His ends: such is the wisdom of the Great Director of events, and such are the vain designs of man. Ever driving headlong onwards, hastened by evil passions, obstinacy, wickedness, and pride, to inevitable destruction;—destroyed by their own villanous devices, thirsting for blood, grasping at riches, feeding absolutely on each other, the wicked perish miserably.
CHAPTER XIII.
MOTHER AND SON.
Those of our readers who have visited Stratford-upon-Avon, and looked upon the house in Henley Street, that house which has caused so great an interest in the world, will remember the lattice-windowed room in its upper floor, that room in which (as their eyes have glanced around its walls) their feelings have perhaps been excited almost unto the shedding of tears;—that room in which some portion of the early youth of him whose idea is enshrined in the hearts of all who speak our English tongue, was passed.
It is mid-day, and seated in that room are a mother and an elder son. The mother is employed in some sort of curious work, whilst her baby is cradled, and asleep at her side. Spinning perhaps, like "the spinsters and the knitters of the sun,"—