After he had taken some supper and was refreshed, Tom began to tell us more.
‘Everything,’ he said, ‘was discovered —— I know not by what treachery. The King, who seems anxious not to offend the House, asked permission to arrest six of the members, of whom I was one, so that there was time for warning; and for my own part, whatever the others did, I saddled my horse and rode away, and, I dare say, the messenger after me. But I think he hath not travelled quite so fast, and I may be safe here for one night at least.’
He laughed, but uneasily. In his eyes there was the look of a hunted creature, and he started at the least sound. Presently, however, he became so heavy with sleep and weariness that he must needs go to bed, and so, messenger or no messenger, threw himself upon his bed and fell asleep.
We sat up late, thinking how best to hide him; yet not so late but that before five in the morning I was up, expecting no less than to find the messenger at the door. But there was no one. Presently, Tom came, awakened by Mr. Hilyard, and grumbling that he could not have his sleep out. But there was no time to lose, for the village was already stirring.
The garden of the Manor House is separated from the sands only by a field of coarse grass. By crossing this field, which can generally be done without being seen by any of the villagers, one can gain access to the castle by the old postern. It was thus that we hurried Tom to his first place of concealment —— a chamber known to no one but Mr. Hilyard and myself. It is below the level of the inner bailly, but yet not underground, because its window is above the rock, and looks out across the sand and the sea. The chamber was perhaps once used for a place of confinement, though the window is larger than one commonly finds in such gloomy places. It is approached by certain vaults now ruinous and partly fallen in, the entrance to which is itself half hidden by broken stones and briars, so that it looks like a broken hole in the wall. Here we thought he might lie hidden as long as he pleased.
At first Tom was as pleased as a child with a new toy. As soon, however, as he felt himself safe from pursuit, he began to reflect that a cell might be secure but yet uncomfortable. So anxious were we about the main point that we gave no thought to anything else, and considered not the wretchedness of waiting all day long in a stone chamber whose window has no glass, and where there is neither chair, bed, nor table, nor any convenience at all for comfort. The conveyance of these things to the chamber without observation or suspicion gave me the first of many lessons in the difficulty of being secret; anybody may easily keep a secret, but no one knows, except those who have unhappily been forced to try, how hard it is to do a thing secretly, so as neither to be seen nor suspected. In a few days, the history of the warrant and Tom’s flight might be known even in this remote village: the messengers would certainly come here in search of him; it was, therefore, of vital importance that his presence should be suspected by no one. How, therefore, all that day I conveyed small pieces of furniture to the end of the garden and dropped them over the wall for Mr. Hilyard to pick up and carry them across to the castle; how, with his own hands, that ingenious man, as ready with a carpenter’s tools as with a Latin poem, constructed and fitted first a window-shutter and afterwards a rude kind of window-sash; how he carried blankets, candles, wine, tobacco, and provisions, to the cell, need not be related. No one, from the mere fact of seeing us go up to the castle, would have suspected anything, because it was my daily resort.
At nightfall we carried a goodly supply of supper and whisky to the cell, and there I left Mr. Hilyard, who came not away until Tom was so much fortified by strong drink that he was in a condition not to fear the ghosts of the castle, and was, in fact, already asleep upon the hard bed we had made up for him with blankets and pillows strewn on the stones.
Thus our charge began. As early in the morning as was possible without causing any who saw to ask why, I went to the castle, carrying breakfast under my cloak. All the morning I sat with Tom. At one o’clock I took him dinner; in the evening Mr. Hilyard brought supper and sat with him.
After a time our prisoner grew peevish, and hard to please. He was anxious to change his quarters, and had it not been for a scare that we had would perhaps have gone off to seek shelter elsewhere. Of this I will speak presently.
He laughed scornfully at Lady Crewe’s counsel. It would be safe, he said, for him to surrender when the Prince himself could safely surrender, and not before. There was enough against him to hang a dozen men, if hanging was to begin; and he had left all his papers behind to be seized by the officers.
‘When the ship is sinking,’ he said, ‘a man cares first to get off alive. I knew not when the warrant would arrive, so mounted and rode away without waiting for anyone. Why, what matters? If they had not taken my papers, they would have taken some other’s.’
It was a grave business, indeed; and graver than we looked for at first, when we thought he was to be arrested only on account of his opinions.
