Oddsfish! by Robert Hugh Benson (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📖

it was feigning on my side too. We parted, outwardly, the best of friends; inwardly we were at one another's throats.

So soon as I had dismounted--he having left me in the Strand--and gone indoors, I came out again, not fearing, indeed rather hoping, that he would be watching for me, and, in my boots just as I was, set out for Whitehall.

* * * * *


Mr. Chiffinch was within, expecting me. Even he looked a little excited; and no wonder. But first I made him answer my questions before I would say a word beyond telling him that his design had prospered.

"Mr. Chiffinch," said I over my supper which he had brought for me to his parlour. "Before I say one more word, you must tell me three or four things. The first is this. How did you know that it was in me that my Lord Essex would confide?"

"That is easily answered," said he. "My men told me that my Lord was after you everywhere--both in your lodgings and here."

"Ah!" I said, "and was there a fellow called Rumbald, with him?"

"You are right," he said. "How did you know that?"

"Wait," I said. "The next is, If you could tell me so much in your letter, why did you not tell me the names of the persons?"

He smiled.

"Mr. Mallock," he said, "from your hesitation I knew that you would refuse to do such work as this. So I intended to catch you unawares, and to entangle you in it. I knew that you would not refuse to go to Amwell, and behave there as I directed, if I said no more than I did."

"Well; you would have failed," I said.

"What!" said he. "You are still going to refuse?"

"No," said I, "I accept the work: but it is not what you think it is."

"Why--what is it then?"

"Wait," I said. "The next is, How did you know that they would be at Amwell at that time?"

"Oh! that is easy enough; one of my fellows got that out of one of Rumbald's maids--that a party of six would lie at the Ryehouse last night; and that they would meet two more at dinner in Amwell at eleven o'clock to-day. Rumbald has been known to us a long while. But it is the others we are waiting for."

I was silent. There were no more questions I wished to ask at present; though there might be others later.

"Well," said the page, a little eagerly; and his narrow face looked very like a fox's, as he spoke. "Well; and what is your news?"

I finished my stew, and laid down the spoon.

"Mr. Chiffinch," said I, "let me first ask one more question. Why do you think that my Lord Essex was after me at all? How did he know of me?"

"Plainly from Rumbald," said he.

"And why did he want me?"

He smiled.

"Why, Rumbald thinks you disaffected towards the King; and yet knows you are in his service. You would be a very great helper to them, if you cared."

It was my turn to smile.

"My Lord Essex is not a fool," I said. "If they know so much of me, would they not know more?"

"Plainly they do not," he said. "Or they would not have tried to get you on their side."

I laughed softly.

"Sir," I said, "you are very sharp: but you are not sharp enough."

Then I related to him the behaviour of them all in the inn; and how Rumbald had shewn no surprise in seeing that I was a gentleman after all; and how my Lord Essex had talked in what would have been the maddest manner, if his intention had been as Chiffinch had thought it to be; and with every word that I said the page's face grew longer.

"Well," he cried, "it is beyond me altogether. What then is the explanation?"

"My friend," I said, "you were right. Neither before nor after what has passed to-day would I have done the work you designed for me which was to get these men's confidence, and then betray it again. But it is not their idea to give me their confidence at all. So I will work with you very gladly."

"But then what can you do--" he began in amazement.

"Listen," I said. "It will fall out just as I say. They will give me very few names; they will admit me to none of their real secrets; but yet they will feign to do so."

"But, what a' God's name--"

"Oh! man!" I cried, "you are surely slow-witted to-day. They will do all this--" (I leaned forward as I spoke for further emphasis)--"_in order that I may hand it on to His Majesty_; but they will give me no real secret till the climax is come, and their designs perfected. And then they will give me a false one altogether. They think that they will make me a tool to further their true plans by betraying false ones. We may know this for certain then--that whatever they tell me, knowing that I will tell you, is not what they intend, but something else altogether. And it will not be hard to know the truth, if we are certified of what is false."

