“And why not to-night, I pray you?” said Christian.
“Because they allow us that time for escape.”
“Why, then, do you not avail yourself of it? Wherefore are you here?” said Christian.
“Nay, rather, why do you not fly?” said Bridgenorth. “Of a surety, you are as deeply engaged as I.”
“Brother Bridgenorth, I am the fox, who knows a hundred modes of deceiving the hounds; you are the deer, whose sole resource is in hasty flight. Therefore lose no time—begone to the country—or rather, Zedekiah Fish’s vessel, the Good Hope, lies in the river, bound for Massachusetts—take the wings of the morning, and begone—she can fall down to Gravesend with the tide.”
“And leave to thee, brother Christian,” said Bridgenorth, “the charge of my fortune and my daughter? No, brother; my opinion of your good faith must be re-established ere I again trust thee.”
“Go thy ways, then, for a suspicious fool,” said Christian, suppressing his strong desire to use language more offensive; “or rather stay where thou art, and take thy chance of the gallows!”
“It is appointed to all men to die once,” said Bridgenorth; “my life hath been a living death. My fairest boughs have been stripped by the axe of the forester—that which survives must, if it shall blossom, be grafted elsewhere, and at a distance from my aged trunk. The sooner, then, the root feels the axe, the stroke is more welcome. I had been pleased, indeed, had I been called to bringing yonder licentious Court to a purer character, and relieving the yoke of the suffering people of God. That youth too—son to that precious woman, to whom I owe the last tie that feebly links my wearied spirit to humanity—could I have travailed with him in the good cause!—But that, with all my other hopes is broken for ever; and since I am not worthy to be an instrument in so great a work, I have little desire to abide longer in this vale of sorrow.”
“Farewell, then, desponding fool!” said Christian, unable, with all his calmness, any longer to suppress his contempt for the resigned and hopeless predestinarian. “That fate should have clogged me with such confederates!” he muttered, as he left the apartment—“this bigoted fool is now nearly irreclaimable—I must to Zarah; for she, or no one, must carry us through these straits. If I can but soothe her sullen temper, and excite her vanity to action,—betwixt her address, the King’s partiality for the Duke, Buckingham’s matchless effrontery, and my own hand upon the helm, we may yet weather the tempest that darkens around us. But what we do must be hastily done.”
In another apartment he found the person he sought—the same who visited the Duke of Buckingham’s harem, and, having relieved Alice Bridgenorth from her confinement there, had occupied her place as has been already narrated, or rather intimated. She was now much more plainly attired than when she had tantalised the Duke with her presence; but her dress had still something of the Oriental character, which corresponded with the dark complexion and quick eye of the wearer. She had the kerchief at her eyes as Christian entered the apartment, but suddenly withdrew it, and, flashing on him a glance of scorn and indignation, asked him what he meant by intruding where his company was alike unsought for and undesired.