A day or two after this Mr. Hilyard appeared no longer in the disguise of a physician, but dressed as a sober and grave citizen; that is to say, in no disguise at all, having bartered his physician’s wig for a full wig such as that worn by the better sort, and his black clothes for a plum-coloured coat and waistcoat of the same.
‘What is this new disguise?’ I asked.
‘No disguise at all,’ he replied. ‘I am now a free man, and need not hide my head at all. There is no warrant out for me; and if there were, I am assured of my pardon.’
I asked him how this was.
‘Miss Dorothy,’ he replied, smiling, ‘the son of a vintner need not be too proud to take favours from a gipsy, or even an actress.’
‘Is this, then, Jenny Lee’s doing?’
‘I will tell you in a few words. Know, then, that Jenny loves to entertain her friends, after the theatre, to supper at her own lodging, and has been so good as to invite me to make one whenever I please. Many gentlemen —— wits, Templars, poets, and the like, go there, and some are men of rank. Jenny cares not who they are, so long as they amuse her and make her laugh, which is all she loves.’
I had already, as I have said, seen Jenny on the stage (at Mr. Hilyard’s urgent entreaty, but from no desire of my own), and a very moving spectacle, I confess, it was. Her part was so full of noble sentiments that I began to understand Mr. Hilyard’s admiration for acting. Why, if all actresses and actors are thus full of virtuous and lofty discourse there can be no question that theirs is truly a great and wonderful profession, and worthy of all honour. But now Mr. Hilyard told me that laughter was all she cared for. Yet she seemed in her part possessed of the finest and most exquisite sensibility. How, after this, can Mr. Hilyard persist that acting is an art which hath in it something of the divine? To care for nothing but laughing!
‘Among her friends,’ Mr. Hilyard went on, ‘who come to sup with her after the play is a certain great Whig lord —— yes, a very great and powerful lord indeed —— and yet his name need not be mentioned between us, because, perhaps, he is one of those humble Christians who love not their good deeds to be made public; or, perhaps, because all the world need not know that he goeth to sup with Jenny Lee. Well, last night, after supper, there was singing and laughing. Among the others, I performed for the amusement of the company some of those small arts of mine by which I have often, of old, beguiled the evening for his honour and his friends.’
‘I know them well, Mr. Hilyard.’
‘Yes —— I sang and played my best. But who can call anything acting when Jenny Lee is present? Yet they laughed and were amused; my lord was so good as to distinguish me particularly, and presently I heard him whisper Jenny, and ask what was my name and condition. “Indeed, my lord,” said she, in her pretty, roguish way, “I shall not tell your lordship unless you promise to grant me the next favour I ask.” “The least favour from your hands, fair Jenny,” he replied, “even to answer so simple a question, is richly repaid by the greatest from mine.” But I think he did not guess what she was about to ask him. “My lord,” she said, whispering, “he is a most harmless, affectionate creature; he hath come up to London from the north; it is dangerous for him to venture abroad for the present, because he was with the rebels. Nay; but he went only because his patron went, as in duty bound, and for no Popish reasons. No one is in search of him; no one wants to arrest him; but if he be by any accident discovered and clapped in ward, then will his neck be twisted and his song spoiled. Wherefore, my lord, make this poor man safe, and give him assurance of safety, and you shall have ——” “What, fair Jenny?” “My gratitude, my lord. Can you ask for more? He is my earliest friend. He first taught me how to act; he who helps Mr. Hilyard, helps me.”
‘Well, he hesitated; told her she was a witch, and a baggage, and a saucy rogue, and kissed her hands. Then he lugged out his tablets, wrote down my name, and beckoned to me. “Sir,” he said, “you owe to this lady your safety. I will take care that you are not molested; go where you please —— go even into Newgate if you will.” You may be sure I hastened to thank him with my best leg, and to assure his lordship that I was his most humble servant to command, and that for the future, after praying for his lordship, I should cry, “God save King George!”’
The first day he came away from the prison, Mr. Hilyard was pensive and melancholy.
‘Truly,’ he said, ‘it grieves me to the soul to see these poor fellows, once so merry and gallant, now mewed up together in that gloomy place, where, ruffle and hector and swear as they may, every man feels as if the gallows was already in sight. The aspect of Mr. Edward Swinburne pleases me not, for he hangs his head and will hardly speak, but sitteth as much alone as may be. The minds of generous men are easily moved to shame for public disgrace; yet the part which this young gentleman took in the Rebellion was not so conspicuous that his shame should enter into his soul. He is not, like Cleopatra, reserved for the chief place in the triumph; nor like Antony, who aimed at the empire of the inhabitable world and lost it. Yet he is as one fallen into melancholy with the shame of the defeat. Some, like Mr. Stokoe, bite their nails and walk gloomily to and fro; some, like poor Mr. Paul, caught by so cursed a mischance, weep and wring their hands; some swear that a man can die but once, and what odds then? Some drink to forget their anxiety; one or two alone, like Mr. Charles Radcliffe and Colonel Oxbrough, preserve an intrepid spirit, and show a resolute countenance to whatever happens.
‘Most of all,’ he went on, ‘I pity Mr. Patten; who, now that he finds himself fairly in for his trial, and no one likely to hale him out of prison, is falling into a dejection which may work harm to his honour, with whom he sits too much.’
In fact, although Mr. Patten continually plied poor Tom with flatteries (more from habit than from any hope of further patronage), and assured him (contrary to the fact) that he was covered with military glory for his conduct in the campaign, his conversation was so full of gibbets, drawing, and quartering, with so many reflections on the pain and misery of quitting the world while in the very prime and heyday of manhood and happiness, that Tom grew daily more melancholy and less disposed for resignation. Every day, also, Mr. Patten found occasion to compare the happy lot of Mr. Hilyard and his freedom with their captivity.
‘Some,’ he said, ‘are born to this kind of fortune, that they may get over the wall with impunity, while others are hanged for no more than peeping over it. Others, again, keep in the background secret friends for their own use, and so procure enlargement —— I would I knew of such! Some even go so far, I have heard, as to procure their own pardon at the price of giving evidence against their friends —— a most monstrous treachery, indeed! Yet, Mr. Hilyard, I think it right to let you know that this is whispered against you in the Press Yard, and some there are who speak of braining the man who would thus ——’ ‘Zounds, sir!’ cried Mr. Hilyard; ‘dare you —— or any —— insinuate that I go at large in order that they may suffer?’
‘Not I, sir —— not I, certainly. I tell them that the General could not repose his confidence in you so fully unless he had first proved your loyalty. Oh! not I, indeed, sir —— believe me!’
But the mere suspicion of the thing made Mr. Hilyard so angry that he had no peace until he had conferred with Charles Radcliffe, and been assured by him that not one of the gentlemen, his old friends, believed him capable of so base an action.
I suppose it was about this time that Mr. Patten began to groan with repentance, and to accuse himself of being a great sinner.
‘I fear, sir,’ he told Tom, ‘that my sin, which now weighs heavily upon my soul, may lead me to show my remorse and repentance in a way which some of my friends may not approve. Yet I am convinced that your honour, knowing the tenderness of my conscience, will approve what I shall do.’
‘Why, Mr. Patten,’ Mr. Hilyard said, answering for Tom, who only stared, so strange was it to hear Mr. Patten talk in this way, ‘as for your sins, it is not for anyone to contradict you since you assert the fact, and doubtless you are, like the rest of us, a............