"Lie down!" he said, gloating on me with cruel eyes, and his hand still in his breast.
I lay down, praying for mercy.
"On your back! On your back!" he continued. "And your hands by your sides. So! That is better. Now listen to me, Mr. Price, and think on what I say. When you want to be laid out for good as you are laid out now, when you are ready for your coffin and shroud--and the worms--then break your promise to me, for coffin and shroud and worms will be ready. Think of that--think of that and of me when the temptation comes. And hark you, you fancy," he went on, fixing his eyes on mine, "and you count on it, that I shall be taken with the others, or escaping shall be where you need not fear me. Don't deceive yourself. If a week hence I am in prison, take that for a sign, and please yourself. But if I am free, obey, obey--or God help you!"
I know not how to describe with any approach to fidelity the peculiar effect which words apparently so simple had on me, or the terror, out of all proportion to the means chosen--for he spoke without oath, violence, or passion--into which they threw me, and which was very far from passing with the sound. I had feared Ferguson, but I feared this man more, a hundred times more! And yet I can give no reason, adduce no explanation, save that he spoke quietly, and so seemed to mean all and something beyond what he said. The plans for deceiving him and breaking my word which I had entertained a moment before melted into thinnest air while I lay and sweated in my narrow berth, not daring to move 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 in sheer cruelty, I know not which--kept me there, and sat smiling and smiling at me (as the devil may smile at some dead man passed beyond redemption)--kept me there God knows how long. But so long, and to such purpose, that when at length he bade me rise, and looking closely into 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, and supported me through it--for in the cold air I staggered like a drunken man--even then, I say, so heavy was the spell of fear laid on me, and such his power, I dared not move or stir until he had twice--smiling the second time--bidden me go. "Go, man," said he, "you are free. But remember!"
[CHAPTER XXX]
Few men are condemned to such an ordeal as that through which I had passed; and though some who read this, and are as remote from death as the wife, that may be any day, and must be one day, is from the young bachelor--though some, I say, and in particular those who never saw blade drawn in anger in their lives, but have done all their fighting in the cock-pit, may think that I carried it poorly in the circumstances, and with none of the front and bravado suitable to the occasion, I would have them remember the old saying, Ne sutor supra crepidam, and ask of a scholar only a scholar's work. I would have them remember that in the shadow of the scaffold, even a man so gallant by repute as the Lord Preston of that day, stooped to be an evidence; and that in the same situation the family pride of Richard Hampden availed as little as the reckless courage of Monmouth, or the effrontery of Sir John Fenwick, to raise its owner above the common level.
Simpliciter, it is one thing to vapour at the Cocoa-tree among wits and beaux, and another to take the hazard when the time comes, as no less a person than my Lord Bolingbroke discovered, and that no farther back than '14. I would have large talkers to remember this. For myself I am content that I came through the trial with my life; and yet, not with so much of that either, that anything surer than instinct guided my steps when all was over to the Duke's home in St. James's Square, where arriving, speechless and helpless, it was wonderful I was not put to the door without more. Fortunately, my lord, marvelling at my failure to return before, and mindful, even in the turmoil of that evening, of the service I had done him in the day, had given orders in my behalf; and on my arrival I was recognised, half dead as I was, and taken to the steward's room, and being let blood by a surgeon who was hastily called in, was put to bed, all who saw me supposing that I was suffering from vertigo, or some injury, though no marks of blows on the head could be discovered.
That was a night long remembered in London. Messengers with lights, attended by files of soldiers, were every hour passing through the streets, searching houses and arresting the suspected. From mouth to mouth rumours of the conspiracy flew abroad; at nine o'clock it was stated, and generally believed, that the King was wounded; at ten that he had been seized; later that he was dead. Early in the evening the draw-bridge at the Tower was drawn, and the sentries were doubled; the City gates were closed and guarded; a whole battalion stood all night under arms at Kensington; the Council was in perpetual sitting; many houses were lighted from eve to dawn; nor since the great panic of Beachy Head in '90 had there been an alarm so deep or widespread.
If this was so in the city generally, at the Secretary's residence, whither many of the prisoners were brought for examination as soon as they were taken, the excitement was at its height. The Square outside, then unenclosed, was occupied all night by successive groups of sight-seers, or of persons more nearly interested in the event. One consequence of this was that, with all this astir without, my case attracted the less notice within; and, unheeded and almost forgotten--which, perhaps, was the better for me--I was left in peace to sleep off the shock and fright I had experienced, of which the severity may be gauged by the fact that the afternoon of the next day was well advanced before I awoke, and finding myself in bed in a strange room, with cold broth and a little wine standing on a stool at my elbow, sat up, and looked round me in amazement. The steep slope of the ceiling towards the window, and the heavy flattened eaves which projected over the latter, soon apprised me that I lay under the leads of a great house; but this was the extent of my knowledge. However, my stomach presently called for food, and I took it; and my head ceasing to swim, I began to recall what had happened to me; and rising, and going to the window, I recognised the great and fashionable Square on which my window looked. At that and the thoughts of what I had gone through, and the danger I had escaped, I fell to quaking again, and for a moment the dizziness returned. But presently, the cheerful aspect of the room much aiding me, I recovered myself, and dressing, and finishing the food, I prepared to descend.