‘Oh, my God! You mean I must do nothing because no one will believe me? And let the plotters plot on, who knows what horror and destruction?’
‘What else can you do? But don’t look so desperate. I will do something. I will see Piers Blanding in the morning. He is a good friend. If I drop a word in his ear, he will see that it gets to the right place. Without involving you. I wish you would let me ask him to take charge of you.’
‘Dearest Julia, you must see that I cannot seem to be abandoning Dick.’
‘You would be well advised to abandon us all.’
‘Never! Julia!’ Somehow he was on his feet; somehow she was in his arms
‘Hart! Do you understand at last?’ She raised her lips to his, confidingly, like a child.
‘I understand nothing!’ Only that he was kissing her, crushing her to him, helpless with a long hunger.
Afterwards his memories were blurred. It must have been she who pulled back the curtain, revealed the door into the next room. But he had picked her up and carried her in and thrown her on the bed.
XV
‘I’ll never forgive myself.’ Cold sober, Hart looked down at Julia as she lay there, naked, luxurious, satisfied.
‘Oh, dear Hart.’ She put up a hand to touch the lips that had fed on her so hungrily. ‘It had to happen. It was too strong for us, that is all. We must forgive ourselves, forgive each other. I love you, Hart.’ She raised pouting lips.
‘No! Julia, it’s no use.’ It was almost a groan. ‘I’m a married man.’ Quite horribly, just as she yielded to him, just as they moaned together, he had remembered Mercy’s body, the feel of it, the difference …
‘Married! Oh, my dear Hart! To the woman who’s the toast of Philadelphia! Who does not even trouble to write to you!’ She raised herself a little in his arms, and a hard nipple brushed his chest. ‘Hart!’
‘No!’ he said again, and began gently but firmly to disengage himself. ‘I’m sorry, Julia, more sorry and ashamed than I can say. I must take you home.’ He picked up his shirt and breeches. ‘I’ll leave you to dress.’
In the other room the candles had been snuffed, the table cleared, and a new bottle and glasses set ready. He looked at them with disgust as he put on his clothes. All part of the expected service. How many other men had Julia met here, for the same purpose, and had she really thought he would not know? What an innocent she must have thought him. He felt sick with shame. A drunken fool; a sot …
She joined him as he was tying his cravat, exquisite as always. Even this disgusted him now. Did English ladies have special clothes that took off easily? And was that why she had worn her hair unpowdered? All planned, all carefully planned …
Like the riots. What in the world had put that idea into his head? ‘We must be going,’ he said. ‘It’s late. Put on your domino and mask.’
‘Why should I? Dear Hart, I am proud to be seen with you. You must not blame me because I love you so much. I cannot help myself. You are my fate. I knew it the first time I saw you. Here, let me—’ She reached up to the cravat with which he was still fumbling. ‘You’re making a terrible botch of that.’
‘Julia, I tell you, no!’ He finished tying the cravat. ‘If you wish me to take you home, you will put on your domino and mask this instant and come with me now.’ He put on his coat as he spoke, wrapped himself in his own domino, and picked up hers.
‘Oh, so masterful.’ She smiled up at him over her shoulder. ‘You will make me fall in love with you all over again.’ But he had turned from her to pull the bellrope and demand the reckoning.
‘And call a chair,’ he said as he paid the bill, which was even higher than he had expected.
The chairmen did not want to take Julia to Charles Street. ‘Mob’s out down there, sir.’
‘Still?’ He had hoped that the streets would be quiet by now.
‘Making a night of it, by all accounts.’
‘What shall we do?’ Julia was clinging to his arm. ‘I’m frightened, Hart! I can’t stand anything more. Take me to the Bonds.’ Her voice rose. ‘I can’t face the mob. Or my mother. Take me to Susan!’
‘But we met the mob there last time.’
‘It never strikes twice. Like lightning. Then you can leave me there, Hart Purchis, and be quit of me.’ She was close to hysteria.
‘Best get the lady home,’ said one of the chairmen. ‘Where to, sir?’
‘Is the mob out between here and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, do you know?’
‘Not that I’ve heard of. They did their business there the other night, by what I hear.’
‘Very well. We’ll go there. I’ll walk beside the chair.’
