Shrewsbury: A Romance
by Stanley John Weyman · English · Gutenberg #39137 · 698,853 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Shrewsbury: A Romance
Author: Stanley John Weyman
Illustrator: Claude A. Shepperson
Release date: March 14, 2012 [eBook #39137]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39137
Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHREWSBURY: A ROMANCE ***
Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books
Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Je-hnRe2EckC
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
SHREWSBURY
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF
A Tale of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE.
A Tale of the Days of Henry of Navarre.
THE RED COCKADE.
A Tale of the French Revolution.
[Illustration: WITH A GESTURE BETWEEN CONTEMPT AND IMPATIENCE THE DUKE
REMOVED HIS HAT]
SHREWSBURY
A Romance
BY
STANLEY J. WEYMAN
AUTHOR OF "A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE," "UNDER THE RED ROBE,"
"THE HOUSE OF THE WOLF," ETC.
WITH 24 ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
CLAUDE A. SHEPPERSON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1898
Copyright, 1897
By STANLEY J. WEYMAN
* * *
_All rights reserved_
TO MY BROTHER HENRY
IN MEMORY OF A SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN THE YEAR 1877
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
With a gesture between contempt and impatience the duke removed his
hat. _Frontispiece_.
She looked directly at me.
In an instant I was on the other side of the fence.
Stole down the stairs and into the garden.
My companion seized my wrist.
The constable led me out of the crowd.
"When my back is turned go through that window."
He wore a dingy morning-gown and had laid aside his wig.
"Damn your King William, and you too!" he cried.
He pressed the ring of cold steel.
In the great chair sat an elderly lady leaning on an ebony stick.
I heard a light foot following me.
With a gesture between contempt and impatience the duke removed his
hat.
I flung my arms round him from behind, and with my right hand jerked
up the pistol.
A slight gentleman ambled and paced in front of a child.
"Now we will have that letter, if you please."
I saw a man had come to a stand before the door.
The place was nothing more than a concealed cupboard.
And turning from me, he began to pace the room, his hands clasped
behind him.
She came a step nearer to me, and peered at me.
Sir John ... stared at me a moment.
She listened in silence, standing over me with something of the
severity of a judge.
He shut himself in with his trouble.
I stood there at last ... the faces at the table all turned towards
me.
She was making marks on the turf with a stick.
SHREWSBURY
CHAPTER I
That the untimely death at the age of fifty-eight of that great
prince, Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury, my most noble and generous
patron, has afflicted me with a sorrow which I may truly call _acerbus
et ingens_, is nothing to the world; which from one in my situation
could expect no other, and, on the briefest relation of the benefits I
had at his hands, might look for more. Were this all, therefore, or my
task confined to such a relation, I should supererogate indeed in
making this appearance. But I am informed that my lord Duke's death
has revived in certain quarters those rumours to his prejudice which
were so industriously put about at the time of his first retirement;
and which, refuted as they were at the moment by the express
declaration of his Sovereign, and at leisure by his own behaviour, as
well as by the support which at two great crises he gave to the
Protestant succession, formed always a proof of the malice, as now of
the persistence, of his enemies.
Still, such as they are, and though, not these circumstances only, but
a thousand others have time after time exposed them, I am instructed
that they are again afloat; and find favour in circles where to think
ill of public men is held the first test of experience. And this being
the case, and my affection for my lord such as is natural, I perceive
a clear duty. I do not indeed suppose that anyone can at this time of
day effect that which the sense of all good men failed to effect while
he lived--I mean the final killing of those rumours; nor is a plain
tale likely to persuade those, with whom idle reports, constantly
furbished up, of letters seen in France, weigh more than a consistent
life. But my lord's case is now, as I take it, removed to the Appeal
Court of Posterity; which nevertheless, a lie constantly iterated may
mislead. To provide somewhat to correct this, and wherefrom future
historians may draw, I who knew him well, and was in his confidence
and in a manner in his employment at the time of Sir John Fenwick's
case--of which these calumnies were always compact--propose to set
down my evidence here; shrinking from no fulness, at times even
venturing on prolixity, and always remembering a saying of Lord
Somers', that often the most material part of testimony is that on
which the witness values himself least. To adventure on this fulness,
which in the case of many, and perhaps the bulk of writers, might
issue in the surfeit of their readers, I feel myself emboldened by the
possession of a brief and concise manner of writing; which, acquired
in the first place in the circumstances presently to appear, was later
improved by constant practice in the composition of my lord's papers.
And here some will expect me to proceed at once to the events of the
year 1696, in which Sir John suffered, or at least 1695. But softly,
and a little if you please _ab ovo_; still the particulars which
enabled my lord's enemies to place a sinister interpretation on his
conduct in those years had somewhat, and, alas, too much, to do with
me. Therefore, before I can clear the matter up from every point of
view, I am first to say who I am, and how I came to fall in the way of
that great man and gain his approbation; with other preliminary
matters, relating to myself, whereof some do not please at this
distance, and yet must be set down, if with a wry face.
Of which, I am glad to say, that the worst--with one exception---comes
first, or at least early. And with that, to proceed; premising always
that, as in all that follows I am no one, and the tale is my lord's, I
shall deal very succinctly with my own concerns and chancings, and
where I must state them for clearness of narration, will do so
_currente calamo_ (as the ancients were wont to say) and so forthwith
to those more important matters with which my readers desire to be
made acquainted.
Suffice it, then, that I was born near Bishop's Stortford on the
borders of Hertfordshire, in that year so truly called the Annus
Mirabilis, 1666; my father, a small yeoman, my mother of no better
stock, she being the daughter of a poor parson in that neighbourhood.
In such a station she was not likely to boast much learning, yet she
could read, and having served two years in a great man's still-room,
had acquired notions of gentility that went as ill with her station as
they were little calculated to increase her contentment. Our house lay
not far from the high road between Ware and Bishop's Stortford, which
furnished us with frequent opportunities of viewing the King and
Court, who were in the habit of passing that way two or three times in
the year to Newmarket to see the horse-races. On these occasions we
crowded with our neighbours to the side of the road, and gaped on the
pageant, which lacked no show of ladies, both masked and unmasked, and
gentlemen in all kinds of fripperies, and mettlesome horses that hit
the taste of some among us better than either. On these excursions my
mother was ever the foremost and the most ready; yet it was not long
before I learned to beware of her hand for days after, and expect none
but gloomy looks and fretful answers; while my father dared no more
spell duty for as much as a week, than refuse the King's taxes.
Nevertheless, and whatever she was as a wife--and it is true she could
ding my father's ears, and, for as handsome as she was, there were
times when he would have been happier with a plainer woman--I am far
from saying that she was a bad mother. Indeed, she was a kind, if
fickle, and passionate one, wiser at large and in intention than in
practice and in small matters. Yet if for one thing only, and putting
aside natural affection--in which I trust I am not deficient--she
deserved to be named by me with undying gratitude. For having learned
to read, but never to write, beyond, that is, the trifle of her maiden
name, she valued scholarship both by that she had, and that she had
not; and in the year after I was breeched, prevailed on my father who,
for his part, good man, never advanced beyond the Neck Verse, to bind
me to the ancient Grammar School at Bishop's Stortford, then kept by a
Mr. G----.
I believe that there were some who thought this as much beyond our
pretensions, as our small farm fell below the homestead of a man of
substance; and for certain, the first lesson I learned at that school
was to behave myself lowly and reverently to all my betters, being
trounced on arrival by three squires' sons, and afterwards, in due
order and gradation, by all who had or affected gentility. To balance
this I found that I had the advantage of my master's favour, and that
for no greater a thing than the tinge of my father's opinions. For
whereas the commonalty in that country, as in all the eastern
counties, had been for the Parliament in the late troubles, and still
loved a patriot, my father was a King's man; which placed him high in
Mr. G----'s estimation, who had been displaced by the Rump and hated
all of that side, and not for the loss of his place only, but, and in
a far greater degree, for a thing which befell him later, after he had
withdrawn to Oxford. For being of St. John's College, and seeing all
that rich and loyal foundation at stake, he entered himself in a body
of horse which was raised among the younger collegians and servants;
and probably if he had been so lucky as to lose an eye or an arm in
the field of honour, he would have forgiven Oliver all, and not the
King's sufferings only, but his own. But in place of that it was his
ill-chance to be one of a troop that, marching at night by the river
near Wallingford, took fright at nothing and galloped to Abingdon
without drawing rein; for which reason, and because an example was
needed, they were disbanded. True, I never heard that the fault on
that occasion lay with our master, nor that he was a man of less
courage than his neighbours; but he took the matter peculiarly to
heart, and never forgave the Roundheads the slur they had unwittingly
cast on his honour; on the contrary, and in the event, he regularly
celebrated the thirtieth of January by flogging the six boys who stood
lowest in each form, and afterwards reading the service of the day
over their smarting tails. By some, indeed, it was alleged that the
veriest dunces, if of loyal stock, might look to escape on these
occasions; but I treat this as a calumny.
That the good man did in truth love and favour loyalty, however, and
this without sparing the rod in season, I am myself a bright and
excellent example. For though I never attained to the outward flower
of scholarship by proceeding to the learned degree of arts at either
of the Universities, I gained the root and kernel of the matter at
Bishop's Stortford, being able at the age of fourteen to write a fine
hand, and read Eutropius, and Caesar, and teach the horn-book and
Christ-Cross to younger boys. These attainments, and the taste for
polite learning, which, as these pages will testify, I have never
ceased to cultivate, I owe rather to the predilection which he had for
me than to my own gifts; which, indeed, though doubtless I was always
a boy of parts, I do not remember to have been great at the first.
_Sub ferula_, however, and with encouragement, I so far advanced that
he presently began to consider the promoting me to the place of usher,
with a cane _in commendam_; and, doubtless, he would have done it but
for a fit that took him at the first news of the Rye House Plot, and
the danger his Sacred Majesty had run thereby--which a friend
imprudently brought to him when he was merry after dinner--and which
caused an illness that at one and the same time carried him off, and
deprived me of the best of pedagogues.
After that, and learning that his successor had a son whom he proposed
to promote to the place I desired, I returned to the school no more,
but began to live at home; at first with pleasure, but after no long
interval with growing chagrin and tedium. Our house possessed none of
the comforts that are necessary to idleness, and therefore when the
east wind drove me indoors from swinging on the gate, or sulking in
the stack-yard, I found it neither welcome nor occupation. My younger
brother had seized on the place of assistant to my father, and having
got thews and experience _ambulando_, found fresh ground every day for
making mock of my uselessness. Did I milk, the cows kicked over the
bucket, while I thought of other things; did I plough, my furrows ran
crooked; when I thrashed, the flail soon wearied my arms. In the
result, therefore, the respect with which my father had at first
regarded my learning, wore off, and he grew to hate the sight of me
whether I hung over the fire or loafed in the doorway, my sleeves too
short for my chapped arms, and my breeches barely to my knees. Though
my mother still believed in me, and occasionally, when she was in an
ill-humour with my father, made me read to her, her support scarcely
balanced the neighbours' sneers. Nor when I chanced to displease
her--which, to do her justice, was not often, for I was her
favourite--was she above joining in the general cry, and asking me,
while she cuffed me, whether I thought the cherries fell into the
mouth, and meant to spend all my life with my hands in my pockets.
To make a long story short, at the end of twelve months, whereof every
day of the last ten increased my hatred of our home surroundings, the
dull strip of common before the door, the duck-pond, the grey horizon,
and the twin ash-trees on which I had cut my name so often, I heard
through a neighbour that an usher was required in a school at Ware.
This was enough for me; while, of my family, who saw me leave with
greater relief on their own account than hope on mine, only my mother
felt or affected regret. With ten shillings in my pocket, her parting
gift, and my scanty library of three volumes packed among my clothes
on my back, I plodded the twelve miles to Ware, satisfied the learned
Mr. D---- that I had had the small-pox, would sleep three in a bed,
and knew more than he did; and the same day was duly engaged to teach
in his classical seminary, in return for my board, lodging, washing,
and nine guineas a year.
He had trailed a pike in the wars, and was an ignorant, but neither a
cruel, nor, save in the pretence of knowledge, a dishonest man; it
might be supposed, therefore, that, after the taste of idleness and
dependence I had had, I should here find myself tolerably placed, and
in the fair way of promotion. But I presently found that I had merely
exchanged a desert for a prison, wherein I had not only the
shepherding of the boys to do, both by night and day, which in a short
time grew inconceivably irksome, so that I had to choose whether I
would be tyrant or slave; but also the main weight of teaching, and
there no choice at all but to be a drudge. And this without any
alleviation from week's end to week's end, either at meals or at any
other time! for my employer's wife had high notions, and must keep a
separate house, though next door, and with communications; sitting
down with us only on Sundays, and then at dinner, when woe betide the
boy who gobbled his food or choked over the pudding-balls. Having
satisfied herself on my first coming that my father was neither of the
Quorum nor of Justice's kin, and, in fact, a mere rustic nobody, she
had no more to say to me, but when she was not scolding her husband,
addressed herself solely to one of the boys, who by virtue of an uncle
who was a Canon, had his seat beside her. Insensibly, her husband, who
at first, with an eye to my knowledge and his own deficiencies, had
been more civil to me, took the same tone; and not only that, but,
finding that I was to be trusted, he came less and less into school,
until at last he would only appear for a few minutes in the day, and
to carve when we had meat, and to see the lights extinguished at
night. This without any added value for me; so that the better I
served him--and for a year I managed his school for him--the less he
favoured me, and at last thought a nod all the converse he owed me in
the day.
Consigned to this solitary life by those above me, it was not likely
that I should find compensation in the society of lads to whom I stood
in an odious light, and of whom the oldest was no more than fourteen.
For what was our life? Such hours as we did not spend in the drudgery
of school, or in our beds, we passed in a yard on the dank side of the
house, a grassless place, muddy in winter and dusty in summer,
overshadowed by one skeleton tree; and wherein, since all violent
games and sports were forbidden by the good lady's scruples (who
belonged to the fanatical party) as savouring of Popery, we had
perforce to occupy ourselves with bickerings and complaints and
childish plays. Abutting on the garden of her house, this yard
presented on its one open side a near prospect of water-butts, and
drying clothes, so that to this day I profess that I hold it in
greater horror than any other place or thing at that school.
It is true we walked out in the country at rare intervals; but as
three sides of the town were forbidden to us by a great man, whose
property lay in that quarter, and who feared for his game, our
excursions were always along one road, which afforded neither change
nor variety. Moreover, I had a particular reason for liking these
excursions as little as possible, which was that they exposed me to
frequent meetings with gay young sparks of my own age, whose scornful
looks as they rode by, with the contemptuous names they called after
me, asking who dressed the boys' hair and the like, I found it
difficult to support--even with the aid of those reflections on the
dignity of learning and the Latin tongue which I had imbibed from my
late master.
Be it remembered (in palliation of that which I shall presently tell)
that at this time I was only eighteen, an age at which the passions
and ambitions awake, and that this was my life. At a time when youth
demands change and excitement and the fringe of ornament, my days and
weeks went by in a plain round, as barren of wholesome interests as it
was unadorned by any kindly aid or companionship. To rise, to teach,
to use the cane, to move always in a dull atmosphere of routine; for
diversion to pace the yard I have described, always with shrill
quarrellings in my ears--these with the weekly walk made up my life at
Ware, and must form my excuse. How the one came to an abrupt end, how
I came to have sore need of the other, it is now my business to tell;
but of these in the next chapter; wherein also I propose to show,
without any moralities, another thing that shall prove them to the
purpose, namely, how these early experiences, which I have thus curtly
described, led me _per viam dolorosam_ to my late lord, and mingled my
fortunes with his, under circumstances not unworthy of examination by
those who take mankind for their study.
CHAPTER II
To begin, Mrs. D----, my master's better-half, though she seldom
condescended to our house, and when engaged in her kitchen premises
affected to ignore the proximity of ours, enjoyed in Ware the
reputation of a shrewd and capable house-wife. Whether she owed this
solely to the possession of a sharp temper and voluble voice, I cannot
say; but only that during all the time I was there I scarcely ever
passed an hour in our miserable playground without my ears being
deafened and my brain irritated by the sound of her chiding. She had
the advantage, when I first came to the school, of an elderly servant,
who went about her work under an even flow of scolding, and, it may
be, had become so accustomed to the infliction as to be neither the
better nor worse for it. But about the time of which I am writing,
when, as I have said, I had been there twelve months, I remarked a
change in Mrs. D----'s voice, and judged from the increased acerbity
and rising shrillness of her tone that she had passed from drilling an
old servant to informing a new one. To confirm this theory, before
long, "Lazy slut!" and "Dirty baggage!" and "Take that, Insolence,"
were the best of the terms I heard; and these so frequently mingled
with blows and slaps, and at times with the sound of sobbing, that my
gall rose. I had listened indifferently enough, and if with
irritation, without much pain, to the chiding of the old servant; and
I knew no more of this one. But by the instinct which draws youth to
youth, or by reason of Mrs. D----'s increased severity, I began to
feel for her, to pity her, and at last to wonder what she was like,
and her age, and so forth.
Nothing more formidable than a low paling separated the garden of Mrs.
D----'s house from our yard; but that her eyes might not be offended
by the ignoble sight of the trade by which she lived, four great
water-butts were ranked along the fence, which, being as tall as a
man, and nicely arranged, and strengthened on the inner side by an
accumulation of rubbish and so forth, formed a pretty effective
screen. The boys indeed had their spyholes, and were in the habit of
peeping when I did not check them; but in only one place, at the
corner farthest from the house, was it possible to see by accident, as
it were, and without stooping or manifest prying, a small patch of the
garden. This gap in the corner I had hitherto shunned, for Mrs.
D---- had more than once sent me from it with a flea in my ear and hot
cheeks: now, however, it became a favourite with me, and as far as I
could, without courting the notice of the wretched urchins who whined
and squabbled round me, I began to frequent it; sometimes leaning
against the abutting fence with my back to the house, as in a fit of
abstraction, and then slowly turning--when I did not fail to rake the
aforesaid patch with my eyes; and sometimes taking that corner for the
limit of a brisk walk to and fro, which made it natural to pause and
wheel at that point.
Notwithstanding these ruses, however, and though Mrs. D----'s voice,
raised in anger, frequently bore witness to her neighbourhood, it was
some time before I caught a glimpse of the person, whose fate, more
doleful than mine, yet not dissimilar, had awakened my interest. At
length I espied her, slowly crossing the garden, with her back to me
and a yoke on her shoulders. Two pails hung from the yoke, I smelled
swill; and in a trice seeing in her no more than a wretched drab, in
clogs and a coarse sacking-apron, I felt my philanthropy brought to
the test; and without a second glance turned away in disgust. And
thought no more of her.
After that I took a distaste for the gap, and I do not remember that I
visited it for a week or more; when, at length, chance or custom
taking me there again, I saw the same woman hanging clothes on the
line. She had her back to me as on the former occasion; but this time
I lingered watching her, and whether she knew or not that I was there,
her work presently brought her towards the place in the fence beside
the water-barrels, at which I stood gazing. Still, I could not see her
face, in part because she did not turn my way, and more because she
wore a dirty limp sun-bonnet, which obscured her features. But I
continued to watch; and by-and-by she had finished her hanging, and
took up the empty basket to go in again; and thereon, suddenly in the
act of rising from stooping, she looked directly at me, not being more
than two, or at the most three, paces from me. It was but one look,
and it lasted, I suppose, two seconds or so; but it touched something
in me that had never been touched before, and to this time of writing,
and though I have been long married and have children, my body burns
at the remembrance of it. For not only was the face that for those two
seconds looked into mine a face of rare beauty, brown and low-browed,
with scarlet, laughing lips, and milk-white teeth, and eyes of
witchery, brighter than a queen's jewels, but in the look, short as it
was and passing, shone a something that I had never seen in a woman's
face before, a something, God knows what, appeal or passion or
temptation, that on the instant fired my blood. I suppose, nay, I know
now, that the face that flashed that look at me from under the dirty
sun-bonnet could change to a marvel; and in a minute, and as by a
miracle, become dull and almost ugly, or the most beautiful in the
world. But then, that and all such things were new to me who knew no
women, and had never spoken to a woman in the way of love nor thought
of one when her back was turned; so new, that when it was over and she
gone without a second glance, I went back to the house another man, my
heart thumping in my breast, and my cheeks burning, and my whole being
oppressed with desire and bashfulness and wonder and curiosity, and a
hundred other emotions that would not permit me to be at ease until I
had hidden myself from all eyes.
