In three or four days Lady Cowper sent for me again to visit her in the morning. She had to tell me that I might now visit my brother in Newgate, for they suffered as many as pleased to visit the prisoners. But that as for the physician, my friend ——‘Child,’ she said, smiling, ‘you ought not to have told me. Pray forget that I have the man’s secret. Yet was I glad to have seen and conversed with a creature so honest and so faithful. Doth he ask no reward for his services?’
How could he, seeing I had nothing in the world to give him, nor had Tom neither? And the upshot of the whole business to him would be little short of ruin, seeing that his occupation was gone. Lady Crewe dead; Tom, if pardoned or reprieved, probably without any means; I powerless to help; his own youth gone (he was now at least thirty-seven) —— what would the poor man do in this hard world to get him a living?
‘Nay,’ said Lady Cowper; ‘a gentleman of his gifts can never starve, though it be long before he finds another patron like Tom, and another place to suit his genius so well as the one now in jeopardy. But, my dear, caution him carefully that he go not near Newgate yet, permission or not. Listen: it is whispered that the evidence against the prisoners will be found in the prison itself —— I mean, cousin, that wherever there are conspirators there are traitors; and when it comes to danger for the neck, honour and faith have but a poor chance. Ask me no questions, my dear. None of the gentlemen, our cousins, we may be sure, would consent to save their lives by such villainy. I only warn thee. There may be informers to turn King’s evidence. This physician —— whoever he may be —— lord! I have no memory —— if you even told me, I have clean and altogether forgotten where he comes from —— Leyden was it, or Muscovy? —— let him not venture within those walls; and, if he value his learned neck, bid him go no more abroad in the streets than is necessary, and if he can disguise his face, let him do so. Informers have one fault: they will still be showing zeal; and, perhaps, to secure a rebel at large might be thought by them more praiseworthy than to convict a rebel in prison. As for Tom,’ she went on, ‘if he is tried, make him plead guilty. It is his only chance —— since he missed the chance of running away on the road. My dear, if Lady Crewe were living, he certainly would never be tried at all.’
She said this with so much meaning, that one could not but understand her.
‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘Lord Crewe might be willing to do for his wife’s nephew what his wife would have done, had she lived.’
She smiled, and looked as if she would like to know more. Then she said:
‘If that is so, cousin, keep thy secret carefully. Tell me no more; or if you do tell me, forget that you have told me. But best not. Has anything yet been done? But do not tell me. A woman whose husband is the Lord Chancellor must not know these things. Yet my memory is very short. Oh! cousin, tell me or not, as seems you best; but, my dear, be prudent. Do not hurry, yet waste no time.’
I told her, then, after reminding her that my brother’s life depended on her secrecy, that nothing was yet done, but that we had command of a vast great sum of money, and Mr. Hilyard was engaged in devising a plan which should be safe and expeditious.
‘Mr. Hilyard,’ she said, ‘may be an ingenious man; but in such a case as this an ounce of woman’s wit, I take it, is worth a pound of man’s. No doubt he could tell us how men have broken prison since the first prison-house was erected by some Greek king; that is the way men cheat us, and because they know history, they think they can do everything; here, however, is no case for the boring of holes through the wall. Remember, my dear, the old story of Jupiter when he was in love, and how he got into the tower of the nymph. You know the pretty, naughty fable? By a shower of gold, my dear. Take your shower of gold in your own hand and try. Alas! how one’s tongue carries one away! What has the wife of the Lord Chancellor to do with showers of gold and Greek damsels? Yet, my cousin, I would to heaven that Tom was gotten clean away! I told the Princess of your long march to London through the snow and frost, and she wept. Do you think your Prince would have wept?’
Now this talk set me a-thinking. For Mr. Hilyard was all in the clouds with his great plans, and talked sometimes as if he was about to raise an army, or to besiege Newgate; and at other times as if he was inventing the plot of some mighty drama, in which the right people always came on the stage at the right time. Yet these vast projects were, I suppose, but the preliminaries to some more practical scheme. As for what I thought and what I attempted, you shall hear presently.
When I repeated to Mr. Hilyard some of this conversation, and especially that part of it which related to King’s evidence, he fell into so violent a wrath that I thought he would have had some sort of fit. For, surely, he declared, there can be no more dreadful wickedness than thus to betray the men with whom you have sworn fidelity. We wrote out lists, so far as we knew them, of all the prisoners brought to London, and we could think of none capable of playing so mean, so treacherous, so contemptible a part. Yet we could not choose but take Lady Cowper’s warning seriously, and Mr. Hilyard, with grave face, promised to run no risks that he could avoid.
In spite of his promise he presently fell into so great a danger that he got a terrible fright, and for some time lost confidence in his disguise, and would not venture abroad until nightfall. The way of it was this. Some prisoners being brought to London from Scotland, he must needs, being assured, in his own conceit, against recognition, go stand with the crowd outside the gates of Newgate to see them enter. It was mostly a Jacobite crowd, collected to cheer the unhappy men, but there were Whigs among them. Now, as Mr. Hilyard, in his sober physician’s dress, stood among the rest, some one tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned and saw that it was no other than the Reverend Mr. William Paul, the clergyman who joined the rebels in Lancashire, and escaped through having been sent away with letters. He had put off his cassock, and now, dressed like a plain citizen of London, was come to see the dismal show.
