Читать книгу Shrewsbury: A Romance - Weyman Stanley John - Страница 9

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.

"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.