[Illustration: SHE LOOKED DIRECTLY AT ME]
Well, to be brief, that, in less than the time I have taken to tell
it, changed all. I was eighteen; the girl's shining eyes burned me up,
as flame burns stubble. In an hour, a week, a day, I can no more say
within what time than I can describe what befel me before I was
born--for if that was a sleeping, this was a dream, and passed swift
and confused as one--I was madly and desperately in love. Her face
brilliant, mischievous, alluring, rose before the thumbed grammar by
day, and the dim casement of the fetid, crowded bedroom by night, and
filled the slow, grey dawnings, now with joy and now with despair. For
the time, I thought only of her, lived for her, did my work in dreams
of her. I kept no count of time, I gave no heed to what passed round
me; but I went through the routine of my miserable life, happy as the
slave that, rich in the possession of some beneficent drug, defies the
pains of labour and the lash. I say my miserable life; but I say it,
so great was the change, in a figure only and in retrospect. Mrs.
D---- might scorn me now, and the boys squabble round me, yet that
life was no longer miserable nor dull, whereof every morning flattered
me with hopes of seeing my mistress, and every third day or so
fulfilled the promise.
With all this, and though from the moment her eyes met mine across the
fence, her beauty possessed me utterly, a full fortnight elapsed
before I spoke with her. In the interval I saw her three times, and
always in the wretched guise in which she had first appeared to me;
which, so far from checking my passion, now augmented it by the full
measure of the mystery with which the sordidness of her dress, in
contrast with her beauty, invested her in my mind. But, for speaking
with her, that was another matter, and one presenting so many
difficulties (whereof, as the boys' constant presence and Mrs. D----'s
temper were the greatest, so my bashfulness was not the least) that I
think we might have gone another fortnight, and perhaps a third to
that, and not come to it, had not a certain privilege on which Mr.
D----'s good lady greatly prided herself, come to our aid in the nick
of time, and by bringing us into the same room (a thing which had
never occurred before, and of itself threw me into a fever) combined
with fortune to aid my hopes.
This privilege--so Mrs. D---- invariably styled it--was the solemn
gathering of the household on one Sunday in each month to listen to a
discourse which, her husband sitting meekly by, she read to us from
the works of some Independent divine. On these occasions she delivered
herself so sonorously and with so much gusto, that I do not doubt she
found compensation in them for the tedium of the sermon on Passive
Obedience, or on the fate of the Amalekite, to which, in compliance
with the laws against Dissent, she had perforce listened earlier in
the day. The master and mistress and the servant sat on one side of
the room, I with the boys on the other; and hitherto I am unable to
say which of us had suffered more under the infliction. But the
appearance of my sweet martyr--so, when Madam's voice rang shrillest
and most angrily over the soapsuds, I had come to think of her--in a
place behind her master and mistress (being the same in which the old
servant had nodded and grunted every sermon evening since my coming),
put a new complexion on the matter. For her, she entered, as if
unconscious of my presence, and took her seat with downcast eyes and
hands folded, and that dull look on her face which, when she chose,
veiled three-fourths of its beauty. But my ears flamed, and the blood
surged to my head; and I thought that all must read my secret in my
face.
With Mrs. D----, however, this was the one hour in the month when the
suspicions natural in one of her carping temper, slept, and she tasted
a pleasure comparatively pure. Majestically arrayed in a huge pair of
spectacles--which on this occasion, and in the character of the family
priest, her vanity permitted and even incited her to wear--and
provided with a couple of tall tallow candles, which it was her
husband's duty to snuff, she would open the dreaded quarto and prop it
firmly on the table before her. Then, after giving out her text in a
tone that need not have disgraced Hugh Peters or the most famous
preacher of her persuasion, it was her custom to lift her eyes and
look round to assure herself that all was cringing attention; and this
was the trying moment; woe to the boy whose gaze wandered--his back
would smart for it before he slept. These preliminaries at an end,
however, and the discourse begun, the danger was over for the time;
for, in the voluptuous roll of the long wordy sentences, and the
elections and damnations, and free wills that plentifully bestrewed
them, she speedily forgot all but the sound of her own voice; and,
nothing occurring to rouse her, might be trusted to read for the hour
and half with pleasure to herself and without risk to others.
So it fell out on this occasion. As soon, therefore, as the steady
droning of her voice gave me courage to look up, I had before me the
same scene with which a dozen Sunday evenings had made me familiar;
the dull circle of yellow light; within it Madam's horn-rimmed glasses
shining over the book, while her finger industriously followed the
lines; a little behind, her husband, nodding and recovering himself by
turns. Not now was this all, however: now I saw also _imprimis_, a dim
oval face, framed in the background behind the two old people; and
that, now in shadow now in light, gleamed before my fascinated eyes
with unearthly beauty. Once or twice, fearing to be observed, I
averted my gaze and looked elsewhere; guiltily and with hot temples.
But always I returned to it again. And always, the longer I let my
eyes dwell on the vision--for a vision it seemed in the halo of the
candles--and the more monotonous hung the silence, broken only by
Mrs. D----'s even drone, the more distinctly the beautiful face stood
out, and the more bewitching and alluring appeared the red lips and
smiling eyes and dark clustering hair, that moment by moment drew my
heart from me, and kindled my ripening brain and filled my veins with
fever!
"Seventhly, and under this head, of the sin of David!"
So Mrs. D---- booming on, in her deep voice, to all seeming
endlessly; while the air of the dingy whitewashed room grew stale, and
the candles guttered and burned low, and the boys, poor little
wretches, leaned on one another's shoulders and sighed, and it was
difficult to say whether Mr. D----'s noddings or his recoveries went
nearer to breaking his neck. At last--or was it only my fancy?--I
thought I made out a small brown hand gliding within the circle of
light. Then--or was I dreaming?--one of the candles began to move; but
to move so little and so stealthily, that I could not swear to it; nor
ever could have sworn, if Mr. D----'s wig had not a moment later taken
fire with a light flame, and a stench, and a frizzling sound, that in
a second brought him, still half-asleep, but swearing, to his feet.
Mrs. D----, her mouth open, and the volume lifted, halted in the
middle of a word, and glared as if she had been shot; her surprise at
the interruption so great--and no wonder--that she could not for a
while find words. But the stream of her indignation, so checked, only
gathered volume; and in a few seconds broke forth.
"Mr. D----!" she cried, slamming the book down on the table. "You
disgusting beast! Do you know that the boys are here?"
"My wig is on fire!" he cried for answer. He had taken it off, and now
held it at arm's length, looking at it so ruefully that the boys,
though they knew the danger, could scarcely restrain their laughter.
"And serve you right for a weak-kneed member!" his wife answered in a
voice that made us quake. "If you had not guzzled at dinner, sir, and
swilled small beer you would have remained awake instead of spoiling a
good wig, and staining your soul! Ay, and causing these little
ones----"
"I never closed my eyes!" he declared, roundly.
"Rubbish!" she answered in a tone that would brook no denial. And
then, "Give the wig to Jennie, sir!" she continued, peremptorily. "And
put your handkerchief on your head. It is well that good Mr. Nesbit
does not know what language has been used during his discourse; it
would cut that excellent man to the heart. Do you hear, sir, give the
wig to Jennie!" she screamed. "A handkerchief is good enough for
profane swearers and filthy talkers! And too good! Too good, sir!"
He went reluctantly to obey, seeing nothing for it; but between his
anger and Jennie's clumsiness, the wig, in passing from one to the
other, fell under the table. This caused Mrs. D----, who was at the
end of her patience, to spring up in a rage, and down went a candle.
Nor was this the worst; for the grease in its fall cast a trail of hot
drops on her Sunday gown, and in a flash she was on the maid and had
smacked her face till the room rang.
"Take that, and that, you clumsy baggage!" she cried in a fury, her
face crimson. "And that! And the next time you offer to take a
gentleman's wig have better manners. This will cost you a year's
wages, my fine madam! and let me hear of your stepping over the
doorstep until it is earned, and I will have you jailed and whipped.
Do you hear? And you," she continued, turning ferociously on her
husband, "swearing on the Lord's day like a drunken, raffling,
God-forsaken Tantivy! You are not much better!"
It only remains in my memory now as a coarse outburst of vixenish
temper, made prominent by after events. But what I felt at the moment
I should in vain try to describe. At one time I was on the point of
springing on the woman, and at another all but caught the sobbing girl
in my arms and challenged the world to touch her.
Fortunately, Mr. D----, now fully awakened, and the more inclined to
remember decency in proportion as his wife forgot it, recalled me to
myself by sternly bidding me see the boys to their beds.
Glad to escape, they needed no second order, but flocked to the door,
and I with them. In our retreat, it was necessary for me to pass close
to the shrinking girl, whom Mrs. D---- was still abusing with all the
cruelty imaginable; as I did so I heard, or dreamed that I heard,
three words, breathed in the faintest possible whisper. I say, dreamed
I heard, for the girl neither looked at me nor removed the apron from
her face, nor by abating her sobs or any other sign betrayed that she
spoke or that she was conscious of my neighbourhood.
Yet the three words, "Garden, ten minutes," so gently breathed, that I
doubted while I heard, could only have come from her; and assured of
that, it will be believed that I found the ten minutes I spent seeing
the boys to bed by the light of one scanty rushlight the longest and
most tumultuous I ever passed. If she had not spoken I should have
found it a sorry time, indeed; since the moment the door was closed
behind me I discerned a hundred reasons to be dissatisfied with my
conduct, thought of a hundred things I should have said, and saw a
hundred things I should have done; and stood a coward convicted. Now,
however, all was not over; I might explain. I was about to see her, to
speak with her, to pour out my indignation and pity, perhaps to touch
her hand; and in the delicious throb of fear and hope and excitement
with which these anticipations filled my breast, I speedily forgot to
regret what was past.
CHAPTER III
Doubtless there have been men able to boast, and with truth, that they
carried to their first assignation with a woman an even pulse. But as
I do not presume to rank myself among these, who have been commonly
men of high station (of whom my late Lord Rochester was, I believe,
the chief in my time), neither--the unhappy occurrence which I am in
the way to relate, notwithstanding---have I, if I may say so without
disrespect, so little heart as to crave the reputation. In truth, I
experienced that evening, as I crept out of the back door of Mr.
D----'s house, and stole into the gloom of the whispering garden, a
full share of the guilty feeling that goes with secrecy; and more than
my share of the agitation of spirit natural in one who knows (and is
new to the thought) that under cover of the darkness a woman stands
trembling and waiting for him. A few paces from the house--which I
could leave without difficulty, though at the risk of detection--I
glanced back to assure myself that all was still: then shivering, as
much with excitement as at the chill greeting the night air gave me, I
hastened to the gap in the fence, through which I had before seen my
mistress.
I felt for the gap with my hand and peered through it, and called her
name softly--"Jennie! Jennie!" and listened; and after an interval
called again, more boldly. Still hearing nothing, I discovered by the
sinking at my heart--which was such that, for all my eighteen years, I
could have sat down and cried--how much I had built on her coming. And
I called again and again; and still got no answer.
Yet I did not despair. Mrs. D---- might have kept her, or one of a
hundred things might have happened to delay her; from one cause or
another she might not have been able to slip out as quickly as she had
thought. She might come yet; and so, though the more prolonged my
absence, the greater risk of detection I ran, I composed myself to
wait with what patience I might. The town was quiet; human noise at an
end for the day; but Mr. D----'s school stood on the outskirts, with
its back to the open country, and between the sighing of the wind
among the poplars, and the murmur of a neighbouring brook, and those
far-off noises that seem inseparable from the night, I had stood a
minute or more before another sound, differing from all these, and
having its origin at a spot much nearer to me, caught my ear, and set
my heart beating. It was the noise of a woman weeping; and to this day
I do not know precisely what I did on hearing it--when I made out what
it was, I mean--or how I found courage to do it; only, that in an
instant, as it seemed to me, I was on the other side of the fence, and
had taken the girl in my arms, with her head on my shoulder, and her
wet eyes looking into mine, while I rained kisses on her face.
[Illustration: IN AN INSTANT I WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE]
Doubtless the darkness and her grief and my passion gave me boldness
to do this; and to do a hundred other mad things in my ecstasy. For,
as I had never spoken to her before, any more than I had ever held a
woman in my arms before, so I had not thought, I had not dreamed of
this! of her hand, perhaps, but no more. Therefore, and though since
Adam's time the stars have looked down on many a lover's raptures,
never, I verily believe, have they gazed on transports so perfect, so
unlooked for, as were mine at that moment! And all the time not a word
passed between us; but after a while she pushed me from her, with a
kind of force that would not be resisted, and holding me at arm's
length, looked at me strangely; and then thrusting me altogether from
her, she bade me, almost roughly, go back.
"What? And leave you?" I cried, astonished and heart-broken.
"No, sir, but go to the other side of the fence," she answered firmly,
drying her eyes and recovering something of her usual calmness. "And
more, if you love me as you say you do----"
I protested. "_If?_" I cried. "If! And what then--if I do?"
"You will learn to obey," she answered, coolly, yet with an archness
that transported me anew. "I am not one of your boys."
For that word, I would have caught her in my arms again, but with a
power that I presently came to know, and whereof that was the first
exercise, she waved me back. "Go!" she said, masterfully. "For this
time, go. Do you hear me?"
My boldness of a minute before, notwithstanding, I stood in awe of
her, and was easily cowed; and I crossed the fence. When I was on my
side, she came to the gap, and rewarded me by giving me her hand to
kiss. "Understand me," she said. "You are to come to this side, sir,
only when I give you leave."
"Oh," I cried. "Can you be so cruel?"
"Or not at all, if you prefer it," she continued, drily. "More, you
must go in, now, or I shall be missed and beaten. You do not want that
to happen, I suppose?"
"If that hag touches you again!" I cried, boiling with rage at the
thought, "I will--I will----"
"What?" she said softly, and her fingers closed on mine, and sent a
thrill to my heart.
"I will strangle her!" I cried.
She laughed, a little cruelly. "Fine words," she said.
"But I mean them!" I answered, passionately. And I swore it--I swore
it; what will not a boy in love promise?
"Well," she answered, whispering and leaning forward until her breath
fanned my cheek, and the intoxicating scent of her hair stole away my
senses, "perhaps some day I shall try you. Are you sure that you will
not fail me then?"
I swore it, panting, and tried to draw her towards me by her arm; but
she held back, laughing softly and as one well pleased; and then, in a
moment, snatching her hand from me, she vanished in the darkness of
the garden, leaving me in a seventh heaven of delight, my blood fired
by her kisses, my fancy dwelling on her beauty; and without one
afterthought.
Doubtless had I been less deep in love (wherein I was far over-head),
or deeper in experience, I might have noted it for a curious thing
that she should be so quickly comforted; and should be able to rise in
a few moments, and at the touch of my lips, from passionate despair to
perfect control, both of herself and of me. And starting thence, I
might have gone on to suspect that she possessed her full share of the
_finesse_, which is always a woman's shield and sometimes her sword.
But as such suspicions are foreign to youth, so are they especially
foreign to youthful love, which takes nothing lower than perfection
for its idol. And this I can say for certain, that they no more
entered my brain than did the consequences which were to flow from my
passion.
For the time, indeed, I was in an ecstasy, a rapture. Walking
a-tip-toe, and troubled by none of the things that trouble common
folk; so that to this day--though long married--I look back to that
period of innocent folly with a yearning and a regret, the sorer for
this, that when I try to analyse the happiness I enjoyed, I fail, and
make nothing of it. That all things should be changed for me, and I be
changed in my own eyes--so that I walked a head taller and esteemed
myself ridiculously--by the fact that a kitchen wench in a drugget
petticoat and clogs had let me kiss her, and left me to believe
that she loved me, seems incredible now; as incredible as that
a daily glimpse of her figure flitting among the water-butts and
powdering-tubs had power to transform that miserable back garden into
a paradise, and Mr. D----'s school, with its dumplings, and bread and
dripping, and inky fingers, into a mansion of tremulous joy!
Yet it was so. Nor did it matter anything to me, so great is the power
of love when one is young, that my mistress went in rags, and had
coarse hands, and spoke rustically. Touching this last, indeed, I must
do her the justice to say that from the first she was as quick to note
differences of speech and manner as she was apt to imitate good
exemplars; and, moreover, possessed under her rags a species of
refinement that matched the witchery of her face, and proved her to
be, as she presently showed herself, no common girl.
Of course I, in the state of happy delirium on which I had now
entered, and wherein even Mr. D---- and the boys wore an amiable air,
and only Mrs. D----, because she persecuted my love, had the semblance
of a female Satan, needed no proof of this; or I had had it when my
Dorinda--so I christened her, feeling Jennie too low a name for so
much beauty and kindness--proposed at our second rendezvous that I
should teach her to read. At the first flush of the proposal I found
reading a poor thing because she did not possess it; at the second I
adored her for the humility that condescended to learn; but at the
third I saw the convenience, as well as sense, of a proposal which was
as much above the mind of an ordinary maid in love as Dorinda appeared
superior to such a creature in all the qualities that render sense
amiable.
Yet this much granted, how to teach her, seeing that we seldom met or
conversed, and never, save under the kindly shelter of darkness? The
obstacle for a time taxed all my ingenuity, but in the end I
surmounted it by boldly asking Mr. D----'s leave to hold the afternoon
classes in the playground. This, the approach of warm weather giving
colour to the petition, was allowed; after which, as Dorinda was
engaged in the back premises at that hour, and could listen while she
drudged, the rest was easy. Calling up the lowest class, I would find
fault with their reading, and after flying out at them in a simulated
passion, would remit them again and again to the elements; so that for
a fortnight or more, and, indeed, until the noise of the lads
repeating the lesson annoyed Mrs. D----'s ears, the playground rang
with a-b, ab; e-b, eb; c-a-t, cat; d-o-g, dog, and the like, with the
alphabet and the rest of the horn-book. And all this so frequently
repeated, that with this assistance, and the help of a spelling-book
which I gave her, and which she studied before others awoke, my
mistress at the end of two months could read tolerably, and was
beginning to essay easy round-hand.
And Heaven knows how delicious were those lessons under the shabby
ragged tree that shaded one half of the yard! I spoke to the yawning
grubby-fingered boys, who slouched and straddled round me; but I knew
to whose ears I applied myself; nor had pupil ever a more diligent
master, or master an apter pupil. Once a week I had my fee of kisses,
but rarely, very rarely, was permitted to cross the fence; a reserve
on my Dorinda's part, that, while it augmented the esteem in which I
held her, maintained my passion at a white heat. When, nevertheless, I
remonstrated with her, and loverlike, complained of the rigour which
in my heart I commended, she chid me for setting a low value on her;
and when I persisted, "Go on," she said, drawing away from me with a
wonderful air of offence. "Tell me at once, and in so many words, that
you think me a low thing! That you really take me for the kitchen
drudge I appear!"
Her tone was full of meaning, with a hint of mystery, but as I had
never thought her aught else--and yet an angel--I was dumb.
"You did think me that?" she cried, fixing me with her eyes, and
speaking in a tone that demanded an answer.
I muttered that I had never heard, had never known, that--that--and so
stammered into silence, not at all understanding her.
"Then I think that hitherto we have been under a mistake," she
answered, speaking very distantly, and in a voice that sent my heart
into my boots. "You were fond--or said you were--of the cook-maid. She
does not exist. No, sir, a little farther away, if you please," my
mistress continued, haughtily, her head in the air, "and know that I
come of better stock than that. If you would have my story I will tell
it you. I can remember--it is almost the first thing I can remember--a
day when I played, as a little child, with a necklace of gold beads,
in the court-yard of a house in a great city; and wandered out, the
side gate being open, and the porter not in his seat, into the
streets; where," she continued dreamily, and gazing away from me,
"there were great crowds, and men firing guns, and people running
every way----"
I uttered an exclamation of astonishment. She noticed it only by
making a short pause, and then went on in the same thoughtful tone,
"As far as I can remember, it was a place where there were booths and
stalls crowded together, and among them, it seems to me, a man was
being hunted, who ran first one way and then another, while soldiers
shot at him. At last he came where I had dropped on the ground in
terror, after running child-like where the danger was greatest. He
glared at me an instant--he was running, stooping down below the level
of the booths, and they had lost him for the time; then he snatched me
up in his arms, and darted from his shelter, crying loudly as he held
me up, 'Save the child! Save the child!' The crowd raised the same
cry, and made a way for him to pass. And then--I do not remember
anything, until I found myself shabbily dressed in a little inn,
where, I suppose, the man, having made his escape, left me."
CHAPTER IV
At that I remember that I cried out in overwhelming excitement and
amazement; cried out that I knew the man and his story, and the place
whence she had been taken; that I had heard the tale from my father
years before. "It was Colonel Porter who picked you up--Colonel
Porter, and he saved his life by it!" I cried, quite beside myself at
the wonderful discovery I had made. "It was Colonel Porter, in the
great riot at Norwich."
