In this way we came to town, where my first night was full of dreadful dreams, and my sleep troubled with the sight of the poor prisoners marching along the road amid the derision and the hootings of the mob. But at the end of the road there was a black scaffold and a gibbet beside it, with hanging ropes; a block, and a man with an axe: and beside me stood no other than my maid, Jenny Lee, saying, as she pointed to Tom, ‘Great name; great blame,’ as she had said on the Eve of St. John.
The place where I was lodged was in a street near Drury Lane, called Great Wyld Street, at the house of one John Purdy, a cousin of John Purdy, the Bamborough blacksmith, himself born at Lucker, but come to London to seek his fortune in that trade, and knowing me very well when I was little. He was married to a buxom young London woman, and had a family of four or five children, being a thriving tradesman. His wife, a decent, kind-hearted body, though a stickler for the Protestant Succession, and of the Independent sect, was curious at first to look upon the sister of the General Forster of whose doings everyone had lately heard so much (the people, I know not why, called him the ‘Man under the Rose,’ and he was popularly supposed to be the chief mover and agent in the whole affair).
‘Sometimes,’ said Mr. Hilyard, ‘popular beliefs make history. Can it be that Catiline was only an instrument, and Spartacus a tool? Will his honour, the dupe of crafty and designing men, go down to posterity as the fabricator of the whole business?’
In the morning the good woman made a hundred excuses to come into my room: she had a log of ship-timber fresh come up from Deptford; she would ask my pleasure concerning dinner and supper; she could get me some fine fresh fish —— and always with something
about the prisoners. ‘They were followed with shouting and curses,’ she said, in her desire to comfort me, ‘all through the town and as far as the Tower, where they have placed the lords; they sang songs running along beside them, and dangled warming-pans out of the windows. As for Lord Derwentwater, they say he is as handsome as the day, and never lowered his head or made the least sign that he heard a word; he might have been going to his wedding instead of his death, the poor young gentleman! As for the gentlemen, some of them are in Newgate. ’Tis a pity! Mercy, they say, will be shown to none, but all will be hanged. Oh dear! Yes, hanged, drawn, and quartered, and their legs and heads set up on Temple Bar. A thousand pities, to be sure!’
It was cold comfort, indeed, that this good woman gave me. Her husband, however, was better. He came to offer me his best services, and if there was anything he could do for his honour or for me, to let him know; he said that, of course, he recognised Mr. Hilyard in his disguise as a countryman, for which he supposed there was good reason; but he was a North-countryman, and knew the respect due to the Forsters, and how to keep a quiet tongue in his head, especially where his wife was concerned.
Early next morning Mr. Hilyard himself came to see me. He was now transformed again, feeling as much pleasure in this, his second disguise, as a child feels in a new toy. He was, if you please, a physician, with an immense great wig, a black coat, and sword —— very grave, but with nose in the air; he rode in a hackney-coach, because, he said, no one regardeth a physician who walks; besides, it was sixteen years and more since he had sat in a glass-coach. I do not know that there was any necessity for this careful disguise, seeing that no one in London knew him, and that all who were with him in the rebel army were dispersed or prisoners. But he thought so, and it gave him confidence. Besides, he felt himself a secret agent or officer of Lord Crewe, and therefore bound, I suppose, to spend his money.
‘My Lord Bishop,’ he said, ‘will approve of this disguise when he hears of it. Money cannot be better laid out than in artifices which prevent suspicion. Until our plan is completed and we are ready for action, we must lie quiet and snug, and take care to give no occasion for talk.’
He then sat down and proceeded with his news. But first I remarked in him a great vivacity and air of enjoyment. He said that it was the noise of the London streets and the smell of the London air which raised and exhilarated his spirits, so that he felt an uncommon lightness of heart, although the circumstances of this return to his native air were so unhappy.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘I must tell you that his honour is lodged in Newgate, with seventy or eighty of the gentlemen, and the rest are in the Fleet and Marshalsea, except the lords, who are all in the Tower. So much I learned in the coffee-house on Ludgate Hill, whither I repaired after buying these clothes at second-hand in the Minories. The talk is of nothing but the rebels and the prisoners. It is sixteen years and more since last I smelt the tobacco and the coffee. I hope you like this wig; it cost me three guineas, and was the property of a great physician now deceased. All the talk, I say, is of the prisoners. They say the insults of the mob were incredible. The mob is now fired with a noble zeal for the Protestant Succession, and hath grown mighty pious. It is a religious fervour which is too hot to last, but may yet prove disastrous to our friends. I have found a lodging in Great Queen Street, not far from here and convenient for Drury Lane Theatre, where I can lie snug. I have told the landlady, who is a respectable widow woman, that I am a physician from the country, come to town on business. I have paid her a fortnight in advance to prevent questions being asked. And now comes another piece of news which will indeed astonish you. Last night I went to the theatre to divert myself.’
‘To divert yourself! Oh, Mr. Hilyard! did you come to London to divert yourself?’
