"He said, 'Hold there, my friend! On the marriage. Very well, although I say that I am married to that lady, very oddly the lady swears that she is not married to me. Now, when that lady acknowledges the marriage I will fulfill my promise. That is fair, is it not?' Then I lost my head and forgot his rank and my position, and the next moment I was kicked into the street by his lackeys without salary, without anything. Oh, villain! villain!"
It seemed as if there was here some opening—of what nature I knew not. However I spoke seriously to Sam. I pointed out that in introducing a broken gamester—a profligate—a man of no honour or principle, the companion of profligates and gamesters, to the simple folk of Lynn who were ready to believe anything, he had himself been guilty of an act more villainous even than the breaking of this contract. I gave him, however, a guinea for present necessities and I promised him five guineas more if he would write a history of the whole business so far as he was concerned. And I undertook to leave this money with my cousin the bookseller—to be paid over to him on receiving the manuscript.
This business arranged, I had nothing more to do with London. I had been, however, as you shall presently learn, more successful than I myself understood, for I had learned by actual presence the daily life and conversation of this noble lord and I had laid the foundation for a proof of the conspiracy to disguise his true character, and, what was much more important, I had unwittingly fired the mind of the mysterious woman herself with resentment and jealousy.
CHAPTER XLI
THE FIRST AND THE SECOND CONFEDERATE
We were now, indeed, although we knew it not, very near the end of these troubles.
I returned with the satisfaction of bringing with me the confession of the conspiracy which we had long known. Still, it is one thing to know of a conspiracy, and quite another thing to have a plain confession by one of the chief conspirators. You may imagine that the poet was not long in writing out a full and complete confession, and in claiming the five guineas of my cousin, who took the liberty of reading the document, and of witnessing his signature before he gave up the money.
"Take it, sir," he said, "if to be a villain is to earn a reward of five guineas, you have earned that reward. Take it, Judas Iscariot. Take it, and make a poem on the Wages of Sin if you can."
"You trample on the weak. I am a worm who cannot turn. Still, sir, if you can find honest employment for a pen which adorns all it touches——"
"Go, sir. For such as you I have no employment. My poets and authors may be poor, but they are honest. Get thee out of my sight."