"Ah?" she said, slowly; looking away from me, and speaking so coolly
and strangely as both to surprise and damp me.
Yet I persisted. "Yes," I said, "the story is well known; at least
that part of it. But----" and there and at that word I stopped,
dumbfounded and gaping.
"But what?" she asked sharply, and looked at me again; the colour
risen in her face.
"But--you are only eighteen," I hazarded timidly, "and the Norwich
riot was in the War time. I dare say, thirty years ago."
She turned on me in a sort of passion.
"Well, sir, and what of that?" she cried. "Do you think me thirty?"
"No, indeed," I answered. And at the most she was nineteen.
"Then don't you believe me?"
I cried out too at that; but, boy-like, I was so proud of my knowledge
and acuteness that I could not let the point lie. "All I mean," I
explained, "is that to have been alive then, and at Norwich, you must
be thirty now. And----"
"And was it I?" she answered, flying out at me in a fine fury. "Who
said anything about Norwich? Or your dirty riots? Or your Porter,
whose name I never heard before! Go away! I hate you! I hate you!" she
continued, passionately, waving me off. "You make up things and then
put them on me! I never said a word about Norwich."
"I know you did not," I protested.
"Then why did you say I did?" she wailed. "Why did you say I did? You
are a wretch! I hate you!"
And with that, dissolving in tears and sobs she at one and the same
time showed me another side of love, and reduced me to the utmost
depths of despair; whence I was not permitted to emerge, nor
reinstated in the least degree of favour until I had a hundred times
abased myself before her, and was ready to curse the day when I first
heard the name of Porter. Still peace was at last, and with infinite
difficulty restored; and so complete was our _redintegratio amoris_
that we presently ventured to recur to her tale and to the strange
coincidence that had divided us; which did not seem so very
remarkable, on second thought, seeing that she could not now remember
that she had said a word about booths or stalls, but would have it I
had inserted those particulars; the man in her case having taken
refuge--she fancied, but could not at this distance of time remember
very clearly--among the seats of a kind of bull-ring or circus erected
in the marketplace. Which of course made a good deal of difference.
Notwithstanding this discrepancy, however, and though, taught by
experience, I hastened to agree with her that the secret of her birth
was not likely to be discovered in a moment, nor by so simple a
process as the journey to Norwich, which I had been going to suggest,
it was natural that we should often revert to the subject, and to her
pretensions, and the hardship of her lot: and my curiosity and
questions giving a fillip to her memory, scarcely a day passed but she
recovered some new detail from the past; as at one time a service of
gold-plate which she perfectly remembered she had seen on her father's
sideboard; and at another time an accident that had befell her in her
childhood, through her father's coach and six horses being overturned
in a slough. Such particulars (and many others as pertinent and
romantic, on which I will not linger) gave us a certainty of her past
consequence and her future fortune were her parents once known; and
while they served to augment the respect in which my love held her,
gradually and almost imperceptibly led her to take a higher tone with
me, and even on occasions to carry herself towards me with an air of
mystery, as if there were still some things which she had not confided
to me.
This attitude on her part--which in itself pained me extremely--and
still more the fear naturally arising from it, that if she came by her
own I should immediately lose her, forced me to make the acquaintance
of yet another side of love; by throwing me, I mean, into such a fever
of suspicion and jealousy as made me for a period the most unhappy of
men. From this plight my mistress, exercising the privilege of her
sex, made no haste to relieve me. On the contrary, by affecting an
increased reserve and asserting that her movements were watched, she
prolonged my doubts; nor when this treatment had wrought the desired
end of reducing me to the lowest depths, and she at length consented
to meet me, did she entirely relent or abandon her reserve; or if she
did so, on rare occasions, it was only to set me some task as the
price of her complaisance, or expose me to some trial by which she
might prove my devotion.
In a word, while I became hopelessly enslaved, even to the flogging a
boy at her word, or procuring a dress far above my station--merely
that she might see me by stealth in it, and judge of my air!--which
were two of her caprices, she appeared to be farther removed from me
every day, and at each meeting granted me fewer privileges. Whether
this treatment had its origin in the natural instinct of a woman, or
was deliberately chosen as better calculated to increase my
subservience, it had the latter effect; and to such an extent that
when, after a long absence, she condescended to meet me, and broached
a plan that earlier would have raised my hair, I asked no better than
to do her bidding, and, instead of pointing out the folly of her
proposal, fell in with it with scarcely a murmur.
Her plan, when she communicated it to me, which she did with an air of
mystery and the same assumption of a secret withheld that had
tormented me before, amounted to nothing less than an evening sally
into the town on the occasion of the approaching visit of the Duke of
York, who was to lie one night at the Rose at Ware on his way to
Newmarket. Mr. D---- had issued the strictest orders that all should
keep the house during this visit; not so much out of a proper care for
the boys' morality (though the gay crowd that followed the Court
served for a pretext) as because, in his character of fanatic and
Exclusionist, he held His Highness's religion and person in equal
abhorrence. Such a restriction weighed little in the scale against
love; but, infatuated as I was, I found something that sensibly
shocked me in the proposal coming from Dorinda's lips; nor could I
fail to foresee many dangers to which a young girl must expose herself
on such an expedition in the town, and at night. But as to a youth in
love nothing that his mistress chooses to do seems long amiss, so this
proposal scared me for a moment only; after which it cost my mistress
no more than a little rallying on my crop-eared manners, and some
scolding, to make me see it in its true aspect of an innocent frolic,
fraught with as much pleasure to the cavalier as novelty to the
escorted.
"You will don your new suit," she said, merrily, "and I shall meet you
in the garden at half past nine."
"And if the boys may miss me?" I protested feebly.
"The boys have missed you before!" she answered, mocking my tone.
"Were you not here last night? And for a whole hour, sir?"
I confessed with hot cheeks that I had been there; humbly and tamely
awaiting her pleasure.
"And did they tell then?" she asked scornfully. "Or are they less
afraid of the birch now? But of course--if you don't care to come with
me--or are afraid, sir----?"
"I am neither," I said warmly. "Only I do not quite understand, sweet,
what you wish."
"They lie at the Rose," she said. "And amongst them, I am told, are
the prettiest men and the most lovely women in the world. And jewels,
and laces, and such dresses! Oh, I am mad to see them! And music and
gaming and dancing! And dishes and plates of gold! And a Popish
priest, which is a thing I have never seen, though I have heard of it.
And----"
"And do you expect to see all these things through the windows?" I
cried in my superior knowledge.
She did not answer at once, but with her hands on my shoulders, swayed
to and fro sideways as if she already heard the music; while her gipsy
face looked archly into mine, first on this side and then on that, and
her hair swung to and fro on her shoulders in a beautiful abandonment
which I found it impossible to resist. At last she stopped, and,
"Yes," she said demurely, "through the windows, Master Richard
Longface! Do you meet me here at half past nine--in your new suit,
sir--and you shall see them too--through the windows."
[Illustration: STOLE DOWN THE STAIRS AND INTO THE GARDEN]
After that, though I made a last effort to dissuade her, there was
nothing more to be said. Obedient to her behest, I made my
preparations, and at the appointed hour next evening rose softly from
the miserable pallet on which I had just laid down; and dressing
myself with shaking fingers and in the dark--that my bed-fellows might
know as little as possible of my movements--stole down the stairs and
into the garden.
Here I found myself first at the rendezvous. The night was dark, but
an unusual light hung over the town, and the wind that stirred the
poplars brought scraps and sounds of music to the ear. I had some time
to wait, and time too to think what I was about to do; to weigh the
chances of detection and dismissal, and even to taste the qualms that
rawness and timidity mingled with my anticipations of pleasure. But,
though I had my fears, no vision of the real future obtruded itself on
my mind as I stood there listening: nor any forewarning of the plunge
I was about to take. And before I had come to the end of my patience
Dorinda stood beside me.
Dark as it was, I fancied that I discerned something strange in her
appearance, and I would have investigated it; but she whispered that
we were late, and evading as well my questions as the caress I
offered, she bade me help her as quickly as I could over the fence. I
did so; we crossed a neighbouring garden, and in a twinkling and with
the least possible difficulty stood in the road. Here the strains of
music came more plainly to the ear, and the glare of light hung lower
and shone more brightly. This seemed enough for my mistress; she
turned that way without hesitation, and set forward, the outskirts of
the town being quickly passed. Between the late hour and the flux of
people towards the centre of interest, the streets were vacant; and we
met no one until we reached the main thoroughfare, and came upon the
edge of the great crowd that moved to and fro before the Rose Inn.
Here all the windows, in one of which a band of music was playing some
new air, were brilliantly lighted; while below and round the door was
such a throng of hurrying waiters and drawers, and such a carrying of
meals and drinks, and a shouting of orders as almost turned the brain.
A carriage and six that had just set down a grandee, come to pay his
devoirs to the Prince, was moving off as we came up, the horses
smoking, the footmen panting, and the postilions stooping in their
saddles. A little to one side a cask was being staved for the troopers
who had come with the Duke; and on all the noisy, moving scene and the
flags that streamed from the roofs and windows, and the shifting
crowd, poured the ruddy light of a great _bon-feu_ that burned on the
farther side of the way.
Nor, rare as were these things, were they the most pertinent or the
strangest that the fire revealed to me. I had come for nothing else
but to see, _clam et furtim_, as the classics say, what was to be
seen; with no thought of passing beyond the uttermost ring of
spectators. But as I hung back shamefacedly my companion seized my
wrist and drew me on; and when I turned to her to remonstrate, as
Heaven lives, I did not know her! I conceived for a moment that some
madam of the court had seized me in a frolic; nor for a perceptible
space could I imagine that the fine cloaked lady, whose eyes shone
bright as stars through the holes in her mask, and whose raven hair,
so cunningly dressed, failed to hide the brilliance of her neck, where
the cloak fell loose, was my Dorinda, my mistress, the cook-maid whom
I had kissed in the garden! Honestly, for an instant, I recoiled and
hung back, afraid of her; nor was I quite assured of the truth, so
unprepared was I for the change, until she whispered me sharply to
come on.
"Whither?" I said, still hanging back in dismay. The bystanders were
beginning to turn and stare, and in a moment would have jeered us.
"Within doors," she urged.
"They will not admit us!"
"They will admit me," she answered proudly, and made as if she would
throw my hand from her.
Still I did not believe her, and it was that, and that only, that
emboldened me; though, to be sure, I was in love and her slave.
Reluctantly, and almost sulkily, I gave way, and sneaked behind her to
the door. A man who stood on the steps seemed, at the first glance,
minded to stop her; but, looking again, smiled and let us pass; and in
a twinkling we stood in the hall among hurrying waiters, and shouting
call-boys, and bloods in silk coats, whose scabbards rang as they came
down the stairs, and a fair turmoil of pages, and footboys, and
gentlemen, and gentlemen's gentlemen.
[Illustration: MY COMPANION SEIZED MY WRIST]
In such a company, elbowed this way and that by my betters, I knew
neither how to carry myself, nor where to look; but Dorinda, with
barely a pause, and as if she knew the house, thrust open the nearest
door, and led the way into a great room that stood on the right of the
hall.
Here, down the spacious floor, and lighted by shaded candles, were
ranged several tables, at which a number of persons had seats, while
others again stood or moved about the room. The majority of those
present were men. I noticed, however, three or four women masked after
the fashion of my companion, but more gorgeously dressed, and in my
simplicity did not doubt that these were duchesses, the more as they
talked and laughed loudly; whereas the general company--save those who
sat at one table where the game was at a standstill, and all were
crying persistently for a Tallier--spoke low, the rattle of dice and
chink of coin, and an occasional oath, taking the place of
conversation. I saw piles of guineas and half-guineas on the tables,
and gold lace on the men's coats, and the women a dream of silks and
furbelows, and gleaming shoulders and flashing eyes; and between awe
of my company, and horror at finding myself in such a place, I took
all for real that glittered. Where, therefore, a man of experience
would have discerned a crowd of dubious rakes and rustic squires
tempting fortune for the benefit of the Groom-Porter, whose privilege
was ambulatory, I fancied I gazed on earls and barons; saw a garter on
every leg, and, blind to the stained walls of the common inn-room,
supplied every bully who cried the main or called the trumps with the
pedigree of a Howard.
This was a delusion not unnatural, and a prey to it, I expected each
moment to be my last in that company. But the fringe of spectators
that stood behind the players favouring us, we fell easily into line
at one of the tables, and nothing happening, and no one saying us nay,
I presently breathed more freely. I could see that my companion's
beauty, though hidden in the main by her mask, was the subject of
general remark; and that it drew on her looks and regards more or less
insolent. But as she took no heed of these, but on the contrary gazed
about her unmoved and with indifference, I hoped for the best; and
excited by the brilliance and movement of a scene so far above my
wildest dreams, that I already anticipated the pride with which I
should hereafter describe it, I began to draw a fearful joy from our
escapade. Like AEneas and Ulysses, I had seen men and cities! And stood
among heroes! And seen the sirens! To which thoughts I was proceeding
to add others equally classical, when a gentleman behind me diverted
my thoughts by touching my companion on the arm, and very politely
requesting, her to lay on the table a guinea which he handed to her.
She did so, and he thanked her with a low-spoken compliment; then
added with bent head, but bold eyes, "Fortune, my pretty lady, cannot
surely have been unkind to one so fair!"
"I do not play," Dorinda answered, with all the bluntness I could
desire.
"And yet I think I have seen you play?" he replied. And affecting to
be engaged in identifying her, he let his eyes rove over her figure.
Doubtless Dorinda's mask gave her courage; yet, even this taken into
the count, her wit and resource astonished me. "You do not know me, my
pretty gentleman," she said, coolly, and with a proud air.
"I know that you have cost me a guinea!" he answered. "See, they have
swept it off. And as I staked it for nothing else but to have an
excuse to address the handsomest woman in the room----"
"You do not know what I am--behind my mask," she retorted.
"No," he replied, hardily, "and therefore I am going--I am going----"
"So am I!" my mistress answered, with a quickness that both surprised
and delighted me. "Good night, good spendthrift! You are going; and I
am going."
"Well hit!" he replied, with a grin. "And well content if we go
together! Yet I think I know how I could keep you!"
"Yes?" she said, indifferently.
"By deserving the name," he answered. "You called me spendthrift."
On that I do not know whether she thought him too forward, or saw that
I was nearly at the end of my patience--which it may be imagined was
no little tried by this badinage--but she turned her shoulder to him
outright, and spoke a word to me in a low tone. Then: "Give me a
guinea, Dick!" she said, pretty loudly. "I think I'll play."
CHAPTER V
She spoke confidently and with a grand air, knowing that I had brought
a guinea with me; so that I had neither the heart to shame her, nor
the courage to displease her. Though it was the ninth part of my
income therefore, and it seemed to me sheer madness or worse to stake
such a sum on a single card, and win or lose it in a moment, I lugged
it out and gave it to her. Even then, knowing her to have no more
skill in the game than I had, I was at a stand, wondering what she
would do with it; but with the tact which never fails a woman she laid
it where the gentleman had placed his. With better luck; for in a
twinkling, and before I thought it well begun, the deal was over, the
players sat back, and swore, and the banker, giving and taking here
and there, thrust a guinea over to our guinea. I was in a sweat to
take both up before anyone cheated us; but she nudged me, and said
with her finest air, "Let it lie, Dick! Do you hear? Let it lie."
This was almost more than I could bear, to see fortune in my grasp,
and not shut my hand upon it, but she was mistress and I let it lie;
and in a moment, hey presto, as the Egyptians say, the two guineas
were four, and those who played next us, seeing her success, began to
pass remarks on her, making nothing of debating who she was, and
discussing about her shape and complexion in terms that made my cheeks
burn. Whether this open admiration turned her head, or their freedom
confused her, she let the money lie again; and when I would have
snatched it up, not regarding her, the dealer prevented me, saying
that it was too late, while she with an air, as if I had been her
servant, turned and rated me sharply for a fool. This caused a little
disturbance at which all the company laughed. However, the event
proved me no fool, but wiser than most, for in two minutes that pretty
sum, which was as much as I had ever possessed at one time in my life,
was swept off; and for two guineas the richer, which we had been a
moment before, we remained one, and that my only one, the poorer!
For myself, I could have cried at the misadventure, but my mistress
carried it off with a shrill laugh, and tossing her head in affected
contempt--whereat, I am bound to confess, the company laughed
again--turned from the table. I sneaked after her as miserable as you
please, and in that order we had got half way to the door, when the
gentleman who had addressed her before, stepped up in front of her.
"Beauty so reckless," he said, speaking with a grin, and in a tone of
greater freedom than he had used previously, "needs someone to care
for it! Unless I am mistaken, Mistress, you came on foot?" And with a
sneering smile, he dropped his eyes to the hem of her cloak.
Alas, I looked too, and the murder was out. To be sure Dorinda had
clothed herself very handsomely above, but coming to her feet had
trusted to her cloak to hide the deficiency she had no means to
supply. Still, and in spite of this, all might have been well if she
had not in her chagrin at losing, forgotten the blot, and, unused to
long skirts, raised them so high as to expose a foot, shapely indeed,
but stockingless, and shod in an old broken shoe!
Her ears and neck turned crimson at the exposure, and she dropped her
cloak as if it burned her hand. I fancied that if the stranger had
looked to ingratiate himself by his ill-mannered jest, he had gone the
wrong way about it, and I was not surprised when she answered in a
voice quivering with mortification, "Yes, on foot. But you may spare
your pains. I am in this gentleman's care, I thank you."
"Oh," he said, in a peculiar tone, "this gentleman?" And he looked me
up and down.
I knew that it behooved me to ruffle it with him, and let him know by
out-staring him that at a word I was ready to pull his nose. But I was
a boy in strange company, and utterly cast down by the loss of my
guinea; he a Court bully in sword and lace, bred to carry it in such
and worse places. Though he seemed to be no more than thirty, he had a
long and hard face under his periwig, and eyes both tired and
melancholy; and he spoke with a drawl and a curling lip, and by the
mere way he looked at me showed that he thought me no better than
dirt. To make a long story short, I had not looked at him a moment
before my eyes fell.
"Oh, this gentleman?" he said again, in a tone of cutting contempt.
"Well, I hope that he has more guineas than one--or your ladyship will
soon trudge it, skin to mud. As it is, I fear that I detain you.
Kindly carry my compliments to Farmer Grudgen. And the pigs!"
And smiling--not laughing, for a laugh seemed alien from his face--at
a jest which was too near the truth not to mortify us exceedingly, my
lord--for a lord I thought he was--turned away with an ironical bow;
leaving us to get out of the room with what dignity we might, and such
temper as remained to us. For myself I was in such a rage, both at the
loss of my guinea and at being so flouted, that I could scarcely
govern myself; yet in my awe of Dorinda I said nothing, expecting and
fearing an outbreak on her part, the consequences of which it was not
easy to foretell. I was proportionately pleased therefore, when she
made no more ado at the time, but pushing her way through the crowd in
the street, turned homeward and took the road without a word.
This was so unlike her that I was at a loss to understand it, and was
fain to conclude--from the fact that she two or three times paused to
listen and look back--that she feared pursuit. The thought, bringing
to my mind the risk of being detected and dismissed, which I ran--a
risk that came home to me now that the pleasure was over, and I had
only in prospect my squalid bed-room and the morrow's tasks--filled me
with uneasiness. But I might have spared myself, for when she spoke I
found that her thoughts were on other things.
"Dick," she said, suddenly--and halted abruptly in the road, "you must
lend me a guinea."
"A guinea?" I cried, aghast, and speaking, it may be, with a little
displeasure. "Why, have you not just----"
"What?" she said.
"Lost my only one."
She laughed with a recklessness that confounded me. "Well, you have
got to find another one," she said. "And one to that!"
"Another guinea?" I gasped.
"Yes, another guinea, and another guinea!" she answered, mimicking my
tone of consternation. "One for my shoes and stockings--oh, I wish he
were dead!" And she stamped her foot passionately. "And one----"
"Yes?" I said, with a poor attempt at irony. "And one----?"
"For me to stake next Friday, when the Duke passes this way on his
road home."
"He does not!"
"He does, he does!" she retorted. "And you will do too--what I say,
sir! or----"
"Or what?" I cried, calling up a spirit for once.
"Or----" and she raised her voice a little, and sang:
"But alas, when I wake, and no Phyllis I find,
How I sigh to myself all alone!"
"You never loved me!" I cried, in a rage at that and her greed.