It was not so late as he had thought. But at least here the streets seemed quiet enough, though he could hear the horrible, too familiar roar of the mob from somewhere south of them, nearer the river, and saw the sky red in that direction. A sporadic outburst of shooting suggested that the soldiers must be out and actually going into action. In Charles Street perhaps? Should we have taken Julia back there? He knew, suddenly, that he could not face it. She would tell her father and mother what had happened. The pressure to a mad, bigamous marriage would become intolerable. He was a coward – he knew himself for one – but he was not going back there. He would find himself a lodging for the night. Things would look better in the morning. They could hardly look worse.
They were approaching Great Queen Street where he heard shouting ahead. The chairmen stopped and put down the chair. ‘Sorry, sir. They’re ahead of us after all. You and the lady will be better on foot.’
‘On foot!’ Julia leant out of the chair. ‘I never heard such impudence. Tell them to go on, Hart. The mob won’t hurt us; why should they?’
‘Sorry, ma’am.’ The spokesman opened the chair door. ‘You can risk your life if you fancy to; we’re not risking the chair. It’s our bread and butter, see? Take you back, if you like.’ He turned to Hart. ‘Charles Street, did you say? Might be clear by now. Ten o’clock was the word there.’
‘The word? What do you mean?’
‘Nothing, I’m sure. You take a man up so short. Not Charles Street then.’ He reached up an ungentle hand and pulled Julia out of the chair.
‘Bumpkin!’ she exclaimed. ‘Hart—’ She swayed towards him, and he had to support her, but his whole attention was for the chairmen.
‘Who told you the mob would be In Charles Street at ten?’ he asked.
‘Why, no one, sir, how should they?’
And while Hart was still helplessly encumbered with Julia, they picked up the chair, turned smartly to the right-about, and vanished back down the dark street without even waiting to be paid. If it had not been for Julia, he would have gone after them, tried to hold them as evidence that the mobs were being directed, but she was sobbing now, clinging to him. ‘I’m frightened! Take me to Susan.’
‘Very well.’ No hope of catching the men now. ‘Keep quiet if we have to pass through the mob. There is no reason why they should molest us.’
‘Or why they should not.’ She clung to him, trembling, and he could feel nothing but impatience with her. ‘I wish we had blue cockades,’ she went on. ‘Why did I not think of it? But you will cry, “No Popery,” if they ask you to?’
‘No.’ He pulled her forward towards the sound of the mob. Emerging warily into Great Queen Street, he saw it entirely filled with the now familiar torch-bearing, chanting crowd. ‘Nothing for it but to pass through them,’ he told her in a low voice. ‘Hold tight to my arm.’ Was it mad to venture? Well, if it was, he was mad. He wanted more than anything in the world to be rid of her, to escape … He began, very carefully, very quietly to try to gentle their way through the shouting, chanting groups of people. Some had torches; some had crowbars; some were carrying an extraordinary variety of loot, fitfully illuminated by the tossing flares. An old, bent man hugged an armful of clothes; a boy carried a pair of fire tongs as if they had been a rifle; a young girl clutched a huge pie and bit at it as she walked. An
d everywhere was the smell of people and of spirits.
‘Faugh!’ said Julia.
‘Hush.’ He tightened his grip on her arm, sensing a change in the movement of the crowd. When they had joined it, it had been making a fairly purposeful way up towards Kingsway. Now, from somewhere ahead, eddies of uncertainty seemed to be building up.
‘Soldiers,’ said a voice, and, ‘Back,’ said another. ‘High Holborn’s blocked.’ And then, buzzing through the crowd, came the words ‘Leicester Fields’ and ‘Sir George Savile.’ And gradually, strangely, the crowd began to move again in the other direction.
Hart had an uncomfortable feeling that Julia’s exclamation of disgust had been noticed and resented by the people immediately around them and thought it wise to go with the tide of humanity for a little while, hoping to be able to edge their way gradually into one of the side streets by which they could get through to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. But Julia had her handkerchief to her face. ‘Faugh,’ she said again. ‘The stink! Get me out of this, Hart, or I will faint.’
‘Gentry,’ said a voice beside them. ‘A gentry mort as don’t like the honest stink o’ man. Faint, she will. Shall us give her something to faint about, brothers?’