‘Ho! brother,’ he whispered. ‘Do you not know me? Let us go drink a glass together.’
‘What!’ said Mr. Hilyard. ‘It is Mr. Paul! Did you recognise me in this disguise?’
‘Recognise you? Of course I did, for all your great wig and your sober looks.’
While they were thus conversing there stepped from the doors of the prison an officer armed with a truncheon, who laid his hand upon the unfortunate Mr. Paul’s shoulder.
‘In the King’s name!’ he said, ‘I have a warrant to arrest the body of the Reverend William Paul.’
So saying, though the crowd pushed to and fro, and groaned, none dared attempt a rescue, and in a moment the poor man was haled within the prison-doors. (He was one of those afterwards executed.) You may be sure that Mr. Hilyard was not long in retreating, and for a few days he did not dare so much as to come to my lodgings.
I thought continually of Lady Cowper’s words concerning woman’s wit, but came not for a long while into any reasonable way of following her advice, for no other cause, I verily believe, than that I could not at all understand how to spend the twenty thousand pounds which Lord Crewe was ready to give us. When, however, I began to go to Newgate (of which I will tell immediately), I distinguished a turnkey or officer who belonged especially to the Governor’s house; and, partly at first in the hope that to conciliate this fellow might soften Tom’s lot in prison, I began to give him money.
He was a cunning-looking rascal, about fifty-five years of age, with a, foxy face and red twinkling eyes, which from the first followed me about as if I seemed likely to offer bribes. His fingers were curly from the taking of fees, while as for pity towards the poor unfortunate people in ward, his heart, I am sure, was nothing in the world but a lump of stone; he looked on every prisoner as worth so many guineas, and lamented the execution of a profitable criminal much as a physician laments the death of a profitable patient. Finding how greedy he was, and keen after money, I began to consider if I could not use him for some more considerable purpose than a careful attention to Tom, for whom, as he had his own man with him, he could do but little, even if he desired. Therefore I increased my gifts, dropping each day something handsome into his palm, and pretending to be grateful for his (supposed) kindness to my brother.
‘Such goodness,’ I said to him, ‘deserves a better reward, which it shall certainly obtain if the General steps out of prison. To be sure, if one were to find a willing and a friendly heart, that were easy. Ah! how gladly would one reward such a person! Think of it, Mr. Jonas!’ That was his name.
He grinned and nodded, and said he should not forget what I had said. Then every day that he saw me he would look at me inquiringly, as if to wonder why I did not use his services; and if he got a chance of speaking to me unheard, he would whisper:
‘A friendly and a willing heart, your ladyship.’
This was all my secret. While Mr. Hilyard was concocting great schemes and plots, I was simply trying whether a common servant of the gaol would not do the business for us just as well as if we were to set agoing the whole machinery of a five-act comedy with Spanish intrigues and French surprises.
And as for this fellow, it was perfectly plain to me that, though perhaps he might play me false in the end, he was willing to open his ears wide at the mere mention of the words ‘reward’ or ‘bribe.’ Therefore I kept him on and off, saying nothing more at the time, but waiting for a favourable opportunity.
The time was not yet ripe, for outside, not only in London, but over the whole country, there was such an uproar that one would have thought it was nothing less than the defeat of the Spanish Armada, instead of a handful of their own misguided countrymen rising inopportunely in a righteous cause. The bells of the City churches were kept a-clanging; bands of men paraded the streets with favours, shouting and challenging the Jacks to come forth and show themselves; there was fighting, drinking, profane swearing, lighting of bonfires, and brandishing of warming-pans all day long, and, I dare say, all night as well. As for me, I saw little of it; but once, going to the prison in a coach, we were stopped by a dozen half-drunken men, who pressed round the doors, swearing that I must drink King George’s health, or kiss them all. So I drank to the King, wishing in secret that it might choke his majesty, and they laughed and bade the coachman drive on. Why, what a poor cause that must be which wants such swaggerers and drunken reprobates to defend it! The hatred of the people against us was kept up, and aggravated as well, by the sermons of the London clergymen, especially in Nonconformist chapels; and, above all, by the Whig papers, which continually hurled dirt at the unfortunate prisoners and the cause for which they suffered. Lady Cowper bade me pay no heed to these things, because, she said, nobody regards what the journals say. Yet it was dreadful to read the things that were written about the wives and friends of the prisoners. We were assailed as tigresses —— but, indeed, I cannot repeat what they said; they also pleased themselves by enumerating the possessions and country seats of the rebels, which they confiscated, sold, and distributed long before the prisoners were tried at all. And they would not so much as listen to a word of mercy.
The first time I went to Newgate, it was expecting nothing short of underground dungeons, chains, gloom, and misery. Yet when I was admitted, the warden (no other than this same Jonas), after taking my name, and telling me that the General was lying in the Governor’s house with a few other gentlemen, led the way to a large and comfortable room on the first floor, which was his chamber. The only inconvenience about the room was that it served as bedroom, dining-room, and parlour............