‘Nay —— nay —— but, believe me, when nothing can be done, it is good to relieve the mind. We must not think of one thing only, or we might presently fall into a melancholy, a lethargy, and so be able to effect nothing. Consider, pray, how long and painful hath been the journey to London, and with what sad thoughts and gloomy forebodings we lengthened the miles. Believe me, Miss Dorothy, not for the pleasure of the acting did I go, but as medicine or physic to the soul.’
He spoke so earnestly that one could not but forgive him. Besides, it was sixteen years since the poor man had seen the theatre.
‘The piece was the “Cobbler of Preston.” But never mind the piece, although it was, for that matter, admirably played. Yet more fire might have been expressed by him who played —— but, I forget; my news has nothing to do with the play. I would you had been in the house to see the brave show, the beaux and the modish ladies. I could have wept to think of the old times when I used to go there whenever I could find a sixpence for the gallery, or a shilling for the pit. The house quite full, and the talk about nothing but the brave bearing of the prisoners. Mostly my Lord Derwentwater was commended, because of all he seems to have the poorest chance of escape. They have already begun to hang them in Liverpool, it is said,’
‘But your news —— your news, Mr. Hilyard!’
‘It is that the principal female character was played —— you will never guess! It was played —— you were never so surprised in all your life —— and played with so great a fire, such justness of gesture and looks, such perfect command of the part and knowledge of the lines as astonished me —— by none other, if you please, than your own maid —— Jenny Lee!’
‘Why,’ I said, ‘I heard that she had joined the players. There is no reason, that I see, for surprise. She was a clever girl, and I hope she has remained good.’
‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Are you not surprised? Should you wonder if I, beginning as a humble curate, were to become Archbishop of Canterbury? Or if a lad who sweeps out the chambers of a barrister were to become Lord Chancellor? Or if a drummer-boy should grow to command the army? Yet, believe me, this is what Jenny Lee has done. Among actresses she is a Bishop, a General, a Lord Chancellor. Indeed she deserves her good fortune, if ever woman did.’
‘By reason of her good conduct?’
‘Nay; what matters her conduct, good or bad? On the stage she is Calista, Almeria, Celinda, what you will; off the stage we have nothing to say or think of her, any more than of any other woman. I mean that she hath become a most accomplished and wonderful actress. But this is not all. After the play was over I went to the stage-door, and begged that a letter might be taken to Mistress Lee from an old friend. It was but a line that I wrote, asking that an old friend from Northumberland might see her. Now be prepared for a new surprise. She came down in a few minutes, but knew me not, so that I had to whisper my name; and then, without saying a word, she took my hand and led me to her own coach. “Come,” she said, “and have supper with me, and tell me all.”’
‘Her own coach? Jenny Lee’s coach?’
‘Why, I said, did I not, that she is a queen among actresses? Of course she has her coach, and coachman too. She lives in Red Lion Square, a very convenient and fashionable part of town, though somewhat far from the theatre. I found in her lodgings no other person than Mr. Frank Radcliffe.’
‘I think,’ I said, ‘that a gentleman of his birth might be more choice in his company. Did he, too, go to the theatre, or to sup with a play-actress, to divert his mind?’
‘But,’ he repeated, ‘she is a very great actress indeed. However, there is not much diversion for Mr. Frank. To begin with, I saw clearly that the poor young gentleman is melancholy mad in love with Jenny. She can do with him what she pleases. You remember the strange thing you saw at Dilston. She orders and he obeys. Yet he looks little like a lover, and is so worn and thin that you would not know him. He says that had he known of the rising he would have hurried to the north to join his brother, but he had no hint or suspicion of it. The poor young gentleman, with his hacking cough, would have been killed in a week. I told him that, so far as I could learn, the Earl had no hint or suspicion of it either, and that, for his own sake, his friends were well pleased that he had not joined that unfortunate enterprise. I then explained the cause of my coming to London, and the manner, which greatly affected Jenny (whose heart, I am sure, is good, though she be an actress). She shed tears, and inquired if in any way she might help us in our business.’
‘Why,’ I said, ‘the Forsters must be sunk low indeed, if they must stoop to seek the aid of an actress who was once a servant-maid.’
Mr. Hilyard replied nothing.
‘To be sure,’ I went on, ‘you yourself seem infatuated with the girl. Is it not intolerable that she should steal away the senses of a young gentleman with her sorceries? And you would have me, her former mistress, go to her for counsel and aid?’
‘Forgive me,’ he replied, humbly. ‘As for her sorceries, I doubt if they are now, whatever they were once, other than any woman can exercise with black eyes and pretty face, and such a wit as Jenny hath. ’Tis true she was your maid; but she is so no longer. All things must have a beginning. Why, I was myself but the son of a vintner, and have, if the truth be told, sat at the spigot when a boy and filled the measures. Yet was I thought worthy to be enrolled among the gentlemen volunteers, and to fight beside Lord Derwentwater himself at Preston. Jenny was once your maid; but she is now a great and wonderfu............