"Have it your own way!" she answered, carelessly, and sang it again;
and after that there was no more talk, but we walked with all the
width of the road between us; I with a sore heart and she titupping
along, cool and happy, pleased, I think, that she had visited on me
some of the chagrin which the stranger had caused her, and for the
rest with God knows what thoughts in her heart. At least I little
suspected them; yet, with the little knowledge I had, I was angry and
pained; and for the time was so far freed from illusion that I would
not make the overture, but hardened myself with the thought of my
guinea and her selfishness; and coming to the gap in the first fence
helped her over with a cold hand and no embrace such as was usual
between us at such junctures.
In a word, we were like naughty children returning after playing
truant; and might have parted in that guise, and this the very best
thing that could have happened to me--who had no guinea, and knew not
where to get one; though I would not go so far as to say that, in the
frame of mind in which I then was, it would have saved me. But in the
article of parting, and when the garden fence already rose between us,
yet each remained plain to the other by the light of the moon which
had risen, Dorinda on a sudden raised her hands, and holding her cloak
from her, stood and looked at me an instant in the most ravishing
fashion--with her head thrown back and her lips parted, and her eyes
shining, and the white of her neck and her bare arms, and the swell of
her bosom showing. I could have sworn that even the scent of her hair
reached me, though that was impossible. But what I saw was enough. I
might have known that she did it only to tantalize me: I might have
known that she would show me what I risked; but on the instant,
oblivious of all else, I owned her beauty, and resentment and my loss
alike forgotten, sprang to the fence, my blood on fire, and words
bubbling on my lips: Another second, and I should have been at her
feet, have kissed her shoes muddy and broken as they were; but she
turned, and with a backward glance, that only the more inflamed me,
fled up the garden, and to the house, whither, even at my maddest, I
dared not follow her.
However, enough had passed to send me to my bed to long and lie awake;
enough, the morrow come, to take all colour from the grey tasks and
dull drudgery of school-time; insomuch that the hours seemed days, and
the days weeks, and Mr. D----'s ignorant prosing and infliction too
wearisome to be borne. What my love now lacked of reverence, it made
up in passion, and passion's offspring, impatience: on which it is to
be supposed my mistress counted, since for three whole days she kept
within, and though every evening I flew to the rendezvous, and there
cooled my heels for an hour, she never showed herself.
Once, however, I heard her on the other side of the fence, singing:
"But alas, when I wake, and no Phyllis I find,
How I sigh to myself all alone!"
And, sick at heart, I understood the threat and her attitude.
Nevertheless, and though the knowledge should have cured me, by
convincing me that she was utterly unworthy and had never loved me, I
only consumed the more for her, and grovelled the lower in spirit
before her and her beauty; and the devil presently putting in my way
the means where he had already provided the motive, it was no wonder
that I made but a poor resistance, and in a short time fell.
It came about in this way. In the course of the week, and before the
Friday on which the Duke was to return that way, Mr. D---- announced
an urgent call to London; and as he was too wise to broach such a
proposal without a _quid pro quo_, Mrs. D---- must needs go with him.
The stage-wagon, which travelled three days in the week, would serve
next morning, and all was hasty preparation; clothes were packed and
mails got out; a gossip, one Mrs. Harris, was engaged to take Mrs.
D----'s place, and the boys were entrusted to me, with strict
instructions to see all lights out at night, and no waste. That these
injunctions might be the more deeply impressed on me, I was summoned
to Mrs. D----'s parlour to receive them; but unluckily with the
instructions given to me were mingled housekeeping directions to Mrs.
Harris, who was also present; the result being that when I retired
from the room I carried with me the knowledge that in a certain desk,
perfectly accessible, my employer left three guineas, to be used in
case of emergency, but otherwise not to be touched.
It was an unhappy chance, explaining, as well as accounting for, so
much of what follows, that were I to enter into long details of the
catastrophe, it would be useless; since the judicious reader will have
already informed himself of a result that was never in doubt, from the
time that my employer's departure at once provided the means of
gratification, and by removing the restraints under which we had
before laboured, held out the prospect of pleasure. Nor can I plead
that I sinned in ignorance; for as I sat among the boys and
mechanically heard their tasks, I called myself, "Thief, thief," a
hundred times, and a hundred to that; and once even groaned aloud; yet
never flinched or doubted that I should take the money. Which I
did--to cut a long story short--before Mr. D---- had been three hours
out of the house; and that evening humbly presented the whole of it to
my mistress, who rewarded my complaisance with present kisses and
future pledges, to be redeemed when she should have once more tasted
the pleasures of the great world.
To tell the truth, her craving for these, and to be seen again in
those haunts where we had reaped nothing but loss and mortification,
was a continual puzzle to me, who asked for nothing better than to
enjoy her society and kindness, as far as possible from the world. But
as she _would_ go and _would_ play, and made my subservience in this
matter the condition of her favour, it was essential she should win;
since I could then restore the money I had taken; whereas if she lost,
I saw no prospect before me but the hideous one of detection and
punishment. Accordingly, when the evening came, and we had effected
the same clandestine exodus as before--but this time with less peril,
Mrs. Harris being a sleepy, easy-going woman--I could think of nothing
but this necessity; and far from experiencing the terrors which had
beset me before, when Dorinda would enter the inn, gave no thought to
the scene or the crowd through which we pushed, or any other of the
preliminaries, but had my soul so set upon the fortune that awaited
us, that I was for passing through the door in the hardiest fashion,
and would scarcely stand even when a hand gripped my shoulder.
However, a rough voice exclaiming in my ear, "Softly, youngster! Who
are you that poke in so boldly? I don't know you," brought me to my
senses.
"I was in last week," I answered, gasping with eagerness.
"Then you were one too many," the doorkeeper retorted, thrusting me
back without mercy. "This is not a tradesman's ordinary. It is for
your betters."
"But I was in," I cried, desperately. "I was in last week."
"Well, you will not go in again," he answered coolly. "For the lady,
it is different. Pass in, mistress," he continued, withdrawing his arm
that she might pass, and looking at her with an impudent leer. "I can
never refuse a pretty face. And I will bet a guinea that there is one
behind that mask."
On which, to my astonishment, and while I stood agape between rage and
shame, my mistress, with a hurried word--that might stand for a
farewell, or might have been merely a request to me to wait, for I
could not catch it--accepted the invitation; and deserting me without
the least sign of remorse, passed in and disappeared. For a moment I
could scarcely, thus abandoned, believe my senses or that she had left
me; then, the iron of her ingratitude entering into my soul, and a
gentleman tapping me imperatively on the shoulder and saying that I
blocked the way, I was fain to turn aside, and plunge into the
darkness, to hide the sobs I could no longer restrain.
For a time, leaning my forehead against a house in a side alley, I
called her all the names in the world; reflecting bitterly at whose
expense she was here, and at what a price I had bought her pleasure.
Nor, it may be thought, was I likely to find excuses for her soon. But
a lover, as he can weave his unhappiness out of the airiest trifles,
so from very gossamer can he spin comfort; nor was it long before I
considered the necessity under which we lay to play and win, and
bethought me that, instead of finding fault with her for entering
alone, I should applaud the prudence that at a pinch had borne this
steadily in mind. After which, believing what I hoped, I soon ceased
to reproach her; and jealousy giving way to suspense--since all for me
now depended on the issues of gain or loss--I hastened to return to
the door, and hung about it in the hope of seeing her appear.
This she did not do for some time, but the interval and my thoughts
were diverted by a _rencontre_ as disagreeable as it was unexpected.
In my solitary condition I had made so few acquaintances in Hertford,
that I fancied I stood in no fear of being recognised. I was vastly
taken aback therefore, when a gentleman plainly dressed, happening to
pause an instant on the threshold as he issued from the inn, let his
glance rest on me; and after a second look stepped directly to me, and
with a sour aspect, asked me what I did in that place.
Then, when it was too late, I took fright; recognising him for a
gentleman of a good estate in the neighbourhood, who had two sons at
Mr. D----'s school, and enjoyed great influence with my master, he
being by far the most important of his patrons. As he belonged to the
fanatical party, and in common with most of that sect had been a
violent Exclusionist, I as little expected to see him in that company,
as he to see me. But whereas he was his own master, and besides was
there--this I learned afterwards--to rescue a young relative, while I
had no such excuse, he had nothing to fear and I all. I found myself,
therefore, ready to sink with confusion; and even when he repeated his
challenge could find no words in which to answer.
"Very well," he said, nodding grimly at that. "Perhaps Mr. D---- may
be able to answer me. I shall take care to visit him to-morrow, sir,
and learn whether he is aware how his usher employs his nights. Good
evening."
So saying, he left me horribly startled, and a prey to apprehensions,
which were not lessened by the guilt, that already lay on my
conscience in another and more serious matter. For such is the common
course of ill-doing; to plunge a man, I mean, deeper and deeper in the
mire. I now saw not one ridge of trouble only before me, but a second
and a third; and no visible way of escape from the consequences of my
imprudence. To add to my fears, the gentleman on leaving me joined the
same courtier who had spoken to Dorinda on the occasion of our former
visit, and who had just come out; so that to my prepossessed mind
nothing seemed more probable than that the latter would tell him in
whose company he had seen me and the details of our adventure. As a
fact, it was from this person's clutches my master's patron was here
to rescue his nephew. But I did not know this; and seeking in my panic
to be reassured, I asked a servant beside me who the stranger was.
"He?" he said. "Oh, he is a gentleman from the Temple. Been playing
with him?" and he looked at me, askance.
"No," I said.
"Oh," he replied, "the better for you."
"But what is his name?" I urged.
"Who does not know Mat. Smith, Esquire, of the Temple, is a country
booby--and that is you!" the man retorted quickly; and went off
laughing. Still this, seeing that I did not know the name, relieved me
a little; and the next moment I was aware of Dorinda waiting for me at
the door. Deducing from the smile that played on her countenance the
happiest omens of success, I forgot my other troubles in the relief
which this promised; and I sprang to meet her. Guiding her as quickly
as I could through the crowd, I asked her the instant I could find
voice to speak, what luck she had had.
"What luck?" she cried; and then pettishly, "there, clumsy! you are
pulling me into that puddle. Have a care of my new shoes, will you?
What luck, did you say? Why, none!"
"What? You have not lost?" I exclaimed, standing still in the road;
and it seemed to me that my heart stood still also.
"Yes, but I have!" she answered hardily.
"All?" I groaned.
"Yes, all! If you call two guineas all," she replied carelessly. "Why,
you are not going to cry for two guineas, baby, are you?"
CHAPTER VI
But I was going to cry and did, breaking down like a child; and that
not so much at the thought of the desperate strait to which she had
brought me--though this was no other than the felon's dock, with the
prospect of disgrace, and to be whipped or burned in the hand, at the
best, and if I had my benefit--but at the sudden conviction, which
came upon me, perfect and overwhelming, that my mistress, for whom I
had risked so much, did not love me! In no other way, and on no other
theory, could I explain callousness so complete, thoughtlessness so
cruel! Nor did her next words tend to heal the mischief, or give me
comfort.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, flouncing from me with impatient contempt, and
walking on the other side of the way, "if you are going to be a
cry-baby, thank you for nothing! I thought you were a man!" And she
began to hum an air.
"My God! I don't think you care!" I sobbed, aghast at her
insensibility.
"Care?" she retorted indifferently, swinging her visor in her hand.
"For what?"
"For me! Or for anything!"
With a coolness that appalled me, she finished the verse she was
humming; then, "Your finger hurts, therefore you are going to die!"
she said, with a sneer. "You see the fire and therefore you must be
burned. Why, you have the courage of a hen! A flea! A mouse! You are
not worthy the name of a man."
"I am man enough to be hanged," I answered miserably.
"Hanged?" quoth she, quite cheerfully. "Do you think that man was ever
hanged for three guineas?"
"Ay, scores," I said, "and for less!"
"Then they must have been cravens like you!" she retorted, perfectly
well satisfied with her answer. "And spun their own ropes. Come,
silly, cheer up! A great many things may happen in a week! And if that
vixen is back under a week, I will eat her!"
"A week won't make three guineas," I said dolefully.
"No, but a good heart will," she rejoined. "And not three but thirty!
Only," she continued, looking askance at me, "you have not the spirit
of a man. You are just Tumbledown Dick, as they say, and as well named
as nine-pence!"
It seemed inconceivable to me that she could jest so merrily and carry
herself so gaily, after such a loss; and I stopped short in sudden
hope and new-born expectation; and peered at her, striving to read her
thoughts. "I don't believe you have lost them!" I exclaimed at last.
"Every groat, Dick!" she answered, curtly--yet still in the best of
spirits. "Never doubt that!"
On which it was not wonderful that my disappointment and her
cheerfulness agreed so ill, that we came to bitter words, and
beginning by calling one another "Thankless," and "Clutch-penny," rose
presently to "Fool," and "Jade"; and eventually parted on the latter
at the garden fence; where Dorinda, so far from lingering as on the
former night, flounced from me in a passion, and left me without a
single word of regret. How miserably after that I stole to bed, and
how wakefully I tossed in the close garret, I cannot hope to convey to
my readers; suffice it that a hundred times I cursed the folly that
had led me to ruin, a hundred times went hot and cold at thought of
the dock and the gallows; and yet amid all found in Dorinda's
heartlessness the sharpest pain. I felt sure now, and told myself
continually, that she had never loved me; therefore--at the time it
seemed to follow--I deemed my own love at an end and cast her off; and
heaping the sharpest reproaches on her head, found my one sweet
consolation--whereat I wept miserably--in composing a last dying
speech and confession that should soften at length that obdurate
bosom, and break that unfeeling heart.
But with the day, and the rising to imminent terrors and hourly fear
of detection, came first regret, then self-reproach--lest I too should
be somewhat in fault--then a revival of passion; lastly, a frantic
yearning to be reconciled to the only person to whom I could speak
freely, or who knew the danger and strait in which I stood. My heart
melting like water at the thought, I was ready to do anything or say
anything, to abase myself to any depth, in order to regain her favour
and have her advice; and the absence of Mr. and Mrs. D----, and Mrs.
Harris's easiness rendering it a matter of no difficulty to seek her,
in the course of the afternoon I took my courage in my hands and went
into the next house. There I found only Mrs. Harris.
"The little slut has stepped out," she said, looking up from the pot
over which she was stooping. "She asked leave for half an hour and has
been gone an hour. But it is the way of the wenches all the world
over. Do you beware of them, Mr. Price," she continued, eyeing me, and
laughing jollily.
I made some trifling answer; and returning to my own domain, with all
the pangs of loneliness added to those of terror, sat down in the
dingy, dreary taskroom and abandoned myself to bitter forebodings. She
did not, she never could have loved me! I knew it and felt it now. Yet
I must think of her or go mad. I must think of her or of the cart and
cord; and so, through the hours that followed, I had only eyes for the
next garden, and ears for her voice. The boys and their chattering,
and the necessity I was under of playing my part before them,
well-nigh mastered me. For, at any hour, on any day, while I sat there
among them, Mr. and Mrs. D---- might return, and the loss be
discovered; and yet, and though time was everything, all the efforts I
made to see Jennie or get speech with her failed; and of myself I
seemed to be unable to think out any plan or way of escape.
I am sure that the most ascetic, could he have weighed the tortures of
those four days during which I sat surrounded by the boys, and now
making frantic efforts to appear myself, now sunk in a staring,
pale-faced lethargy of despair, would have deemed them a punishment
more than commensurate with my guilt. The unusual air of peace and
quietness with which Mrs. D----'s absence invested the school had no
more power to soothe me than the presence of Mrs. Harris, nodding over
her plain-stitch in the next garden, availed to banish the burning
gusts of fear that at times parched my skin. At length, on the fifth
day, the immediate warning of coming judgment arrived in the shape of
a letter announcing that my employer would return (D.V.) by the night
waggon, which in the ordinary course was due to reach Ware about six
next morning.
At that I could stand the strain no longer, but flinging appearance
and deception to the winds, I rose from the class I was pretending to
teach, and in a disorder I made no effort to suppress, followed Mrs.
Harris; who, having declared the news, was already waddling back to
the next house. She started at sight of me in her train--as she well
might, for it was the busiest time of the day; then asked if anything
ailed me.
"No," I said. "I want a word with Jennie."
"Do you?" quoth she, looking hard at me. "So, it would seem, do a good
many young fellows. She is a nice handful if ever there was one."
"Why?" I stammered.
"Why?" she answered in a tone very sharp for her. "Why, because--but
what have you to do with Jennie, young man?"
"Nothing," I said.
"Then have nothing," she answered promptly, and shook her sides
at her sharpness. "That is no puzzle! And as it is no more than
half-past ten, and I hear your boys rampaging like so many wild
Irishmen--suppose you go back to them, young man!"
I obeyed; but whatever effect her warning might have had earlier--and
I shrewdly suspect that it would have affected me as much as water
affects a duck's back--it came too late; my one desire now being to
see the girl, even as my one hope lay in her advice. Nine had struck
that evening, however, and night had fallen, and I grown fairly sick
with fear, before my efforts were rewarded, and stealing into the
garden on a last desperate search--I think for the twentieth time--I
came on her standing in the dusk, beside the fence where I had so
often met her.
I sprang to her side, relief at my heart, reproaches on my lips; but
it was only to recoil at sight of her face, grown hard and old and
pinched, and for the moment almost ugly. "Why, child!" I cried,
forgetting my own trouble. "What is it?"
She laughed without mirth, looking at me strangely. "What do you
suppose?" she said huskily, and I could see that fear was on her. "Do
you think that you are the only one in danger?"
"How?" I exclaimed.
"How?" she replied in a tone of mockery. "Why, do you suppose that
stockings and shoes are the only things that cost money? Or that vizor
masks, and gloves and hoods grow on bushes? Briefly, fool, if you can
give me four guineas, I am saved. If not----"
"My God!" I cried, horror-stricken.
"If not," she continued hardily, "you have taught me to read, and that
may save my neck. I suppose I shall be sent to the plantations, to be
beaten weekly, and work in the sun, and----"
"Four guineas!" I groaned.
"Yes, seven in all!" she answered with a sneer.
"Have you got them?"
"No, nor a groat!" I answered, overwhelmed by the discovery that
instead of giving help she needed it. "Not a penny!"
"Then it must be got!" she answered fiercely. "It must be got!" and as
she repeated the words, she dropped her mocking tone, and spoke with
feverish energy. "It must be got, Dick!" and she seized my hands and
held them. "It must be, and can be, if you have a spark of spirit, if
you are not the poor mean thing I sometimes think you. Listen! Listen!
In the old man's room upstairs--the door is locked and double-locked,
I have tried it--are sixty guineas, in a bag! Sixty guineas, in a
drawer of the old bureau by the bed!"
"It is death," I cried feebly, recoiling from her as I spoke. "It is
death! I dare not! I dare not do it!"
"Then we hang! We hang, man!" she answered fiercely. "You and I! Will
it be better to hang for a lamb than a sheep? For seven guineas than
for sixty?"
"But if we take it, what shall we be the better for it?" I said
weakly. "He returns in the morning."
"By the morning, given the money, we shall be a score of miles away!"
she answered, flinging her arms round my neck, and hanging on my
breast, while her hot breath fanned my cheek. No wonder I felt my
brain reel, and my will melt. "Away from here, Dick," she repeated
softly. "Away---and together!"
Yet I made an effort to withstand her. "You forget the door," I said.
"If the door is locked, and Mrs. Harris sleeps in the next room, how
can it be done?"
"Not by the door, but by the window," she replied. "There is a ladder
in the second garden from this; and the latch of the window is weak.
The old fool indoors sleeps like a hog. By eleven she will be sound.
And oh, Dick!" my mistress cried, breaking down on a sudden and
snatching my hands to her bosom, "will you see me shamed? Play the man
for ten minutes only--for ten minutes only, and by morning we shall be
safe, and far from here! And--and together, Dick! Together!"
Was it likely, I ask, was it possible that I should long resist
pleading such as this? That holding her in my arms, in the warm summer
night, with her hair on my breast, while the moon sailed overhead and
a cricket chirped in the wall hard by--was it likely or possible, I
say, that I should steel my heart against her; that I should turn from
the cup of pleasure, who had tasted as yet so few delights, and
drudged and been stinted all my life? Whose appetite had known no
daintier relish than the dull round of dumpling and bacon, or at the
best salt meat and spinach; and who for sole companionship had been
shut in, June days and December nights alike, with a band of
mischievous boys, whom the ancients justly called _genus improbum_. At
any rate I did not; to my shame, great or small, according as I shall
be harshly or charitably judged--I did not; but with a beating heart
and choked voice, I gave my word and left her; and an hour later I
crept down the creaking stairs for the last time, guilty and
shivering, a bundle in my hand, and found her waiting for me in the
old place.