At the words the crowd solidified into a threatening circle round them. A torch, thrust dangerously close, singed Hart’s cheek, and illuminated them for their tormentors. A scarecrow of a woman reached out to pluck off Julia’s mask. ‘Look at the doxy then. And the swell cove, too! Catholics, are you?’ The crowd around them gave a growl. ‘Bloody foreigners? Looking for that chapel of yours? She has a foreign look, the doxy, don’t she?’
‘Not at all.’ Hart flung back the hood of his domino and faced the woman. ‘We’re as Protestant as you are. The lady is English. Speak to them, Julia. Let them hear your voice.’
‘Of course I’m English.’ Julia seemed to have forgotten fear in rage. ‘And a better Englishwoman than any of you scum. Now let me pass, please.’
For a moment Hart actually thought it would work, that the crowd were so trained to give way to the imperious accents of the upper class that they would do so now. But the woman who had first spoken barred the way, arms akimbo. ‘Scum, is it? We’ll show you scum. And you too, pretty boy, who ain’t English whatever you try to pretend. Your talk gives you away, dirty foreigner.’
The surrounding circle moved a step closer. ‘I’m an American.’ Hart raised his voice in a last effort to hold them. ‘A fighter for liberty. I won’t cry, “No Popery,” friends, but I’ll cry, “God save George Washington,” and I hope you’ll join me!’
To his surprise and slight dismay, the crowd instantly burst into a very free rendering of his words, to the tune of ‘God Save the King.’ And at the same time an impatient ripple came down from the direction of Kingsway. ‘Time’s a-wasting,’ said a voice.
‘On to Leicester Fields,’ said another.
And, ‘No violence, he says no violence,’ said someone quite close to Hart, apparently to the woman who had questioned him.
‘Oh, get along with you’ – she gave Hart a push – ‘and take your woman with you, though it’s more than she deserves. Scum indeed!’ As she spoke, she was swept away in the southwards movement of the crowd, and Hart seized the chance to guide Julia across the road and into Kingsway.
They found the Bonds’ house brilliantly illuminated, as the mob demanded, but it took some time before they could make anyone open the door. At last, Bond himself leant out of an upstairs window in nightcap and dressing gown, identified Julia with a squeak of dismay, and came down to open the door. ‘Can’t take any chances,’ he said apologetically as Julia subsided into his arms. And then to Hart: ‘You’re not coming in?’
‘No,’ said Hart. ‘You and Mrs. Bond will take care of her, I know. Good-bye, Julia. Forgive me.’ And before she could retrieve herself from her pretended swoon, he turned and got himself safe back into the dark entrance of Duke Street. Where now? Most certainly not back to the Purchas house. He paused in the shadows, away from the street’s one inadequate light, and listened to the roar of the mob, still surging down Great Queen Street. Someone had been controlling them. Everything pointed to that. The change of direction had not happened spontaneously; word had been passed down from what had been the head of the unruly procession. So – whoever was in fact in command must be quite near now. He wrapped his domino more closely round him and insinuated himself quietly back into the milling, chanting crowd. The group who had tormented him and Julia should be well away by this time, and he had noticed other men in evening dress here and there among the rioters. It was only Julia’s folly that had drawn the mob’s attention to them. By himself, he should be safe enough.
Mad to be doing this. But he was mad tonight. And he could not shake off the strange feeling that he had known the man whose voice he had heard in the crowd earlier that evening. If he could only hear it again … A chance in a million, but one he felt he must take. In some curious way he felt it to be connected with Julia and all that disaster. Or was he merely clutching at straws, trying to make himself forget his own shameful behaviour? Either way he found himself moving down Great Queen Street, an unnoticed member of the mob. When they passed houses that had been looted in the previous day’s rioting, the crowd stopped to give them three ironical cheers, but each time a new ripple flowed forwards through the crowd, and the words ‘Leicester Fields’ and ‘Sir George Savile’ passed from mouth to mouth. He thought that whoever was masterminding the riot must be behind him still and tried to slow his pace, but found it too dangerous. The only way to escape notice was to move with the tide.
