“In Southwark. I had my reasons. Can you give me supper to-night, and an hour’s private talk? I have many things to turn over in my mind before then.”
The Secretary laid a hand upon John Gore’s shoulder.
“A friend’s trust is a friend’s affection, John. Come and sup with me; what I can do I will.”
The Secretary’s wife was feasting with friends that night, and Mr. Pepys and John Gore had the table to themselves. When supper was over, Mr. Samuel took the sea-captain to the library, locked the door, and prepared to play the part of counsellor and friend. For Mr. Pepys was a shrewd, sound man of the world, for all his oddities and love of news—a man who had walked the slippery path of public responsibility, and who knew the world’s deceitfulness, even to the latest lie from the lips of a king.
But even this critic of court scandals, and of the vanities of himself and of mankind at large, was flustered a little by John Gore’s account of his doings, and of the tragedy that had taken place at Thorn. Mr. Pepys could pass over a gay intrigue, but this darker and more sinister affair gripped the manhood in him, and made him understand his friend’s grimness.
“On the Cross of our Lord, Sam, I pledge you to silence over this. I know you are to be trusted where questions of life and death are concerned.”
There was no need to question the intenseness of the Secretary’s sincerity. He was a man of oak whose foibles and frivolities were merely the flutter of leaves in the wind.
“Have no doubt of that, John. But upon my conscience, this is black villany or something marvellous like it. Iago, oh Iago, thou dinest with us and smilest at us in church, thou art not only a thing of the stage!”
John Gore sat thinking, smoking his pipe, and snapping the thumb and middle finger of his right hand.
“It is the girl who has to be considered, Sam. She has borne enough, suffered enough, and from my own flesh and blood; that’s where the rub comes.”