I confess that the flurry of my spirits in this crisis was such as to
disturb my judgment; and my passion for my mistress being no longer of
the higher kind, these two things may account for the fact that I felt
no wonder or repulsion when she explained to me, coolly and in detail,
where the bureau stood, and in what part of it lay the money; even
adding that I had better bring away a pair of silver candlesticks
which I should find in another place. By the time she had made these
things clear to me, the favourable moment was come; the lights of the
town had long been extinguished, and the house obscuring the moon cast
a black shadow on the garden, that greatly seconded our movements. Yet
for myself, and though all went well with us, I trembled at the
faintest sound, and started if a leaf stirred; nay, to this day I
willingly believe that the smallest trifle, a light at a window or a
distant voice, would have deterred me from the adventure. But nothing
occurred to hinder or alarm; and the darkness cloaking us only too
effectually, and my accomplice directing me where to find the ladder,
I fetched it, and with her help thrust it over the fence and climbed
over after it.
This was a small thing, the worst being to come. The part of the
garden under the wall of the house was paved; it was only with the
greatest exertion therefore and the utmost care that we could raise
the ladder on it without noise; and but for the surprising strength
which Jennie showed, I doubt if we should have succeeded, my hands
trembled so violently. In the end we raised it, however; the upper
part fell lightly beside the second floor casement, and Jennie
whispered to me to ascend.
I had gone too far now to retreat, and I obeyed, and had mounted two
steps, when I heard distinctly--the sound coming sharp and clear
through the night--the shod hoof of a horse paw the ground, apparently
in the road beyond the house. Scared by such a sound at such a time, I
slid rapidly down into Jennie's arms. "Hush!" I cried. "Did you hear
that? There is someone there!"
But angered by my sudden descent which had come near to knocking her
down, she whispered in a rage that I was either the biggest fool or
the poorest craven in the world. "Go up! Go up!" she continued
fiercely, almost striking me in her excitement. "There are sixty
guineas awaiting us up there--sixty guineas, man, and you budge,
because a horse stirs."
"But what is it doing there?" I remonstrated. "A horse, Jennie--at
this time of night!"
"God knows!" she answered. "What is it to us?"
Still I lingered a moment, unwilling to ascend; but hearing nothing,
and thinking I might have been mistaken, I was ashamed to hang back
longer, and I went up, though my legs trembled under me, and a bird
darting suddenly out of the ivy glued me to the ladder by both hands,
with the sweat standing out on my face. Alone, nothing on earth would
have persuaded me to it; but with Jennie below I dared not flinch, and
the latch of the window proving as weak as she had described it, in a
moment the lattice swung open and I climbed over the sill.
Feeling the floor with my feet, I stood an instant in the dark stuffy
room, and listened. It smelled strongly of herbs, on which account I
hate that smell to this day. I could hear Mrs. Harris snoring next
door; and the pendulum of the fine new clock on the stairs, which was
Mrs. D----'s latest pride, was swinging to and fro regularly; and I
knew that at the slightest alarm the house would be awake. But I had
gone too far to recede; and though I feared and sweated, and at the
touch of a hand must have screamed aloud, I went forward and groping
my way across the floor, found the bureau, and tried the drawer.
It was locked, but crazily; and Jennie foreseeing the obstacle had
given me a chisel. Inserting the point, I listened awhile to assure
myself that all was quiet, and then with the resolution of despair
forced the drawer open with a single wrench. Probably the noise was no
great one, but to my ears it rang through the night loud as the crack
of laden ice. I heard the sleeper in the next room cease her snoring
and turn in the bed; and cowering down on the floor I gave up all for
lost. But in a moment she began to breathe again, and encouraged by
that and the silence in the house, I drew the drawer open, and feeling
for the bag, discovered it, and clutching it firmly, turned to the
window.
I found that Jennie had mounted the ladder, and was looking into the
room, her hands on the sill, her head dark against the sky. "Have you
got it?" she whispered, thrusting in her arm and groping for me. "Then
give it me while you get the candlesticks. They are wrapped in
flannel, and are under the bed."
I gave her the bag, which chinked as it passed from hand to hand; then
I turned obediently, and groping my way to the bed which stood beside
the bureau, I felt under it. I found nothing, but did not at once give
up. The candlesticks might lie on the farther side, and accordingly I
rose and climbed over the bed and tried again, passing my hands
through the flue and dust which had gathered under Mrs. D----'s best
feather-bed.
How long I might have searched in the dark, and vainly, I cannot say;
for my efforts were brought to a premature end by a dull thud that
came to my ears apparently from the next room. Certain that it could
be caused by nothing less than Mrs. Harris getting out of bed, I
crawled out, and got to my feet in a panic, and stood in the dark
quaking and listening; so terrified that I am sure if the good woman
had entered at that moment, I should have fallen on my knees before
her, and confessed all. Nothing followed, however; the house remained
quiet; I heard no second sound. But my nerve was gone. I wanted
nothing so much now as to be out of the place; not for a thousand
guineas would I have stayed; and without giving another thought to the
candlesticks, I groped my way to the window, and passing one leg over
the sill, felt hurriedly for the ladder.
I failed to find it, and tried again; then peering down called Jennie
by name. She did not answer. A second time I called, and felt about
with my foot; still without success. Then as it dawned upon me at last
that the ladder was really gone, and I a prisoner, I thought of
prudence no longer, but I called frantically, at first in a whisper,
and then as loudly as I dared; called and called again, "Jennie!
Jennie!" And yet again, "Jennie!"
Still no answer came; but listening intently, in one of the intervals
of silence, I caught the even beat of hoofs, receding along the road,
and growing each moment less marked. They held me; scarcely breathing,
I listened to them, until they died away in the distance of the summer
night, and only the sharp insistent chirp of the cricket, singing in
the garden below, came to my ears.
CHAPTER VII
How long I hung at the window, at one time stunned and stricken down
by the catastrophe that had befallen me, and at another feeling
frantically for the ladder which I had over and over again made sure
was not there, I know no more than another; but only that after a
time, first suspicion and then rage darted lightning-like through the
stupor that clouded my mind, and I awoke to all the tortures that love
outraged by treachery can feel; with such pangs and terrors added as
only a faithful beast, bound and doomed and writhing under the knife
of its master, may be supposed to endure.
For a while, it is true, imagining that Jennie, terrified by someone's
approach, had lowered the ladder and withdrawn herself, and so would
presently return to free me, I hoped against hope. But as minutes
passed, and yet more minutes, laden only with the cricket's even
chirp, and the creepy rustling of the wind in the poplars, and still
failed to bring her, the sound of retreating hoofs which I had heard
recurred to my mind, with dreadful significance, and on the top of it
a hundred suspicious circumstances; among which, as her sudden passion
when I had taken fright at the foot of the ladder, was not the least,
so her avoidance of me during the last few days and her frequent
absences from the house, spoken to by Mrs. Harris, had their weight.
In fine, by the light of her desertion after receiving the plunder,
and while I sought the candlesticks--which I had now convinced myself
were not there--many things obscure before, or to which I had wilfully
shut my eyes--as her callousness, her greed, her recklessness--stood
out plainly; while these again, being coolly considered, reflected so
seriously on her, as to give her sudden departure the worst possible
appearance, even in a lover's eyes. The days had been when I would not
have believed such a thing of her at the mouth of an angel from
Heaven. But much had happened since, to which my passion had blinded
me, temporarily only; so that it needed but a flash of searing light
to make all clear, and convince me that she had not only left me, but
left me trapped--I who had given up all and risked all for her!
In the first agony of pain and rage wrought by a conviction so
horrible, I could think only of her treachery and my loss; and head to
knees on the bare floor of the room, I wept as if my heart would
break, or choked with the sobs that seemed to rend my breast. And
little wonder, seeing that I had given her a boy's first devotion, and
that of all sins ingratitude has the sharpest tooth! But to this
paroxysm, when I had nearly exhausted myself, came an end and an
antidote in the shape of urgent fear; which suddenly flooding my soul,
roused me from my apathy of grief, and set me to pacing the room in a
dreadful panic, trying now the door and now the window. But on both my
attacks were in vain, the former being locked and resisting the
chisel, while the latter hung thirty feet above the paved yard.
Thus caught and snared, as neatly as any bird in a springe, I had no
resource but in my wits; and for a time, as I had nothing of which I
could form a rope, I busied myself with the expedient of throwing out
the featherbed and leaping upon it. But when I had dragged it to the
window, and came to measure the depth, I recoiled, as the most
desperate might, from the leap; and softly returning the bed to its
place, I fell to biting my nails, or fitfully roamed from place to
place, according as despair or some new hope possessed me.
In one or other of these moods the dawn found me; and then in a
surprisingly short time I heard the dreaded sounds of life awaken
round me, and creeping to the window I closed it, and crouched down on
the floor. Presently Mrs. Harris began to stir, and a boy walked
whistling shrilly across the adjacent yard; and then--strangest of all
things, and not to be invented--in the crisis of my fate, with the
feet of those who must detect me almost on the stairs, I fell asleep;
and awoke only when a key grated in the lock of the room, and I
started up to find Mr. D---- in the doorway staring at me, and behind
him a crowd of piled-up faces.
"Why, Price?" he cried, with a look of stupefaction, as he came slowly
into the room, "what is the meaning of this?"
Then I suppose my shame and guilty silence told him, for with a sudden
scowl and an oath he strode to the bureau and dragged out the drawer.
A glance showed him that the money was gone, and shouting frantically
to those at the door to keep it--to keep it, though they were
half-a-dozen to one!--he clutched me by the breast of my coat, and
shook me until my teeth chattered.
"Give it up," he cried, spluttering with rage. "Give it up, you
beggar's brat! Or, by heaven, you shall hang for it."
But as I had nothing to give up, and could not speak, I burst into
tears; which with the odd part I had played in staying in the room to
be taken, and perhaps my youth and innocent air, aroused the
neighbours' surprise; who, crowding round, asked him solicitously what
was missing. He answered after a moment's hesitation, sixty guineas.
One had already clapped his hands over my clothes, and another had
forced my mouth open; but on this they desisted, and stood, full of
admiration.
"He cannot have swallowed that," said the most active, gaping at me.
"No, that is certain. But what beats me," said another, looking round,
"is how he got here."
"To say nothing of why he stayed here!" replied the former.
"I'll tell you what," quoth a third, shaking his head. "There is some
hocus-pocus in this. And I should not wonder, neighbours, if the
Catholics were at the bottom of it!"
The theory appeared to commend itself to more than one--for they were
all of the fanatical party; but it was swept to the winds by the
entrance of Mrs. D----, who having heard of robbery, came in like a
whirlwind, her face on fire, and made no more ado, but rushed upon me,
and tore and slapped my cheeks with all her might, crying with each
blow, "You nasty thief, will that teach you better manners? That for
your roguery! and that! Oh, you jail bird, I'll teach you!"
How long she would have continued to chastise me I cannot say, but her
husband presently stepped in to protect me, and being thoroughly
winded, she let me go pretty willingly. But when she learned, having
hitherto been under the impression that I had been seized in the act
with the money upon me, that the latter could not be found, her face
turned yellow and she sat down in a chair.
"Have you searched?" she gasped.
"Everywhere," the neighbours answered her.
"He must have thrown it through the window."
They shook their heads.
On that she jumped up, and looked at me with a cold spite in her face
that made me shiver. "Then I will tell you what it is," she said, "he
has given it to that hussy, and she has taken it! But I will have it
out of him; where the money is, and she is, and how he got in! Mr.
D----, when you have done standing there like a gaby, fetch your
stoutest cane; and do you, my friends, lay him across that bed! And if
we do not cut it out of his skin, his name is not Richard Price. I
wish I had the wench here, and I would serve her the same!"
I screamed, and fell on my knees as they laid hands on me; but Mrs.
D---- was a woman without bowels, and the men were complaisant and not
unwilling to see the cruel sport of the usher flogged, and the
schoolmaster disciplined; and it would have gone hard with me, in
spite of my prayers, if the constable had not arrived at that moment,
and requested with dignity to see his prisoner. Introduced to me, he
stared; and, moved I believe by an impulse of pity, said I was young
to hang.
"Ay, but not too good!" Mrs. D---- answered shrilly, her head
trembling with passion. "He and the hussy, that is gone, have robbed
me of eighty guineas in a green bag, as I am prepared to swear!"
"Sixty, Mrs. D----," said her husband, looking a warning at her and
then askance at his neighbours.
"Rot take the man, does it matter to a guinea or two?" she
retorted--but her sallow face flushed a little. "At any rate," she
continued, pressing her thin lips together, and nodding her head
viciously, "sixty or eighty, they have taken them."
It seemed, however, that even to that one of the neighbours had a word
to say. "As to the girl, I am not so sure, Mrs. D----," he struck in
ponderously. "If she is the wench that has been carrying on with the
gentleman at the 'Rose,' she has had other fish to fry. Though I don't
say, mind you, that she has _not_ been in this. Only----"
But Mrs. D---- could restrain herself no longer. "Only! only!
Gentlemen at the 'Rose'!" she cried. "Why, man, are you mad? What do
you think has my maid--though maid she is not, but a dirty drab, and
more is the pity I took her out of charity from the parish--she was
Kitty Higgs's base-born brat as you know--what has she to do with
gentlemen at the 'Rose'?"
"Well, that is not for me to say," the man answered quietly. "Only I
know that for a week or more a wench has been walking with the
gentleman in the roads and so forth, by night as well as by day. I
came on them twice myself hard by here; and though she was dressed
more like a fine madam than a serving girl, I watched her into your
house. And for the rest, Mrs. Harris must know more than I do."
But Mrs. Harris, when Mrs. D---- turned on her in a white rage, could
only cover her head and weep in a corner; as much, I believe, out of
sorrow for me as on her own account. However, the fact that the
good-natured woman had left Jennie pretty much to her own devices
could not be gainsaid; and Mrs. D---- had much to say on it. But when
she talked of sending after the baggage and jailing her, ay, and the
gentleman at the "Rose" too, if he could not pay the money, the
constable pursed up his lips.
"It is to be remembered that he came with His Royal Highness, our
gracious Prince," he said, swelling out his chest and puffing out his
cheeks with importance. "And though it is true he ordered his horses
and went for London last evening--as I know myself, having seen him
go, and seen him before for the matter of that at Hertford Assizes,
for he is a Counsellor--it does not follow that the wench went with
him. Or, if she did, Mrs. D----, ----"
"That she had anything to do with this money," the neighbour who had
spoken before put in.
"Precisely, Mr. Jenkins," the constable answered. "You are a man of
sense. For my part," he continued, looking round a little defiantly,
"I am no Whig, and I am not for meddling with Court gentlemen, and
least of all lawyers. And if you will take my advice, Mr. D----, you
will be satisfied to lay this young jail-bird by the heels; and if he
does not speak before the rope is round his neck, it is not likely
that you will get your money other ways. But, lord," the good man went
on, standing back from me, to view me the better, "he is young to be
such a villain! It is 'broke and entered,' too, and so he will swing
for it." And he took off his hat and wiped his bald head, while he
gazed at me between pity and admiration.
Mrs. D----, who was very far from sharing either of these feelings,
would have had me taken at once before a Justice and committed. But
the constable, partly to prove his importance, and partly, I believe,
to give me a chance of disclosing where the money lay, before it was
too late, would have the house and garden searched, and all the boys
examined; under the impression that I might have had one of these for
my accomplice. Naturally, however, nothing came of this, except the
discovery that I had been out of nights lately; which had scarcely
been made when who should appear on the scene, in an unlucky hour for
me, but the gentleman who had identified me outside the gaming room at
the "Rose." As he had come for the very purpose of laying a complaint
against me, his story destroyed the last scrap of my credit, by
exhibiting me as a secret rake; and this removing all doubt of my
guilt, if any were still entertained even by Mrs. Harris, it was
determined to convey me, dinner over, to Sir Baldwin Winston's, at
Abbot's Stanstead, to be committed; the two Justices who resided in
Ware being at the moment disabled.
All this time, and while my fate was being decided, I listened to one
and another in a dull despair, which deprived me of the power to
defend myself; and from which nothing less than Mrs. D----'s atrocious
proposal to flog me, until I gave up the money, could draw me, and
that only for a moment. Conscious of my guilt, and seized in the act
and on the scene of my crime, I beheld only the near and certain
prospect of punishment; while I had not the temptation to tell all,
and inform against my crafty accomplice, to which a knowledge of her
destination must have exposed me. Besides--and I think a great part of
my apathy was due to this--I still felt the stunning effects of the
blow which her cruel treachery had dealt me. I saw her in her true
light; and as I sat, weeping silently, and seeming to those who
watched me, little moved, I was thinking at least as much of the past
and my love, and her craft, as of the fate that lay before me.
Though this was presently brought vividly before me, and of all
persons by Mrs. Harris. Mrs. D---- of herself would have given me
neither bit nor sup in the house; but the constable insisting that the
King's prisoner must be fed, Mrs. Harris, tearful and shaking, was
allowed to bring me some broken victuals. These set before me, the
good soul, instead of retiring, pottered aimlessly about the room; and
by and by got behind me; on which, or rather a moment later, I felt
something cold and sharp at the nape of my neck and started up.
Bursting into a flood of tears she plumped down on a seat, and I saw
that she had a pair of scissors and a scrap of my hair in her hand.
"Good Lord!" I said.
Doubtless the tone in which I spoke betrayed me, for the constable's
man who was in charge of me laughed brutally. "Gad, if he does not
think she did it out of love!" he cried, speaking to a friend who was
sitting with him. "When all the old dame wants is a charm for the
rheumatics; and she thinks the chance too good to be lost."
Then I remembered that the hair of a hanged man is in that part held
to be sovereign for the rheumatics; and I sat down feeling cold and
faint.
CHAPTER VIII
That saying, though a small thing, and a foolish one, brought my state
home to me; and, moreover, filled me with so grisly a foreboding of
the gibbet, that henceforth I gave my treacherous mistress no more
thought than she deserved--which was little; but I became wholly taken
up with my own fate, and especially with the recollection of a man,
whom I had once seen, pitched and hanging in chains, at Much Hadham
Crossroads. The horrible spectacle he had become, ten days dead, grew
on my mind, until I grovelled and sweated in a green terror, and that
not so much at the prospect of death--though this sent me hot and cold
in the same instant--as of the harsh rope about my neck, and the
sacking bands, and the dreadful apparatus, and the grinning loathsome
thing I must become.
Near swooning at these thoughts, I sank huddled into the chair; and
was presently plucked up by the constable's assistant, who, seeing my
state, came forward, and though he was naturally a coarse fellow,
strove to hearten me, saying that there was always hope until the cart
moved, and that many a man cast for death was drinking the King's
health in the Plantations. With an oath or two and in a loud voice.
On that a last flicker of pride came to my aid, and trying to meet his
eye I muttered that it was not that; that I was not afraid, and that
at worst I should be burned in the hand.
"To be sure!" he said nodding, and looking at me curiously. "To be
sure. It is well to be a scholar!"
I was athirst, however, to get some further and better assurance from
him; and fixing my eyes on his face, I asked hoarsely, "You think that
it is certain? You think there is no doubt?"
"Certain sure, my Toby!" he answered. But I saw that, as he moved
away, he winked to his comrade, and I heard the latter ask him softly,
as he took his seat again, "Is't so? Will the lad cheat the hangman?"
"Not he!" was the reply, uttered in a whisper--but terror sharpened my
ears. "There was so long a list at the last Assizes, and half of them
_legit_, that it was given out they would override it this time, and
make examples. And ten to one he will swing, Ben."
"But is it the law?"
I did not hear the answer for the drumming in my ears and the dreadful
confusion in my brain; which were such that I was not aware of the
constable's entrance or of anything that happened after that, until I
found myself in the road climbing clumsily on the back of a pony, in
the middle of a throng of staring curious faces. My feet being secured
under the beast's belly--at which some gave a hand, while others stood
off, whispering and looking strangely at me--the constable mounted
himself, and shouting to his wife that he should take me on to
Hertford gaol, and should not be back until late, led me out of the
crowd, Mr. D---- and Mr. Jenkins bringing up the rear. The last I saw
of the school the boys were hanging out of the windows to see me go;
and Mrs. D---- was standing in the doorway, and unappeased by my
misery, was shrilly denouncing me--hands and tongue, all going--to a
group of her gossips.
