As for Archibald Sholto, he, too, did that which he had said would be best. He made his way from Kensington to Chelsea and so to Wandsworth, only to find when he had arrived there that his brother and friend had long since--for it was by then nine o'clock--departed for Vauxhall. Therefore he said a few words to the landlady--herself an adherent of the Stuarts, as she, whose father had fallen at Sherriffmuir, was certain to be--telling her that it was doubtful if they would ever return to their lodgings, but that, if they did, she must manage to send them off at once. He told her, too, the address of the Minories where he could be communicated with, under cover to McGlowrie, and, since he it was who had sent them as lodgers to her house, he gave her some money on their account. Then he left her and, thorough and indomitable in all he did, made his way to the Spring Gardens.
"If they are there," he thought, as he waited outside the inn in Wandsworth--an old one, known then, as now, as the Spread Eagle, while the horse was being put into the shafts of the hackney coach he had hired, "I may see them in time to warn them. Dressed as the executioner, the woman said of Bertie and Douglas, without any disguise, though in a garb that will be supposed to be one in that place; there should be no difficulty in finding them if they are still there. Thank God, they were not caught in their lodgings."
He did not know, nor could the landlady have told him--not knowing herself--of how they had been watched and followed from the village to Vauxhall; so he passed his time on the lonely drive through the Battersea marshes in meditating how this last act of treachery of Lord Fordingbridge was to be repaid. For that it should be so repaid, and with interest, Archibald Sholto had already determined. "Though not for his baseness to me so much," he muttered, "as to those whom I love. For since to me, a priest, there can be no home, no wife, no children, I have centred all my heart upon those three--my brother, our friend Bertie, and poor, bonnie Kate. And those it is against whom he has struck. May God forget me if I strike not equally, ay! and with more certainty than he has done, when my hour comes."
A good friend was Archibald Sholto, Jesuit though he was, but a terrible foe. As you shall see.
On his way to the garden he passed half a dozen young men of fashion who, from their talk and actions, he knew to be about to assist at a duel, and, forgetting that he was in secular garb, he could not forbear from addressing them in his priestly character and begging them to desist from the sin they contemplated. But they bade him pass on and not interfere in what concerned him not, while one, striking at the horse with his clouded cane, caused the animal to dash off upon the uneven road or track. These, doubtless, were the men for whom the boatmen who ferried Bertie and Douglas across later on were waiting.
So he reached the gardens, but only to find that most of the company was already gone, and that, with the exception of a few revellers who would keep the night up so long as it were possible, none of the masqueraders remained. Yet, even from these he gathered enough to set his mind fairly at rest; for, happening to hear one of them speak of the "merry disturbance" which had taken place that night, and also boast somewhat loudly of how he had assisted the Jacobites in resisting the limbs of the law, he, by great suavity and apparent admiration of the speaker's prowess, managed to extract from him a more or less accurate account of what had taken place.
Thus he learned that, in some way, his brother and friend had made their escape--aided, of course, by the pot-valiant hero to whom he was listening--and also that the "ladies of fashion" and the gentlemen by whom they were accompanied had also departed without molestation. "Though," continued the narrator, as he swallowed the last drop of brandy in his glass and then looked ruefully at the empty vessel, "I know not if they would have been allowed to go so freely had not I and my friend assisted in protecting them."
After that Archibald withdrew, and, on foot, made his way to the City, while as he crossed London Bridge nearly two hours later--for he was weary with all that had happened that day--the sun came up and lighted with a rosy hue the Tower lying on his right hand.
"Ay," he muttered. "Ay, many's the poor aching heart within your walls this morning besides the doomed Balmerino, Cromartie, and Kilmarnock--for nought can save them; thank God that some at least are free at present. But how long will they be so? How long? How long?"