When they reached Drury Lane, he could see a glow ahead, over the heads of the mob, and as they poured down Long Acre and spread into Leicester Fields, they were more and more clearly illuminated by the light of the huge bonfire that burnt in front of Sir George Savile’s house. ‘Too late,’ said a disgusted voice behind him.
And, ‘Look,’ said another, ‘the troops!’
The house itself still stood, with all its windows broken and its front door hanging ajar on broken hinges, but now Hart could see the glint of steel, the gleam of epaulettes in the savage firelight, as the Guards took over.
Now a new catchword was echoing through the crowd: ‘Rainforth.’ And ‘Clare Street.’ He pushed his way back towards Long Acre, trying to see who had started it going but again found it difficult and dangerous to move against the crowd and made slow work of it. He ought to be carrying something; everyone else had a bit of booty or a weapon. He picked up a piece of wood from the road and, as he did so, noticed something. People with booty were detaching themselves from the mob and moving southwards towards the dark shape of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.
He followed them quietly, clutching the bit of wood as if it had value. It was darker as he moved away from the great bonfire, and he was able to watch unobserved as one after another the men paused by a big old-fashioned carriage that was standing in a dark corner by the church. They leant in at the carriage window, said something, and came away empty-handed. Or – not entirely so? One of them was muttering as he came back past Hart, ‘Sixpence!’ angrily to himself. ‘Risk my life for sixpence! I’ll see you damned first.’
‘Is that all you got?’ Hart took his own purse out of his pocket. ‘Maybe I’ll keep this myself, if so.’
‘I would,’ said the other man. ‘A paltry sixpence for a bit of plate I’d have hung for. Word was, pay was good! Good!’ He spit loudly. ‘I’ll prig for myself from this on.’
‘And so will I,’ said Hart. ‘Unless I can find the man himself and make better terms. Where is he, do you know?’
‘Black George? As well ask me where the devil is! You don’t know much if you don’t know that.’ He gave Hart a sharp sideways look. ‘Why may you be, asking questions? And in a damned odd voice, too!’ He reached out to grab Hart.
‘An American!’ Hart managed to evade him. ‘Who doesn’t want to be hanged either.’ He threw it back as he turned
and hurried back towards Long Acre. Clearly the carriage was merely a collecting place for loot; there was no chance that the man who was organising the riots would risk himself by being seen near it.
The crowd was thinning now. The bonfire still burnt high, illuminating faces to a dangerous extent, and the Guards were fully in command of Sir George Savile’s house. Hart suddenly felt too exhausted almost to move. He must find himself somewhere to spend the night. He began to work his way in the direction of Fladong’s Hotel, which Dick had told him was much used by country gentlemen. Perhaps a night’s sleep would help him identify that mysterious, surely familiar voice he had heard earlier that evening. Black George’s voice, presumably, or that of one of his accomplices. Horrible to think that this whole unspeakable outbreak of mob violence might have been planned simply as a means to loot. Planned … The word caught in his mind. Something else had been planned that night; Julia had planned to entrap him and had succeeded. And thinking of her, hating himself all over again, he had it. Black George. Not George Gordon. George Purchas. His voice. Part of him had known it all the time. Known it and not wanted to admit it? Very likely. It was a horrible bit of knowledge and one he did not know how to use. He had harmed the Purchas family enough already without branding George Purchas as the worst kind of criminal. Besides, he had not a shadow of proof. Thinking it miserably over as he prepared for bed at Fladong’s, he decided that the only thing he could do was confront George himself with his knowledge and hope to frighten him out of further criminal activity. A forlorn hope, but in the end it helped him to a restless, nightmare-haunted sleep.
His first problem next morning was that of funds. The staff at Fladong’s had welcomed him kindly enough the night before as a fugitive from the mob, which had explained his lack of luggage for the time being, but that would do for only one night. Either he had to go back to the house in Charles Street, collect his effects, and face Mr. Purchas, or he must go to Drummond’s, draw some more money, and reequip himself. Feeling himself a craven, he chose the latter course. It would be time enough to face Mr. Purchas about Julia when he had seen George and done his duty there. He was pretty sure to find George at the Cocoa Tree later in the day, but he had no idea where he actually lived.
Wide is the Water Page 21