* * * * *


There was complete silence in the room when I had finished, except for the wash of the tide outside the windows. The man's mouth was open, and his eyes set in thought. Then sense came back to his face; and he smiled suddenly and widely.

"God!" he said, and slapped me suddenly on the thigh. "Good God! you have hit it, I believe."


CHAPTER VII

From now onwards there began for me such a series of complications that I all but despair of making clear even the course that they ran. My diaries are filled with notes and initials and dates which I dared not at the time set down more explicitly; and my memory is often confused between them. For, indeed, my work in France was but child's play to this, neither was there any danger in France such as was here.

For consider what, not a double part merely, but a triple, I had to play. The gentlemen, who were beginning at this time to conspire in real earnest against the King and the Constitution, some of whom afterwards, such as my Lord Russell, suffered death for it, and others of whom like my Lord Howard of Escrick escaped by turning King's evidence--although their guilt was very various--these gentlemen, through my Lord Essex, had got at me, as they thought, to betray not truth but falsehood to His Majesty, and told me matters, under promise of secrecy, which they intended me to tell to the King and his advisers. To them, therefore, I had to feign feigning: I had to feign, that is, that I was feigning to keep their confidence, but that in reality that I was betraying it; while to Mr. Chiffinch I had to disclose these precious secrets not as true but as false, and conjecture with him what was the truth. (My evidence, later, was never called upon, nor did my name appear in any way, for that the jury would never have understood it.) I had, therefore, a double danger to guard against; first that which came from the conspirators--the fear that they should discover I was tricking them, or rather that I had discovered their trickery; and, on the other side, that I should become involved with them in the fall that was so certain from the beginning, and be myself accused of conspiracy--or of misprision of treason at the least. Against the latter I guarded as well as I could, by revealing to Mr. Chiffinch every least incident so soon as it happened; and on three occasions in the following year having a long discourse with His Majesty. But against the former danger I had only my wits to protect me.

The best thing, therefore, that I can do is to relate a few of the events that happened to me. (I have never, I think, experienced such a strain on my wits; for it went on for a good deal more than a year, since I could for a long time arrive at no certain proofs of the guilt of the conspirators, and His Majesty did not wish to strike until their conviction was assured.)

The first meeting of the conspirators to which I was admitted was in January. (I had not been able, of course, to go to Hare Street for Christmas; but the letters I had now and again from Dolly, greatly encouraged and comforted me. I had told her that I "was keeping to my resolution," but that "I should be in some peril for a good while to come," and begged her to remember me often in her pure prayers.)

A fellow came to my lodgings about the middle of January, with a letter from my Lord Essex. It ran as follows:

"SIR,--With regard to some matters of which we spoke together on the occasion of our very pleasant ride to town last month, I am very anxious to see you again. Pray do not write any answer to this; but if you can meet me on Thursday night at the house of my friend Mr. West, in Creed Lane, at nine o'clock, we may have a little conversation with some other friends of ours. I am, sir, your obliged servant,

"Essex."

I told the fellow that the answer was Yes. My Lord had been to see me in Covent Garden twice, but had said very little that was at all explicit; but Mr. Chiffinch had bid me hold myself in readiness, and put aside all else for the further invitations that would surely come. And so it had.

I found the house without difficulty; and was shewn into a little parlour near the door; where presently my Lord came to me alone, all smiles.

"I am very glad you are come, Mr. Mallock," he said. "I was sure that you would. I have a few friends here who meet to talk politics; and they would greatly like to hear your views on the points. I think I may now venture to say that we know who you are, Mr. Mallock, and that you have done a good deal for His Majesty in France. Your opinion then would be of the greatest interest to us all."

(I understood why he put so much emphasis on France; it was to quiet me as to any suspicions they thought I might have as to my being the King's servant in England too.)

I answered him very civilly, smiling as if I was at my ease; and after a word or two more he took me in. It was a long low room, with a beamed ceiling and shuttered windows, in which the men were sitting. There were six of them there; and I knew two of them, immediately. He that sat at the head of the table, a very grim-looking man, with pointed features, in an iron-grey peruke,