Our road took us past the Rose Inn, and through a great part of the
town, but no impression of either remains with me, my only
recollection being of the sunshine that lay over the country, and of
the happiness that all creation, all living things, save my doomed
self, enjoyed. The bitterness of the thought that yesterday I had been
as these, free to move and live and breathe, caused great tears to
roll down my cheeks; but my companions, whose thoughts had already
gone forward to the Steward's Room at Sir Winston's, and the
entertainment they expected there, took little notice of me; and less
after the porter at the lodge told them that there were grand doings
at the house, and a great company, including a lord, come unexpectedly
from London.
"I don't think ye'll be welcome," the porter added, looking curiously
at me.
"Justice's business," the constable replied sturdily. "The King must
be served."
"Ay, that is what you all say when you've something to gain by it,"
the porter retorted; and went in.
[Illustration: THE CONSTABLE LED ME OUT OF THE CROWD]
All which I heard idly; not supposing that it meant to me the
difference between life and death, fortune and misery; or that in the
company come unexpectedly from London lurked my salvation. If I dwelt
on the news at all it was only as it might affect me by adding to the
shame I felt. But in this I deceived myself; for when the ordeal of
waiting in the servants' hall--where the maids pitied me and would
have fed me if I could have eaten--was over, and we were ushered into
the parlour in which Sir Winston, who had newly risen from dinner,
would see us, we found only one gentleman with him.
The two stood at the farther end of a long narrow room, in the bay of
a large window, that, open to the ground, permitted a view of cool
sward and yew hedges. That they had had companions, lately withdrawn,
was clear; and this, not only from the length of the table, which,
bestrewn with plates and glasses and half-empty flagons, stretched up
the room from us to them, but from two chairs, thrown down in the
hurry of rising, and six or seven others thrust back, haphazard,
against the panels. In the side of the room were four tall straight
windows that allowed the sunshine to fall in regular bars on the
table; and these, displaying here a little pool of spilled claret, and
there a broken tobacco pipe, the ash still smouldering, gave a touch
of grimness to the luxurious disorder.
The same incongruity was to be observed in the appearance of the elder
and stouter of the two men; who had hung his periwig on the back of a
chair, and showed a bald head and flushed face that agreed very ill
with his laced cravat and embroidered coat. Standing with his feet
apart and his arm outstretched, he was not immediately aware of our
entrance; but continued to address his companion in words that were
coherent, yet betrayed how he had been employed.
"Crop-eared knaves, my lord, half of them, and I one!" he cried, as we
came to a halt a little within the door, to await his pleasure--I with
shaking knees and sinking heart. "And ready to become the same again
if the times call for it. For why? Because it was only so we could
keep or get, my lord. And martyrs have been few in my time, though
fools plenty."
"I should be sorry to deny the last, Sir Winston," his companion
answered, smiling; for whom at the moment, blind bat as I was, I had
no eyes, seeing in him only a noble youth, handsomely dressed and
periwigged, and two, or it might be three years older than myself;
whereas I hung on the Justice's nod. "But here is your case," the
young man continued, turning to me, and speaking in a pleasant voice.
"And a hard case one of them is," the Justice answered jollily, as he
turned to us, and singled out the constable. "That is you, Dyson!" he
continued, "one of those of whom I have been telling you, my lord. A
psalm-singer in the troubles, sergeant in Lord Grey's regiment, a
roundhead, and ran away, with better men than himself, at Cropredy
Bridge. To-day he damns a Whig, and goes to bed drunk every
twenty-ninth of May."
"Having a good example, your honour!" the constable answered grinning.
"Ay, to be sure. And why don't you follow it also?" Sir Winston
continued, turning to the schoolmaster. "But crop-eared you were and
crop-eared you are; one of Shaftesbury's brisk boys, my lord! And
ought to be fined for a ranter every Monday morning, if all had their
deserts!"
"Then I am afraid that your theory does not apply to him, Sir
Winston," the young man said with a smile. "Here is one martyr
already; and if one martyr, why not many?"
"Martyr?" the Justice answered, with half-a-dozen oaths. "He? No one
less! He goes to church as you and I do, and does not smart to the
tune of a penny! It is true he pulls a solemn face and abhors
mince-pies and plum-porridge. But why? Because he keeps a school, and
the righteous, or what are left of them, who are just such hypocrites
as himself, resort unto his company with boys and guineas! Resort unto
his company, eh, D---?" the Justice repeated gleefully, addressing the
schoolmaster. "That is the phrase, isn't it? Oh, I have chopped
Scripture with old Noll in my time. And so it pays, do you see, my
lord? When it does not, he'll damn the Whigs and turn Tantivy or
Abhorrer, or something that does. And so it is with all; they are
loyal. Never were Englishmen more loyal; but to what are they loyal?
Themselves, my lord!"
"Yet there are Whigs who do not keep schools," the young lord said,
after a hearty laugh.
"Ay, my lord, and why?" Sir Winston answered, in high good humour,
"because we are all trimmers to the wind, but some trim too late, and
some too soon. And those are your Whigs. Never you turn Whig, my lord,
whatever you do, or you will die in a Dutch garret like Tony
Shiftsbury! And if anyone could have made Whiggery pay nowadays,
clever Anthony would have. Here's his health, but I doubt he is in
hell, these eight months."
And Sir Winston, going to the table, filled and drank off a bumper of
claret. Then he filled again. "The King--God bless him--is not very
well, I hear," said he, winking at the young lord. "So I will give you
another toast. His Highness's health, and confusion to all who would
exclude him! And now what is this business, Dyson? Who is the lad?
What has he been doing?"
The constable began to explain; but before he had uttered many words,
the baronet, whose last draught had more than a little fuddled him,
cut him short. "Oh, come to me to-morrow!" he said. "Or stay! You are
in the Commission for the county, my lord?"
"I am, but I have not acted," the young man answered.
"Rot it, man, but you shall act now! Burglary, is it? Broke and
entered, eh? Then that is a hanging matter, and a young hound should
be blooded. I am off! My lord will do it, Dyson. My lord will do it."
With which the Justice lurched out of the window so quickly, not to
say unsteadily, that he was gone before his companion could
remonstrate. The young lord, thus abandoned, looked at first at a
nonplus, and seemed for a while more than half-inclined to follow.
But changing his mind, and curious, I am willing to believe, to hear
the case of a prisoner so much out of the common as I must have
appeared to him, he turned to us, and adopting a certain stateliness,
which came easily to him, young as he was, he told the constable he
would hear him.
Then it was that, hanging for my life on the nods and words of
intelligence that from time to time fell from him, and whereby he
lifted the constable out of the slough of verbiage in which he
floundered, I dared again to hope; and noting with eyes sharpened by
terror the cast of his serious handsome features, and the curves of
his mouth, sensitive as a woman's yet wondrously under control, saw a
prospect of life. For a time indeed I had nothing more substantial on
which to build than such signs, so damning seemed the tale that
branded me as taken in the act and on the scene of my crimes. But when
the young peer, after eyeing me gravely and pitifully, asked if they
had found the money on me, and the constable answered, "No," and my
lord retorted, "Then where was it?" and got no answer; and again when
he enquired as to the lock on the door and the height of the window,
and who had aided me to enter, and learned that a girl was suspected
and no one else--then I felt the blood beat hotly in my head, and a
mist come before my eyes.
"Who is his accomplice? Pooh; there must be one!" he said.
"The girl, may it pleasure your lordship," the constable answered.
"The girl? Then why should she leave him to be taken? How did he
enter?"
"By a ladder, it is supposed, my lord."
"It is supposed?"
"Yes, my lord."
"But ladder or no ladder, why did she leave him?"
The constable scratched his head.
"Perhaps they were surprised, please your lordship," he ventured at
last.
"But the boy was found in the room at seven, dolt. And the sun is up
before four. What was he doing all those hours? Surprised, pooh!"
"Well, I don't know as to that, your worship," the man answered
sturdily; "but only that the prisoner was found in the room, in which
he had not ought to be, and the money was gone from the room where it
had ought to be!"
"And the bureau was broken open," Mr. D---- cried eagerly. "And what
is more, he has never denied it, my lord! Never."
At that and at sight of the change that came over my judge's face the
hope that had risen in me died suddenly; and I saw again the grim
prospect of the prison and the gibbet; and to be led from one to the
other, dumb, one of a drove, unregarded. And, it coming upon me
strongly that in a moment it would be too late, I found my voice and
cried to him, "Oh, my lord, save me!" I cried. "Help me! For the sake
of God, help me!"
Whether my words moved him or he had not yet given up my case, he
looked at me attentively, and with a shade as of recollection on his
face. Then he asked quietly what I was.
"Usher in a school, my lord," someone answered.
"Poor devil!" he exclaimed. And then, to the others, "Here, you!
Withdraw a little to the passage, if you please. I would speak with
him alone."
The constable opened his mouth to demur; but the young gentleman would
not suffer it; saying with a fine air that there was no resisting,
"Pooh, man, I am Lord Shrewsbury. I will be responsible for him." And
with that he got them out of the room.
CHAPTER IX
I know now that there never was a man in whom the natural propensity
to side with the weaker party was by custom and exercise more highly
developed than in my late lord, in whose presence I then stood; who,
indeed, carried that virtue to such an extent that if any fault could
be found with his public carriage--which I am very far from admitting,
but only that such a colour might be given to some parts of it by his
enemies--the flaw was attributable to this excess of generosity. Yet
he has since told me that on this occasion of our first meeting, it
was neither my youth nor my misery--in the main at any rate--that
induced him to take so extraordinary a step as that of seeing me
alone; but a strange and puzzling reminiscence, which my features
aroused in him, and whereto his first words, when we were left
together, bore witness. "Where, my lad," said he, staring at me, "have
I seen you before?"
As well as I could, for the dread of him in which I stood, I essayed
to clear my brain and think; and in me also, as I looked at him, the
attempt awoke a recollection, as if I had somewhere met him. But I
could conceive one place only where it was possible I might have seen
a man of his rank; and so stammered that perhaps at the Rose Inn, at
Ware, in the gaming-room I might have met him.
His lip curled, "No," he said coldly, "I have honoured the
Groom-Porter at Whitehall once and again by leaving my guineas with
him. But at the Rose Inn, at Ware--never! And heavens, man," he
continued in a tone of contemptuous wonder, "what brought such as you
in that place?"
In shame, and aware, now that it was too late, that I had said the
worst thing in the world to commend myself to him, I stammered that I
had gone thither--that I had gone thither with a friend.
"A woman?" he said quickly.
I allowed that it was so.
"The same that led you into this?" he continued sharply.
But to that I made no answer: whereon, with kindly sternness he bade
me remember where I stood, and that in a few minutes it would be too
late to speak.
"You can trust me, I suppose?" he continued with a fine scorn, "that I
shall not give evidence against you. By being candid, therefore, you
may make things better, but can hardly make them worse."
Whereon I have every reason to be thankful, nay, it has been matter
for a life's rejoicing that I was not proof against his kindness; but
without more ado, sobbing over some parts of my tale, and whispering
others, I told him my whole story from the first meeting with my
temptress--so I may truly call her--to the final moment when, the
money gone, and the ladder removed, I was rudely awakened, to find
myself a prisoner. I told it, I have reason to believe, with feeling,
and in words that carried conviction; the more as, though skilled in
literary composition, and in writing _secundum artem_, I have little
imagination. At any rate, when I had done, and quavered off
reluctantly into a half coherent and wholly piteous appeal for mercy,
I found my young judge gazing at me with a heat of indignation in
cheek and eye, that strangely altered him.
"Good G----!" he cried, "what a Jezebel!" And in words which I will
not here repeat, he said what he thought of her.
True as the words were (and I knew that, after what I had told him,
nothing else was true of her), they forced a groan from me.
"Poor devil," he said at that. And then again, "Poor devil, it is a
shame! It is a black shame, my lad," he continued warmly, "and I would
like to see Madam at the cart-tail; and that is where I shall see her
before all is done! I never heard of such a vixen! But for you," and
on the word he paused and looked at me, "you did it, my friend, and I
do not see your way out of it."
"Then must I hang?" I cried desperately.
He did not answer.
"My lord! My lord!" I urged, for I began to see whither he was
tending, and I could have shrieked in terror, "you can do anything."
"I?" he said.
"You! If you would speak to the judge, my lord."
He laughed, without mirth. "He would whip you instead of hanging you,"
he said contemptuously.
"To the King, then."
"You would thank me for nothing," he answered; and then with a kind of
contemptuous suavity, "My friend, in your Ware Academy--where
nevertheless you seem to have had your diversions--you do not know
these things. But you may take it from me, that I am more than
suspected of belonging to the party whose existence Sir Baldwin
denies--I mean to the Whigs; and the suspicion alone is enough to damn
any request of mine."
On that, after staring at him a moment, I did a thing that surprised
him; and had he known me better a thing that would have surprised him
more. For the courage to do it, and to show myself in colours unlike
my own, I had to thank neither despair nor fear, though both were
present; but a kind of rage that seized me, on hearing him speak in a
tone above me, and as if, having heard my story, he was satisfied with
the curiosity of it, and would dismiss the subject, and I might go to
the gallows. I know now that in so speaking he had not that intent,
but that brought up short by the certainty of my guilt, and the
impasse as to helping me, in which he stood, he chose that mode of
repressing the emotion he felt. I did not understand this however: and
with a bitterness born of the misconception, and in a voice that
sounded harsh, and anyone's rather than mine, I burst into a furious
torrent of reproaches, asking him if it was only for this he had seen
me alone, and to make a tale. "To make a tale," I cried, "and a jest?
One that with the same face with which you send me out to be strangled
and to rot, and with the same smile, you'll tell, my lord, after
supper to Sir Baldwin and your like. Oh, for shame, my lord, for
shame!" I cried, passionately, and losing all fear of him in my
indignation. "As you may some day be in trouble yourself--for great
heads fall as well as low ones in these days, and as little pitied--if
you have bowels of compassion, my lord, and a mother to love you----"
He turned on me so swiftly at that word, that my anger quailed before
his. "Silence!" he cried, fiercely. "How dare you, such as you,
mention----. But there, fellow--be silent!"
I caught the ring of pain as well as anger in his tone, and obeyed
him; though I could not discern what I had said to touch him so
sorely. He on his side glowered at me a moment; and so we stood, while
hope died within me, and I grew afraid of him again, and a shadow fell
on the room as it had already fallen on his face. I waited for nothing
now but the word that should send me from his presence, and thought
nothing so certain as that I had flung away what slender chance
remained to me. It was with a start that when he broke the silence I
was aware of a new sound in his voice.
"Listen, my lad," he said in a constrained tone--and he did not look
at me. "You are right in one thing. If I meant to do nothing for you,
I had no right to your confidence. I do not know what it was in your
face induced me to see you. I wish I had not. But since I have I must
do what I can to save you: and there is only one way. Mind you," he
continued in a sudden burst of anger, "I do not like it! And I do it
out of regard for myself, not for you, my lad! Mind you that!"
"Oh, my lord!" I cried, ready to fall down and worship him.
"Be silent," he answered, coldly, "and when my back is turned go
through that window. Do you understand? It is all I can do for you.
The alley on the left leads to the stables. Pass through them boldly;
if you are not stopped you will in a minute be on the high road. The
turn, to the left at the cross-roads, leads to Tottenham and London.
That on the right will take you to Little Parndon and Epping. That is
all I have to say; while I look for a piece of paper to sign your
commitment, you would do well to go. Only remember, my man, if you are
retaken--do not look to me."
He suited the action to the words by turning his back on me, and
beginning to search in a bureau that stood beside him. But so sudden
and so unexpected was the proposal he had made, that though he had
said distinctly "Go!" I doubt if, apart from the open window, I should
have understood his purpose. As it was I came to it slowly--so slowly
that he lost patience, and with his head still buried among the
pigeon-holes, swore at me.
[Illustration: WHEN MY BACK IS TURNED GO THROUGH THAT WINDOW]
"Are you going?" he said. "Or do you think that it is nothing I am
doing for you? Do you think it is nothing that I am going to tell a
lie for such as you? Either go or hang, my lad!"
I heard no more. A moment earlier nothing had been farther from my
thoughts than to attempt an escape, but the impulse of his will
steadied my wavering resolution, and with set teeth and a beating
heart, I stepped through the window. Outside I turned to the left
along a shady green alley fenced by hedges of yew, and espying the
stable-yard before me, walked boldly across it. By good luck the
grooms and helpers were at supper and I saw only one man standing at a
door. He stared at me, mouthing a straw, but said nothing, and in a
twinkling I had passed him, left the curtilage behind me, and had the
park fence and gate in sight.
Until I reached this, not knowing whose eyes were on me, I had the
presence of mind to walk; though cold shivers ran down my back, and my
hair crept, and every second I fancied--for I was too nervous to look
back--that I felt Dyson's hand on my collar. Arriving safely at the
gate, however, and the road stretching before me with no one in sight,
I took to my heels, and ran a quarter of a mile along it; then leaping
the fence that bounded it on the right, I started recklessly across
country, my aim being to strike the Little Parndon highway, to which
my lord had referred, at a point beyond the cross-roads, and so to
avoid passing the latter.
I am aware that this mode of escape, this walking through a window and
running off unmolested, sounds bald and commonplace; and that if I
could import into my story some touch of romance or womanish disguise,
such as--to compare great things with small--marked my Lord
Nithsdale's escape from the Tower three years ago, I should cut a
better figure. Whereas in the flight across the fields on a quiet
afternoon, with the sun casting long shadows on the meadows, and for
my most instant alarms, the sudden whirring up before me of partridge
or plover, few will find anything heroic. But let them place
themselves for a moment in my skin, and remember that as I sweated and
panted and stumbled and rose again, as I splashed in reckless haste
through sloughs and ditches, and tore my way through great
blackthorns, I had death always at my heels! Let them remember that in
the long shadows that crossed my path I saw the gallows, and again the
gallows, and once more the gallows; and fled more quickly; and that it
needed but the distant bark of a dog, or the shout of a boy scaring
birds, to persuade me that the hue and cry was coming, and to fill me
with the last extremity of fear.
I believe that the adventurer, and the knight of the road, when it
falls to their lot to be so hunted--as must often happen, though more
commonly such an one is taken _securus et ebrius_ in the arms of his
mistress--find some mitigation of their pains in the anticipation of
conflict, and in the stern joy which the resolve to sell life dearly
imparts to the man of action. But I was unarmed, and worn out with my
exertions; no soldier, and with no heart to fight. My flight therefore
across the quiet fields was pure terror, the torture of unmitigated
fear. Fear spurred me and whipped me; and yet, had I known it, I might
have spared my terror. For darkness found me, weak and exhausted, but
still free, in the neighbourhood of Epping in Essex, where I passed
the night in the Forest; and before noon next day, believing that they
would watch for me on the Tottenham Road, I had found courage to slink
in to London by way of Chingford, and in the heart of that great city,
whose magnitude exceeded all my expectations, had safely and
effectually lost myself.
CHAPTER X
At this point, it becomes me to pause. I set out, the reader will
remember, to furnish such a narrative of the events attending my first
meeting with my honoured patron, as taken with a brief account of
myself might enable all to pursue with insight as well as advantage
the details of my later connection with him. And this being done, and
bearing in mind that Sir John Fenwick did not suffer for his
conspiracy until 1696, and that consequently a period of thirteen
years divided the former events, which I have related, from those
which follow--and which have to do, as I intimated at the outset, with
my lord's alleged cognisance of that conspiracy--some may, and with
impatience, look to me to proceed at once to the gist of the matter.
Which I propose to do; but first to crave the reader's indulgence,
while in a very hasty and perfunctory manner I trace my humble
fortunes in the interval; whereby time will in the end be saved.
That arriving in London, as I have related, a fugitive, penniless and
homeless, in fear of the law, I contrived to keep out of the beadle's
hands, and was neither whipped for a vagrant at Bridewell, nor starved
outright in the streets, I attribute to most singular good fortune;
which not only rescued me (_statim_) from a great and instant danger
that all but engulfed me, but within a few hours found for me honest
and constant employment, and that of an uncommon kind.
It so happened that, perplexed by the clamour of the great city,
wherein all faces were new to me and ways alike, I came to a stand
about noon in the neighbourhood of Newgate Market; where, confident
that in the immense and never-ceasing tide of life that ebbs and flows
in that quarter, I was safe from recognition, I ventured to sell an
undergarment in a small shop in an alley, and buying a loaf with the
price, satisfied my hunger. But the return of strength was accompanied
by no return of hope; rather, my prime necessity supplied, I felt the
forlornness of my position more acutely. In which condition, having no
resource but to wander aimlessly from one street to another while the
daylight lasted--and after that no prospect at all except to pass the
night in the same manner--I came presently into Little Britain, and
stopped, as luck would have it, before one of the bookshops that crowd
that part. A number of persons were poring over the books, and I
joined them; but I had not stood a moment, idly scanning the backs of
the volumes, before one of my neighbours touched my elbow, and when I
turned and met his eyes, nodded to me. "A scholar?" he said, smiling
pleasantly through a pair of glasses. "Ah, how ill does the muse
requite her worshippers. From the country, my friend?"