‘So it is, however, Dorothy,’ he said, ‘and nothing is left but to push on the Prince’s interest. Fear not, child! Why, all is ready; the country is with us; the train is laid. Yet a week or two and thou shalt see an explosion will startle all England. Fortune and rank are before us when we have succeeded.’
‘And if we fail?’ Mr. Hilyard muttered with serious face.
‘Tony,’ said Tom, ‘I take that for a most peevish, ill-natured speech. “If we fail,” he says! Why, do you ask a sailor when he embarks what he will do if the ship be wrecked? or a soldier before a battle, how if he be shot? Hark ye, brother —— there is one comfort for me if we fail. I risk my neck, but not my estates, for I have none. So talk no more of failure, Tony, if you love me.’
Whenever I think of this time, and consider that we were engaged upon so dangerous a piece of work, much I wonder that we carried it through with success. Yet we did, thanks to the extraordinary precautions taken by Mr. Hilyard. For, first, he would have none in the secret at all —— no, not even Tom’s old companions, Ned Swinburne and Perry Widdrington, though they rode over a dozen times for news of their friend.
To them Mr. Hilyard replied that he had good assurance of his honour’s safety, but that until Mr. Forster chose to reveal his whereabouts it would be better for his friends not to inquire. Nor would he suffer any of the people in the village to be informed, nor the maids in the house, saying that these would be the first to be suspected, and, if they were arrested, would certainly, from sheer terror and dread of the whipping-post, tell all they knew. ‘Pinch a rat,’ he said, ‘and he will squeak.’ As for the additional food required, we both pretended great and uncommon appetite. Mr. Hilyard, for his part generally a small eater, though valiant with a bottle, assumed the guise of a desperate trencherman, comparing himself with the Grand Monarque himself, who is said to devour daily enough to maintain ten ordinary people (I mean not in the rhetorical sense, in which he hath devoured —— that is, impoverished —— his whole country, but in the literal sense). Then, after nightfall, he would steal out, carrying a great basket laden with next day’s provisions, to the chamber in the castle, where Tom would take his supper, and they would talk, drink, and smoke tobacco till the prisoner was sleepy. This we did during the whole of the month of August and half-way through September, Tom all the time expecting every day to hear of a rising over the whole country. No news coming to us, he chafed and wondered by what mischance the project was hindered. I cannot doubt that what Tom told me was true, and that so many noblemen and gentlemen all over the country should be in the plot, should have given solemn promises, and should be looking for the business to begin, fills me now with amazement that the result was so meagre. Alas! it costs more than promises to make a Rebellion become a Revolution.
As for the scare of which I have spoken, it was caused by the visit of Mr. Ridley, Justice of the Peace, with three or four messengers, armed with a warrant to search for Tom. With him was my father, grave and anxious, my brother Jack, and my half-brother Ralph, now a lad of thirteen or fourteen.
‘Dorothy,’ whispered my father, ‘surely thou hast not been so foolish as to hide Tom in the Manor House?’
‘Nay, sir,’ I replied truthfully, and aloud. ‘Tom is not here. Mr. Ridley might like, perhaps, to content himself.’
Mr. Ridley told us that he was charged to look for and to arrest Mr. Thomas Forster the younger; that he had been traced north as far as Newcastle; and that it was believed he had taken refuge in this, his own house. I assured him that he was not there. At first he was for taking my word, but his officers murmured. Therefore he said that he must, with my permission, visit the house. This he did in a civil and discreet manner, being a gentleman of as old a family as our own, and by no means desirous of finding Tom. They went into all the rooms, one after the other; first my own, with the maids’ room beside it; Tom’s room next, with his bed ready made, but no sign of its having been used, and Mr. Hilyard’s last.
Then the officers whispered together again, and, with Mr. Ridley, rode up to the castle-wall, where all dismounted, and went into the ruins, my father and I following.
‘I ask not where he is, Dorothy,’ said my father. ‘Sure I am that he would tell thee. But is he safe? Mr. Ridley tells me that there is as much against him as against the Duke of Ormond.’
‘I believe, sir,’ I replied, ‘that he is perfectly safe.’
They searched the great keep from top to bottom; they peered down the well; they climbed the broken stairs; they looked into the open and roofless rooms, along the broken walls; and they found nobody. But they did not know of the ruined vaults, where the ground slopes northwards to the postern-gate, nor did they know that in a chamber beneath............