I answered that I was; and seeing him to be a man well on in years,
clad in good broadcloth, and of a sober, substantial aspect, I saluted
him abjectly.
"To be sure," he said, again nodding cheerfully. "And a stranger to
the town I expect?"
"Yes," I said.
"And a reader? A reader? Ah, how ill does the muse---- But you _can_
read?" he ejaculated, breaking off somewhat suddenly.
I said I could, and to convince him read off the names of several of
the volumes before me. I remembered afterwards that instead of looking
at them to see if I read aright, he kept his eyes on my face.
"Good!" he said, stopping me when I had deciphered half-a-dozen. "You
do your schoolmaster credit, my lad. Such a man should not want, and
yet you look----frankly, my friend, are you in need of employment?"
He asked the question with so much benevolence, and looked at me with
so good-natured a twinkle in his eyes, that my tears nearly
overflowed, and I had much ado to answer him. "Yes," I said. "And
without friends, sir."
"Indeed, indeed," quoth he. "Well, I must do what I can. And first,
you may do me a service, which in any case shall not go unrequited.
Come this way."
Without waiting for an answer he led me into the mouth of a court hard
by, where we were less open to observation; there, pointing to a shop
at a little distance from that at which he had found me, he explained
that he wished to purchase a copy of _Selden's Baronage_ that stood at
the front of the stall, but that the tradesman knew him and would
overcharge him. "So do you go and buy it for me, my friend," he
continued, chuckling over his innocent subterfuge, with a simplicity
that took with me immensely. "It should be half-a-guinea. There is a
guinea"--and he lugged one out. "Buy the book and bring the change to
me, and it shall be something in your pocket. Alas, that the muse
should so ill---- But there, go, go, my lad," he continued, "and
remember _Selden's Baronage_, half-a-guinea. And not a penny more!"
Delighted with the luck which had found me such a patron, and anxious
to acquit myself to the best advantage I hurried to do his bidding;
first making sure that I knew where to find him. The shop he had
pointed out, which was surmounted by the sign of a gun, and appeared
to enjoy no small share of public favour, was full of persons reading
and talking; but almost the first book on which my eyes alighted was
_Selden's Baronage_, and the tradesman when I applied to him made no
difficulty about the price, saying at once that it was half-a-guinea.
I handed him my money, and without breaking off his talk with a
customer, he was counting the change, when something in my aspect
struck him, and he looked at the guinea. On which he muttered an oath
and thrust it back into my hand.
"It will not do," he said angrily. "Begone!"
I was quite taken aback: the more as several persons looked up from
their books, and his immediate companion, a meagre dry-looking man in
a snuff-coloured suit, fell to staring at me. "What do you mean?" I
stammered.
"You know very well," the tradesman answered me roughly. "And had
better be gone! And more, I tell you, if you want a hemp collar, my
man, you are in the way to get one!"
"Clipped?" quoth the dry-looking man.
"New clipped and bright at the edges!" the bookseller answered. "Now
go, my man, and be thankful I don't send for a constable."
At that I shrank away, two or three of the customers coming to the
door to see me out, and watching which way I turned. This, I
suppose--though I was then, and for a little time longer in doubt
about him--was the reason why I could see nothing of my charitable
friend, when I returned to the place where I had left him. I looked
this way and that, but he was gone; and though, not knowing what else
to do, and having still the guinea in my possession, I lingered about
the mouth of the court for an hour or more, looking for him, he did
not return.
At the end of that time the meagre dry man whom I had seen in the shop
passed with a book under his arm; and seeing me, after a moment's
hesitation stood and spoke to me. "Well, my friend?" said he, looking
hard at me. "Are you waiting for the halter?"
I told him civilly, no; but that the gentleman who had given me the
guinea to change had bidden me return to him there.
"And he is not here?" he said with a sneer.
"No," I said.
He stared at me, wondering at the simplicity of my answer; and then,
"Well, you are either the biggest fool or the biggest knave within the
bills!" he exclaimed. "Are you straight from Gotham?"
"No," I told him. "From the north." And that I wanted employment.
"You are like to get it--at the Plantations!" he answered savagely,
taking snuff. I remarked that neither his hands nor his linen were of
the cleanest, and that the former were stained with ink. "What are
you?" he continued, presently, in the same snappish, churlish tone.
I told him a schoolmaster.
"_Exempli gratia_," he answered quickly, and turning to the nearest
stall, he indicated the title-page of a book. "Read me that, Master
Schoolmaster."
I did so. He grunted; and then, "You write? Show me your hand."
I said I had no paper or ink there, but that if he would take me----
"Pooh, man, are you a fool?" he cried, impatiently. "Show me your
right hand, middle finger, and I will find you _scribit_ or _non
scribit_. So! And you want work?"
"Yes," I said.
"Hard work and little pay?"
I said I wanted to make my living.
"Ay, and maybe the first time you come to me, you will cut my throat,
and rob my desk," he answered gruffly. "Hm! That touches you home,
does it? However, ask for me to-morrow, at seven in the forenoon--Mr.
Timothy Brome, at the sign of the Black Boy in Fleet Street."
Now I was overjoyed, indeed. With such a prospect of employment, it
seemed to me a small thing that I must pass the night in the streets;
but even that I escaped. For when he was about to part from me, he
asked me what money I had. None, I told him, "except the clipped
guinea."
"And I suppose you expect me to give you a shilling earnest?" he
answered, irascibly. "But no, no, Timothy Brome is no fool. See here,"
he continued, slapping his pocket and looking shrewdly at me, "that
guinea is not worth a groat to you; except to hang you."
"No," I said, ruefully.
"Well, I will give you five shillings for it, as gold, mind you; as
gold, and not to pass. Are you content?"
"It is not mine," I said doubtfully.
"Take it or leave it!" he said, screwing up his eyes, and so plainly
pleased with the bargain he was driving that I had no inkling of the
kind heart that underlay that crabbed manner. "Take it or leave it, my
man."
Thus pressed, and my mind retaining no real doubt of the knavery of
the man who had entrusted the guinea to me, I handed it to my new
friend, and received in return a crown. And this being my last
disposition of money not my own, I think it a fit season to record
that from that day to this I have been enabled by God's help and man's
kindness to keep the eighth commandment; and earning honestly what I
have spent have been poor, but never a beggar.
In gratitude for which, and both those good men being now dead, I here
conjoin the names of Mr. Timothy Brome, of Fleet Street, newsmonger
and author, whose sharp tongue and morose manners cloaked a hundred
benefactions; and of Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury, my honoured patron,
who never gave but his smile doubled the gift which his humanity
dictated.
The reader will believe that punctually on the morrow I went with joy
and thankfulness to my new master, whom I found up three pairs of
stairs in a room barely furnished, but heaped in every part with piles
of manuscripts and dogs-eared books, and all so covered with dust that
type and script were alike illegible. He wore a dingy morning-gown and
had laid aside his wig; but the air of importance with which he nodded
to me and a sort of dignity that clothed him as he walked to and fro
on the ink-stained floor mightily impressed me, and drove me to wonder
what sort of trade was carried on here. He continued, for some minutes
after I entered, to declaim one fine sentence after another, rolling
the long words over his tongue with a great appearance of enjoyment: a
process which he only interrupted to point me to a stool and desk,
and cry with averted eyes--lest he should cut the thread of his
thoughts--"Write!"
[Illustration: "HE WORE A DINGY MORNING-GOWN AND HAD LAID ASIDE HIS
WIG"]
On my hesitating, "Write!" he repeated, in the tone of one commanding
a thousand troopers. And then he spoke thus--and as he spoke I
wrote:--
"This day His Gracious Majesty, whose health appears to be completely
restored, went, accompanied by the French Ambassador and a brilliant
company, to take the air in the Mall. Despatches from Holland say that
the Duke of Monmouth has arrived at the Hague and has been well
received. Letters from the West say that the city of Bristol having a
well-founded confidence in the Royal Clemency has hastened to lay its
Charter at His Majesty's feet. The 30th of the month began the
Sessions at the Old Bailey, and held the first and second of this;
where seventeen persons received sentence of death, nine to be burned
in the hand, seven to be transported, and eleven ordered to be
whipped. Yesterday, or this day, a commission was sealed appointing
the Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys----"
CHAPTER XI
In a word, my master was a writer of Newsletters, and in that capacity
possessed of so excellent a style and so great a connection in the
Western Counties that, as he was wont to boast, there was hardly a
squire or rector from Bristol to Dawlish that did not owe what he knew
of His Majesty's gout, or Mr. Dryden's last play, to his weekly
epistles. The Popish Plot which had cost the lives of Lord Stafford
and so many of his persuasion, no less than the Rye House Plot, which
by placing the Whigs at the mercy of the Government had at once
afforded those their revenge, and illustrated the ups and downs of
court life, had given so sharp a stimulus to the appetite for news,
that of late he had found himself unable to cope with it. In this
unsettled condition, and meditating changes which should belittle Sir
Roger and _The London Mercury_, and oust print from the field, he fell
in with me; and where another man would have selected a bachelor whose
cassock and scarf might commend him at Wills' or Childs', his
eccentric kindness snatched me from the gutter, and set me on a tall
stool, there to write all day for the delectation of country houses
and mayors' parlours.
I remember that at first it seemed to me so easy a trick (this noting
the news of the day in plain round hand) that I wondered they paid him
to do it, more than another. But besides that I then had knowledge of
one side of the business only, I mean the framing the news, but none
of the manner in which it was collected at Garraway's and the Cockpit,
the Sessions House, the Mall, and the Gallery at Whitehall. I
presently learned that even of the share that fell to my lot I knew
only as much as a dog that turns the spit knows of the roasting of
meat. For when my employer, finding me docile and industrious--as I
know I was, being thankful for such a haven, and crushed in spirit not
only by the dangers through which I had passed, but also by my
mistress's treachery--when I say, he left me one day to my devices,
merely skimming through a copy and leaving me to multiply it, with,
for sole guide, the list of places to which the letters were to go, as
Bridgewater, Whig; Bath, Tory; Bridport, Tory; Taunton, Whig; Frome,
Whig; Lyme, Whig, and so on, I came very far short of success. True,
when he returned in the evening I had my packets ready and neatly
prepared for the mail, which then ran to the West thrice a week and
left next morning; and I had good hopes that he would send them
untouched. But great was my dismay when he fell into a rage over the
first he picked up, and asked me bluntly if I was quite a fool.
I stammered some answer, and asked in confusion what was the matter.
"Everything," he said. "Here, let me see! Why, you dolt and
dunderhead, you have sent letters in identical terms to Frome and
Bridport."
"Yes," I said faintly.
"But the one is Whig and the other is Tory!" he cried.
"But the news, sir," I made bold to answer, "is the same."
"Is it?" he cried in fine contempt. "Why you are a natural! I thought
you had learned something by this time. Here, where is the Frome
letter? '"_The London Gazette_" _announces that His Majesty has been
graciously pleased to reward my Lord Rochester's services at the
Treasury Board by raising him to the dignity of Lord President of the
Council, an elevation which renders necessary his resignation of his
seat at the Board_.' Tut-tut! That is the Court tone. Here, out with
it, and write:--
"'_The Earl of Rochester's removal from the Treasury Board to the
Presidency of the Council, which is announced in_ "_The Gazette_," _is
very well understood. His lordship made what resistance he could, but
the facts Were plain, and the King could do no otherwise. Rumour has
it that the sum lost to the country in the manner already hinted
exceeds fifty thousand guineas_.'
"There, what comes next? '_Letters from the Continent have it that
strong recommendations have been made to the Court at the Hague to
dismiss the D---- of M----, and it is confidently expected that the
next packet will bring the news of his departure_.' Pooh, out with it.
Write this:--
"'_The D---- of M---- is still at the Hague, where he is being
sumptuously entertained. Much is made of His Majesty's anger, but the
D---- is well supplied with money from an unknown source, which some
take to be significant. At a ball given by their Highnesses on the
eleventh, he danced an English country dance with the Lady Mary,
wherein his grace and skill won all hearts_.'
"That is better. And now what next? '_This day an Ambassador from the
King of Siam in the East Indies waited on His Majesty with great marks
of respect_.' Umph! Well leave it, but add, 'Ah, _si sic propius_.'
"And then, '_There are rumours that His Majesty intends to call a
parliament shortly, in which plan he is hindered only by the state of
his gout_.'
"Out with that and write this:--'_In the city is much murmuring that a
parliament is not called. Though His Majesty has not played lately at
tennis, he showed himself yesterday in Hyde Park, so that some who
maintain his health to be the cause deserve no weight. In his company
were His Highness the Duke of York and the French Ambassador_.'
"There, you fool," my master continued, flinging two-thirds of the
packets back to me. "You will have to amend these, and another time
you will know better."
Which showed me that I had still something to learn; and that as there
are tricks in all trades, so Mr. Timothy Brome, the writer, did not
enjoy without reason the reputation of the most popular newsvendor in
London. But as I addressed myself to the business with zeal, I
presently began to acquire a mastery over his methods; and my
knowledge of public affairs growing with each day's work, as in such
an employment it could not fail to grow, I was able before very long
to take the composition of the letters in a great measure off his
hands; leaving him free to walk Change Alley and the coffee-houses,
where his snuff-coloured suit and snappish wit were as well known as
his secret charity was little suspected.
In private, indeed, he was of so honest a disposition, his faults of
temper notwithstanding, as to cause me at first some surprise; since I
fancied an incompatibility between this and the laxity of his public
views; which he carried so far that he was not only a political
skeptic himself, but held all others to be the same; maintaining that
the best public men were only of this or that colour because it suited
their pockets or ambitions, and that, of all, he respected most Lord
Halifax and his party, who at least trimmed openly, and never cried
loudly for either extreme.
But as his actions in other matters bettered his professions, so I
presently found that in this too he belied himself; which was made
clear when he came to the test. For the death of King Charles the
Second occurring soon after I came to serve him--so soon that I still
winced when my former life was probed, and hated a woman and trembled
at sight of a constable, and wondered if this were really _I_,
who went to and fro daily from my garret in Bride Lane to St.
Dunstan's--the death, I say, of the King occurring just at that time,
we were speedily overwhelmed by a rush of events so momentous and
following so quickly one on another that they threw the old see-saw of
Court and Country off its balance; and upset with it the minds of many
who had hitherto clung firmly to a party. For the King had been
scarcely laid very quietly--some thought, meanly--in his grave and the
Duke of York been proclaimed by the title of James the Second, when
those who had fled the country in the last reign, either after the Rye
House Plot, or later with Monmouth, returned and kindled two great
insurrections, that of the Marquess of Argyle in the north, and that
of the Duke of Monmouth in the west. Occurring almost simultaneously,
it was wonderful to see how, in spite of the cry of a Popish King, and
the Protestant religion in danger, which the rebels everywhere raised,
these outbreaks rallied all prudent folk to the King; whose popularity
never, before or afterwards, stood so high as on the day of the battle
of Sedgmoor.
And doubtless he might have retained the confidence and affection of
his people, and by these means attained to the utmost of his
legitimate wishes--I mean the relief of the papists from penal clauses
if not from civil disabilities--had he gone about it discreetly, and
with the moderation which so delicate a matter required. But in the
outset the severity with which the western rebels were punished, both
by the military after the rout and by the Lord Chief Justice at the
Assizes which followed, gave check to his popularity; and thenceforth
for three years all went one way. The Test Acts, abrogated at the
first in a case here and there (yet ominously in such, in particular,
as favoured the admission of papists to the army), were presently
nullified, with other acts of a like character, by a general
declaration of indulgence; and that, to the disgust of the clergy, to
be read in the churches. To this main assault on the passive obedience
which the Church had so often preached, and to which it still fondly
clung, were added innumerable meaner attacks perhaps more humiliating;
as the expulsion of the Protestant Fellows from Magdalene College,
the conversion of University College into a Romish Seminary, and
the dismissal of my Lords Rochester and Clarendon, the King's
brothers-in-law, from all their places because--as was everywhere
rumoured--they would not resign the creed in which they had been born.
It were long to recount all the other errors into which the King fell;
but I may lay stress on the dissolution of a most loyal Parliament,
because it would not legalise his measures; on the open and shameless
attempt to pack its successor, on the corruption of the Judges, and on
the trial of the seven bishops for sedition. It were shorter and
equally to the point to say that an administration conducted for three
years on these lines, sufficed not only to sap the patient loyalty of
the nation, but to rouse from its rest the political conscience of my
employer. Mr. Brome, after much muttering and many snappish
corrections and alterations, all tending (as I soon perceived) to
Whiggery, resigned, on the day the Fellows of Magdalene were expelled,
his time-honoured system of duplicity; and thenceforward, until the
end, issued the same letter to Tory squire and Whig borough alike.
What was more remarkable, and, had the King known, it might have
served his obstinate Majesty for a warning, we lost no patrons by the
step; but rather increased our readers; the whole nation by this time
being of one mind. When the end came therefore, and in answer to the
famous Invitation signed by the Seven, the Deliverer, as the Whig
party still love to call him, landed at Torbay, and with scarcely a
blow, and no life lost, entered London, there were few among those who
ruffled it in his train, as he rode to St. James's, who had done as
much to bring him to his throne as my master; though he, good honest
man, wore neither spurs nor sword, and stood humbly a-foot in the
mouth of an alley to see the show go by.
CHAPTER XII
I suppose that there never was an abrupt change in the government of a
nation more quietly, successfully, and bloodlessly carried through
than our great Revolution. But it is the way of the pendulum to swing
back; and it was not long before those who had been most deeply
concerned in the event began to reflect and compare, nor, as they had
before them the example of the Civil War and the subsequent
restoration besides, and were persons bred for the most part in an
atmosphere of Divine Right and passive obedience (whether they had
imbibed those doctrines or not), was it wonderful if a proportion of
them began to repent at leisure what they had done in haste. The late
King's harsh and implacable temper, and the severity with which he had
suppressed one rising, were not calculated to reassure men when they
began to doubt. The possibility of his return hung like a thick cloud
over the more timid; while the favours which the new King showered on
his Dutchmen, the degradation of the coin and of trade, and the many
disasters that attended the first years of the new government were
sufficient to shake the confidence and chill the hearts even of the
stoutest and most patriotic.
So bad was the aspect of things that it was rumoured that King William
would abdicate; and this aggravating the general uncertainty, many in
high places spent their days in a dreadful looking forward to
judgment; nor ever, I believe, slept without dreaming of Tower Hill,
the axe, and the sawdust. The result that was natural followed. While
many hastened to make a secret peace with St. Germain's, others,
either as a matter of conscience or because they felt that they had
offended too deeply, remained constant; but perceiving treachery in
the air, and being in daily fear of invasion, breathed nothing but
threats and slaughter against the seceders. This begot a period of
plots and counter-plots, of perjury and intrigue, of denunciations and
accusations real and feigned, such as I believe no other country has
ever known; the Jacobites considering a restoration certain, and the
time only doubtful; while the Whigs in their hearts were inclined to
agree with them and feared the worst.
During seven such years I lived and worked with Mr. Brome; who,
partly, I think, because he had come late to his political bearings,
and partly because the Tories and Jacobites had a newswriter in the
notorious Mr. Dyer--to whose letters Mr. Dryden, it was said, would
sometimes contribute--remained steadfast in his Whig opinions; and did
no little in the country parts to lessen the stir which the Nonjurors'
complaints created. I saw much of him and little of others; and being
honestly busy and honourably employed--not that my style made any
noise in the coffee-houses, which was scarcely to be expected, since
it passed for Mr. Brome's--I began to regard my life before I came to
London as an ugly dream. Yet it had left me with two proclivities
which are not common at the age which I had then reached; the one a
love of solitude and a retired life, which, a matter of necessity at
first, grew by-and-by into a habit; the other an averseness for women
that amounted almost to a fear of them. Mr. Brome, who was a confirmed
bachelor, did nothing to alter my views on either point, or to
reconcile me to the world; and as my life was passed between my attic
in Bride Lane and his apartment in Fleet Street, where he had a
tolerable library, few were better acquainted with public affairs or
had less experience of private, than I; or knew more intimately the
order of the signs and the aspect of the houses between the Fleet
Prison and St. Dunstan's Church.
Partly out of fear, and partly out of a desire to be done with my
former life, I made myself known to no one in Hertfordshire; but, some
five years after my arrival in London, having a sudden craving to see
my mother, I walked down one Sunday to Epping. There making cautious
enquiries of the Bishop Stortford carrier, I heard of her death, and
on the return journey burst once into a great fit of weeping at the
thought of some kind word or other she had spoken to me on a
remembered occasion. But with this tribute to nature I dismissed my
family, and even that good friend from my mind; going back to my
lodging with a contentment which this glimpse of my former life
wondrously augmented.
Of Mr. D---- or of the wicked woman who had deceived me I was not
likely to hear; but there was one, and he the only stranger who _ante
Londinium_ had shown me kindness, whose name my pen was frequently
called on to transcribe, and whose fame was even in those days in all
men's mouths. With a thrill of pleasure I heard that my Lord
Shrewsbury had been one of the seven who signed the famous invitation:
then that the King had named him one of the two Secretaries of State;
and again after two years, during which his doings filled more and
more of the public ear--so that he stood for the government--that he
had suddenly and mysteriously resigned all his offices and retired
into the country. Later still, in the same year, in the sad days which
followed the defeat of Beachy Head, when a French fleet sailed the
Channel, and in the King's absence, the most confident quailed, I
heard that he had ridden post to Kensington to place his sword and
purse at the Queen's feet; and, later still, 1694, when three years of
silence had obscured his memory, I heard with pleasure, and the world
with surprise, that he had accepted his old office, and stood higher
than ever in the King's favour.
The next year Queen Mary died. This, as it left only the King's life
between the Jacobites and a Restoration, increased as well their
activity as the precautions of the government; whose most difficult
task lay in sifting the wheat from the chaff and discerning between
the fictions of a crowd of false witnesses (who thronged the
Secretary's office and lived by this new trade) and the genuine
disclosures of their own spies and informers. In the precarious
position in which the government stood, ministers dared neglect
nothing, nor even stand on scruples. In moments of alarm, therefore,
it was no uncommon thing to close the gates and prosecute a house to
house search for Jacobites; the most notorious being seized and the
addresses of the less dangerous taken. One of these searches which
surprised the city in the month of December, '95, had for me results
so important that I may make it the beginning of a consecutive
narrative.
I happened to be sitting in my attic that evening over a little coal
fire, putting into shape some Whig reflections on the Coinage Bill;
our newsletter tending more and more to take the form of a pamphlet. A
frugal supper, long postponed, stood at my elbow, and the first I knew
of the search that was afoot, a man without warning opened my door,
which was on the latch, and thrust in his head.
Naturally I rose in alarm; and we stared at one another by the light
of my one candle. Only the intruder's head and shoulders were in the
room, but I could see that he wore bands and a cassock, and a great
bird's nest wig, which overhung a beak-like nose and bright eyes.
"Sir," said he after a moment's pause, during which the eyes leaving
me glittered to every part of the room, "I see you are alone, and have
a very handy curtain there."
I gasped, but to so strange an exordium had nothing to say. The
stranger nodded at that as if satisfied, and slowly edging his body
into the room, disclosed to my sight the tallest and most uncouth
figure imaginable. A long face ending in a tapering chin added much to
the grotesque ugliness of his aspect; in spite of which his features
wore a smirk of importance, and though he breathed quickly, like a man
pressed and in haste, it was impossible not to see that he was master
of himself.
And of me; for when I went to ask his meaning, he shot out his great
under-lip at me, and showed me the long barrel of a horse pistol that
he carried under his cassock. I recoiled.
"Good sir," he said, with an ugly grin, "'tis an argument I thought
would have weight with you. To be short, I have to ask your
hospitality. There is a search for Jacobites; at any moment the
messengers may be here. I live opposite to you and am a Nonjuring
clergyman liable to suspicion; you are a friend to Mr. Timothy Brome,
who is known to stand well with the government. I propose therefore to
hide behind the curtain of your bed. Your room will not be searched,
nor shall I be found if you play your part. If you fail to play
it--then I shall be taken; but you, my dear friend, will not see it."
He said the last words with another of his hideous grins, and tapped
the barrel of his pistol with so much meaning that I felt the blood
leave my cheeks. He took this for a proof of his prowess; and nodding,
as well content, he stood a moment in the middle of the floor, and
listened with the tail of his eye on me.
He had no reason to watch me, however, for I was unarmed and cowed;
nor had we stood many seconds before a noise of voices and weapons
with the trampling of feet broke out on the stairs, and at once
confirmed his story and proved the urgency of his need. Apparently he
was aware of the course things would take and that the constables and
messengers would first search the lower floors; for instead of
betaking himself forthwith to his place of hiding--as seemed
natural--he looked cunningly round the chamber, and bade me sit down
to my papers. "Do you say at once that you are Mr. Brome's writer," he
continued with an oath, "and mark me well, my man. Betray me by a word
or sign, and I strew your brains on the floor!"
After that threat, and though he went then, and hid his hateful
face--which already filled me with fear and repugnance beyond
words--behind the curtain, where between bed and wall, there was a
slender space, I had much ado to keep my seat and my self-control. In
the silence which filled the room I could hear his breathing; and I
felt sure that the searchers must hear it also when they entered.
Assured that the Sancrofts and Kens, and the honest but misguided folk
who followed them, did not carry pistols, I gave no credit to his
statement that he was a Nonjuring parson; but deemed him some
desperate highwayman or plotter, whose presence in my room, should he
be discovered and should I by good luck escape his malice, would
land me at the best in Bridewell or the Marshalsea. By-and-by the
candle-wick grew long, and terrified at the prospect of being left in
the dark with him, I went to snuff it. With a savage word he whispered
me to let it be; after which I had no choice but to sit in fear and
semi-darkness, listening to the banging of doors below, and the
alternate rising and falling of voices, as the search party entered or
issued from the successive rooms.
In my chamber with its four whitewashed walls and few sticks of
furniture there was only one place where a man could stand and be
unseen; and that was behind the curtain. There, I thought, the most
heedless messenger must search; and as I listened to the steps
ascending the last flight I was in an agony. I foresaw the moment when
the constable would carelessly and perfunctorily draw the curtain--and
then the flash, the report, the cry, the mad struggle up and down the
room, which would follow.
So strong was this impression, that though I had been waiting minutes
when the summons came and a hand struck my door, I could not at once
find voice to speak. The latch was up, and the door half open when I
cried "Enter!" and rose.
In the doorway appeared three or four faces, a couple of lanthorns,
held high, and a gleam of pike-heads. "Richard Price, servant to Mr.
Brome, the newswriter," cried one of the visitors, reading in a
sonorous voice from a paper.
"Well affected," answered a second--evidently the person in command.
"Brome is a good man. I know him. No one hidden here?"
"No," I said, with a loudness and boldness that surprised me.
"No lodger, my man?"
"None!"
"Right!" he answered. "Good-night, and God save King William!"
"Amen!" quoth I; and then, and not before, my knees began to shake.
However, it no longer mattered, for before I could believe that the
danger was over they were gone and had closed the door; and I caught a
sniggering laugh behind the curtain. Still they had gone no farther
than the stairs; I heard them knock on the opposite door and troop in
there, and I caught the tones of a woman's voice, young and fresh,
answering them. But in a minute they came out again, apparently
satisfied, and crowded down stairs; whereon the man behind the curtain
laughed again, and swaggering out, Bobadil-like, shook his fist with
furious gestures after them.
"Damn your King William, and you too!" he cried in ferocious triumph.
"One of these days God will squeeze him like the rotten orange he is;
and if God will not, I will! I, Robert Ferguson! Trot, for the set of
pudding-headed blind-eyed moles that you are! Call yourselves
constables! Bah! But as for you, my friend," he continued, turning to
me and throwing his pistol with a crash on the table, "you have more
spunk than I thought you had, and spoke up like a gentleman of mettle.
There is my hand on it!"
My throat was so dry that I could not speak, but I gave him my hand.
He gripped it and threw it from him with a boastful gesture, and
stalking to the farther side of the room and back again, "There!"
cried he. "Now you can say that you have touched hands with Ferguson,
the famous Ferguson, the Ferguson on whose head a thousand guineas
have been set! Ferguson the Kingmaker, who defied three Kings and made
three Kings and will yet make a fourth! Fire and furies, do a set of
boozing tipstaves think to take the man who outwitted Jeffreys and
slipped through Kirke's lambs?"
[Illustration: "DAMN YOUR KING WILLIAM, AND YOU TOO!" HE CRIED]
Hearing who he was, I stared at him in astonishment; but in
astonishment largely leavened with fear and hatred; for I knew the
reputation he enjoyed, and both what he had done, and of what he was
suspected. That in all his adventures and intrigues he had borne a
charmed life; and where Sidney and Russell, Argyle and Monmouth,
Rumbold and Ayloffe had suffered on the scaffold, he had escaped scot
free was one thing and certain; but that men accounted for this in
strange ways was another scarcely less assured. While his friends
maintained that he owed his immunity to a singular skill in disguise,
his enemies, and men who were only so far his enemies as they were the
enemies of all that was most base in human nature, asserted that this
had little to do with it, but went so far as to say that in all his
plots, with Russell and with Monmouth, with Argyle and with Ayloffe,
he had played booty, and played the traitor: and tempting men, and
inviting men to the gibbet, had taken good care to go one step
farther--and by betraying them to secure his own neck from peril!
CHAPTER XIII
Such was the man I saw before me; on whose face, as if heaven purposed
to warn his fellows against him, malignant passion and an insane
vanity were so plainly stamped that party spirit must have gone to
lengths, indeed, before it rendered men blind to his quality. His
shambling gait seemed a fitting conveyance for a gaunt, stooping
figure so awkward and uncouth that when he gave way to gesticulation
it seemed to be moved by wires; yet, once he looked askance at you,
face and figure were forgotten in the gleam of the eyes that,
treacherous and cruel, leered at you from the penthouse of his huge,
ill-fitting wig.
Nevertheless, I confess that, while I hated and loathed the man, he
cowed me. His latest escape had intoxicated him, and astride on my
table, or stalking the floor, he gave way to his vanity. Pouring out a
flood of ribald threats and imaginings, he now hinted at the fate
which had never failed to befall those who thwarted him; now he
boasted of his cunning and his hundred intrigues, and now he touched,
not obscurely, on some great design soon to be executed. His audacity,
no less than his frankness, bewildered me; for if he did not tell me
all, he told enough, were it true, to hang a man. Yet I soon found
that he had method in his madness; for while I listened with a
shamefaced air, hating him and meditating informing against him the
moment I was freed from his presence, he turned on me with a hideous
grin, and thrusting the muzzle of his pistol against my temple, swore
with endless curses to slay me if I betrayed him.
"You will go to Brome to-morrow, as usual," he said. "The Whiggish old
dotard, I could pluck out his inwards! And you will say not one word
of Mr. Ferguson! For, mark me, sirrah Dick, alone or in company I
shall be at your elbow, nor will all Cutts's guards avail to save you!
Do you mark me? Then d---- you, down on your knees! Down on your
knees, you white-livered dog, and swear by the Gospels you will tell
no living soul by tongue or pen that you have seen me."
He pressed the cold steel muzzle to my temple and I knelt and swore.
When it was done, he roared and jeered at me. "You see, I have my
oath!" he cried, "as well as Little Hooknose! And no non-jurors! Now
say 'Down with King William!'"
I said it.
"Louder! Louder!" he cried.
I could only comply.
[Illustration: HE PRESSED THE RING OF COLD STEEL]
"Now, write it! Write it!" he continued, thrusting a piece of paper
under my nose, and slapping his huge hand upon it. "I'll have it in
black and white! Or write this--ha! ha! that will be better. Are you
ready? Write, 'I hereby abjure my allegiance to Prince William.'"
"No," I said faintly, laying down the pen which I had taken up at his
bidding. "I will not write it."
"You _will_ write it!" he answered in a terrible tone. "And within a
very few seconds. Write it at once, sirrah! 'I hereby abjure my
allegiance to Prince William!'"
I wrote it with a shaking hand, after a glance at the pistol muzzle.
"And swear that I regard King James as my lawful sovereign. And I
undertake to obey the rules of the St. Germain's Club, and to forward
its interests. Good! Now sign it."
I did so.
"Date it," cried the tyrant; and when I had done so he snatched the
paper from me and flourished it in the air, "There is my passport!"
quoth he, with an exultant laugh. "When I am taken that will be taken,
and when that is taken the worse for Mr. Richard Price if he is taken.
He will taste of the hangman's lash. So! You are a clever fellow,
Richard Price, but Robert Ferguson is your master, as he has been
better men's!"
The man was so much in love with cruelty, that even when he had gained
his point he could not bear to give up the pleasure of torturing me;
and for half an hour he continued to flout and jeer at me, sometimes
picturing my fate if the paper fell into the Secretary's hands, and
sometimes threatening me with his pistol, and making sport of my
alarm. At last, reluctantly, and after many warnings of what would
happen to me if I informed, he took himself off; and I heard him go
into the opposite rooms, and slam the door.
Be sure I was not long in securing mine after him! I was in a pitiable
state of terror; shaking at thought of the man's return, and in an
ague when I considered the power over me, which the paper I had signed
gave him. I could hardly believe that, in so short a time, anything so
dreadful had happened to me! Yet it were hard to say whether, with all
my terror, I did not hate him more than I feared him; for though at
one time my heart was water when I thought of betraying him, at
another it glowed with rage and loathing, and to spite him, and to
free myself from him, I would risk anything. And as I was not wanting
in foresight, and could picture with little difficulty the slavery in
which he would hold me from that day forward--and wherein his cruel
spirit would delight--it was the latter mood that prevailed with me,
and determined my action when morning came.
Reflecting that I could expect no mercy from him, but had little to
fear from the Government, if I told my tale frankly, I determined at
all risks to go to the Secretary. I would have done so, the moment I
rose, the thought that at any moment he might burst in upon me keeping
me in a cold sweat; but I was prudent enough to abide by my habits,
and refrain from anticipating by a second the hour at which it was my
custom to descend. I waited in the utmost trepidation, therefore,
until half-past seven, when with a quaking heart, but a mind made up,
I ventured down to the street.
It was barely light, but the coffee-houses were open, and between
early customers to these, and barbers passing with their curling
tongs, and milkmen and hawkers plying morning wares, and apprentices
setting out their masters' goods, the ways were full and noisy; so
that I had no reason to fear pursuit, and in the hubbub gained courage
the farther I left my oppressor behind me. Nevertheless, I took the
precaution of going first to Mr. Brome's, opposite St. Dunstan's; and
passing in there, as was my daily custom, lingered a little in the
entry. When by this ruse I had made assurance doubly sure, I slipped
out, and went through the crowded Strand to Whitehall.
Mr. Brome had a species of understanding with the Government; and on
one occasion being ill, had made me his messenger to the Secretary's.
I knew the place therefore, but none the less gave way to timidity
when I saw the crowd of ushers, spies, tipstaves, and busybodies that
hung about the door of the office, and took curious note of everyone
who went in or out. My heart failed me at the sight, and I was already
more than half inclined to go away, my business undone, when someone
touched my sleeve, and I started and turned. A girl still in her
teens, with a keen and pinched face, and a handkerchief neatly drawn
over her head, handed a note to me.
"For me?" I asked.
"Yes," said she.
I took it on that and opened it, my hands shaking. But when I read the
contents, which were these--"Mr. Robert Ferguson's respects to the
Secretary, and he has to-day changed his lodging. He will to-morrow be
pleased to supply the bearer's character"--I thought I should have
fallen to the ground. Nor was my alarm the less for the reflection
which immediately arose in my mind that the note had of necessity been
written and despatched before I left Mr. Brome's door; and
consequently before I had taken any step towards the execution of my
design!
Still, what I held was but a piece of paper bearing a message from a
man proscribed, who dared not show his face where I stood. A word to
the doorkeepers and I might even now go in and lay my information. But
the man's omniscience cowed my spirit, terrified me, and broke me
down. Assured after this, that whatever I did or wherever I went he
would know and be warned in time, and I gain by my information nothing
but the name of a gull or a cheat, I turned from the door. Then seeing
that the girl waited, "There is no answer," I said.
"Will you please to go to the gentleman?" quoth she.
My jaw dropped. "God forbid!" I said, beginning to tremble.
"I think you had better," said she.
And this time there was that in her voice roused doubts in me and made
me waver--lest what I had done prove insufficient, and he betray me,
though I refrained from informing. Sullenly, therefore, and after a
moment's thought, I asked her where he was.
"I am not to tell you," she answered. "You can come with me if you
please."
"Go on," I said.
She cast a sharp glance at the group about the office, then turned,
and walking rapidly north by Charing Cross led me through St. Martin's
Lane and Bedford Bury to Covent Garden. Skirting this, she threaded
Hart Street and Red Lion Court, and crossing Drury Lane conducted me
into Lincoln's Inn Fields, where she turned sharply to the left and
through Ralph Court to the Turnstile. Seeing that she lingered here
and from time to time looked back, I fancied that we were near our
destination; but starting afresh, she led me along Holborn and through
Staple Inn. Presently it struck me that we were near Bride Lane, and I
cried "He is in my room?"
"Yes," she said gravely, and without explanation. "If he pleases you
will find him there." And without more she signed to me to go on, and
disappeared herself in the mouth of an alley by Green's Rents.
It did please him. When I entered with the air, doubtless, of a
whipped hound, I found him sitting on my table swinging his legs and
humming an air; and with so devilish a look of malice and triumph on
his face as sent my heart into my boots. Notwithstanding, for a while
it was his humour not to speak to me but to leer at me askance out of
the corner of his eyes, and keep me on tenterhooks, expecting what he
would say or do; and this he maintained until he had finished his
tune, when with a grin he asked after his friend the Secretary.
"Was it Trumball you saw, or the new Duke?" said he; and when I did
not answer he roared out an oath, and snatching up the pistol which
lay on the table beside him, levelled it at me. "Answer, will you? Do
you think that I am to speak twice to such uncovenanted dirt as you?
Whom did you see?"
"No one," I stammered, trembling.
"And why not?" he cried. "And why not, you spawn of Satan?"
"I received your note," I said.
"Oh, you received my note!" he whimpered, dropping his voice and
mocking my alarm. "Your lordship received my note, did you? And if you
had not got my note, you would have informed, would you? You would
have informed and sent me to the gallows, would you? Answer! Answer,
or----"
"Yes!" I cried in an agony of terror; for he was bringing the pistol
nearer and nearer to my face, while his finger toyed with the trigger,
and at any moment might press it too sharply.
"So! And you tell me that to my face, do you?" he answered, eyeing me
so truculently, that I held up my hands and backed to the door. "You
dare tell me that, do you? Come here, sirrah!"
I hesitated.
"Come here!" he cried. "Or by ---- I will shoot you! For the last
time, come here!"
I went nearer.
"Oh, but I would like to see you in the boot!" he said. "It would be
the finest sight! It would not need a turn of the screw to make you
cry out! And mind you," he continued, suddenly seizing my ear in his
great hand, and twisting it until I screamed, "in a boot of some kind
or other I shall have you--if you play me false! Do yon understand,
eh? Do you understand, you sheep in wolf's clothing?"
"Yes!" I cried. "Yes, yes!" He had forced me to my knees, and brought
his cruel sneering face close to mine.
"Very well. Then get up--if you have learned your lesson. You have had
one proof that I know more than others. Do not seek another. But,
umph--where have I seen you before. Master Trembler?"
I said humbly, my spirit quite broken, that I did not know.
"No?" he answered, staring at me with his face puckered up. "Yet
somewhere I have. And some day I shall call it to mind. In the
meantime--remember that you are my slave, my dog, my turnspit, to
fetch or carry, cry or be merry at my will. You will sleep or wake, go
or come as I bid you. And so long as you do that--Richard Price, you
shall live. But on the day you play me false, or whisper my name to
living soul--on that day, or within the week, you will hang! Do you
hear, hang, you Erastian dog! Hang, and be carrion: with Ayloffe, and
many another good man, that would stint me, and take no warning!"
CHAPTER XIV
Alas, the secret subjection into which I fell from that day onwards,
to a man who knew neither pity nor scruple--and wielded his power with
the greater enjoyment and the less remorse for the piquant contrast it
afforded to his position, as a proscribed and hunted traitor, in
hiding for his life--exceeded all the anticipations of it which I had
entertained. Having his favourite lodging in the rooms opposite mine,
he was ready, when the cruel humour seized him, to sally forth and
mock and torment me; while the privacy of his movements and the number
of his disguises (whence it arose that I never knew until I saw him
whether he was there or
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