CHAPTER XXX
Few men are condemned to such an ordeal as that through which I hadpassed; and though some who read this, and are as remote from death asthe wife, that may be any day, and must be one day, is from the youngbachelor--though some, I say, and in particular those who never sawblade drawn in anger in their lives, but have done all their fightingin the cock-pit, may think that I carried it poorly in thecircumstances, and with none of the front and bravado suitable to theoccasion, I would have them remember the old saying, _Ne sutor supracrepidam_, and ask of a scholar only a scholar's work. I would havethem remember that in the shadow of the scaffold, even a man sogallant by repute as the Lord Preston of that day, stooped to be anevidence; and that in the same situation the family pride of RichardHampden availed as little as the reckless courage of Monmouth, or theeffrontery of Sir John Fenwick, to raise its owner above the commonlevel.
_Simpliciter_, it is one thing to vapour at the Cocoa-tree among witsand beaux, and another to take the hazard when the time comes, as noless a person than my Lord Bolingbroke discovered, and that no fartherback than '14. I would have large talkers to remember this. For myselfI am content that I came through the trial with my life; and yet, notwith so much of that either, that anything surer than instinct guidedmy steps when all was over to the Duke's home in St. James's Square,where arriving, speechless and helpless, it was wonderful I was notput to the door without more. Fortunately, my lord, marvelling at myfailure to return before, and mindful, even in the turmoil of thatevening, of the service I had done him in the day, had given orders inmy behalf; and on my arrival I was recognised, half dead as I was, andtaken to the steward's room, and being let blood by a surgeon who washastily called in, was put to bed, all who saw me supposing that I wassuffering from vertigo, or some injury, though no marks of blows onthe head could be discovered.
That was a night long remembered in London. Messengers with lights,attended by files of soldiers, were every hour passing through thestreets, searching houses and arresting the suspected. From mouth tomouth rumours of the conspiracy flew abroad; at nine o'clock it wasstated, and generally believed, that the King was wounded; at ten thathe had been seized; later that he was dead. Early in the evening thedraw-bridge at the Tower was drawn, and the sentries were doubled; theCity gates were closed and guarded; a whole battalion stood all nightunder arms at Kensington; the Council was in perpetual sitting; manyhouses were lighted from eve to dawn; nor since the great panic ofBeachy Head in '90 had there been an alarm so deep or widespread.
If this was so in the city generally, at the Secretary's residence,whither many of the prisoners were brought for examination as soon asthey were taken, the excitement was at its height. The Square outside,then unenclosed, was occupied all night by successive groups ofsight-seers, or of persons more nearly interested in the event.One consequence of this was that, with all this astir without, mycase attracted the less notice within; and, unheeded and almostforgotten--which, perhaps, was the better for me--I was left in peaceto sleep off the shock and fright I had experienced, of which theseverity may be gauged by the fact that the afternoon of the next daywas well advanced before I awoke, and finding myself in bed in astrange room, with cold broth and a little wine standing on a stool atmy elbow, sat up, and looked round me in amazement. The steep slope ofthe ceiling towards the window, and the heavy flattened eaves whichprojected over the latter, soon apprised me that I lay under the leadsof a great house; but this was the extent of my knowledge. However, mystomach presently called for food, and I took it; and my head ceasingto swim, I began to recall what had happened to me; and rising, andgoing to the window, I recognised the great and fashionable Square onwhich my window looked. At that and the thoughts of what I had gonethrough, and the danger I had escaped, I fell to quaking again, andfor a moment the dizziness returned. But presently, the cheerfulaspect of the room much aiding me, I recovered myself, and dressing,and finishing the food, I prepared to descend.
No need to say that I wondered much at all I saw, and particularly atthe handsome and stately proportions of the staircase, which Idescended without seeing any person until I reached the landing on thefirst floor. Here, looking timidly over the balustrade, I discoveredthat the buzz and hum of voices which I had heard as soon as I openedmy door, came from the hall below, which appeared to be paved withheads. First and nearest to where I stood were clustered on the lowersteps of the staircase a number of persons whom I took to be servants,and who, standing as if in the boxes of a theatre, were taken up withstaring at what went on on the floor below them, and particularly at arow of eight or nine men, who seated on chairs along one side of thehall, seemed to be in the charge of a messenger and some tipstaves,and to be prisoners awaiting examination. Between these last and thestairs occupying the floor of the hall, and both moving and standingstill, were a crowd of persons of condition, the greater part, to allappearance, clients of the Duke, or officers and persons who, havingthe _entree_, had stepped in out of curiosity to see the sight.
However, I had no eyes for these, for with a beating heart Irecognised among the dejected prisoners seated along the wall, fourwhom I knew. King, Keyes, Cassel, and Ferguson himself, and I hadanything but a mind to stay to be recognised in my turn. I was in theact of withdrawing, therefore, as quietly as I could, when I saw witha kind of shock that the prisoner at the end of the row, the onenearest to me and farthest from the door, was a girl. It scarcelyneeded a second glance to tell me that the girl was Mary. The light atthat inner extremity of the hall was waning, and her face, always paleand now in shadow, wore an aspect of grey and weary depression that,natural as it was under the circumstances, went to my heart, andimpressed me deeply in proportion as I had always found her hard andself-reliant. But moved as I was, I dared not linger, since to lingermight be to be observed. With a light foot, therefore, I carried outmy first intention, and drawing back undiscovered, sneaked up thestaircase to my room.
My clue in the circumstances was clear. Plainly it was to lie closeand keep quiet and shun observation until the crisis was passed; thenby every means in my power--saving always the becoming an evidence incourt, which was too dangerous--to deserve the Duke's favour; and asto the pledge I had given to Smith, to be guided by the future.
Such a line of conduct was immensely favoured by the illness to whichI had so fortunately succumbed. Once back in my bed, I had only to liethere, and affect weakness; and in a day or two I might hope thatthings would be so far advanced that my share in them and knowledge ofthem would go for little, and I, on the ground of the personal serviceI had done his Grace, might keep his favour--yet run no risk.
In fact nothing could seem more simple than such a line of conduct; onwhich, the western daylight that still lingered in the room, giving myretreat a most cheerful aspect, I felt that I had every reason to hugmyself. After the miseries and dangers of the past week I was indeedwell off. Here, in the remote top floor of my lord's great house inthe Square, I was as safe as I could be anywhere in the world, and Iknew it.
But so contrary is human nature, and so little subject to thedictations of the soundest sense, that I had not lain in my bed fiveminutes, congratulating myself on my safety, before the girl, and thewretchedness I had read in her face, began to trouble me. It was notto be denied that she had gone some way towards saving my life--if shehad not actually saved it; and I had a kind of feeling for her on thataccount. True, things were greatly altered since we had agreed to goto Romford together, _et nuptias facere_; I had got no patron then,nor such prospects as I now had, these troubles once overpast. But forall that, it troubled me to think of her as I had seen her, pale anddowncast; and by-and-by I found myself again at the door of my roomwith my hand on the latch. Thence I went back, shivering and ashamed,and calling myself and doubtless rightly a fool; and tried, bywatching the crowd in the Square--but timidly, since even at thatheight I fancied I might be recognised--to divert my thoughts. With solittle success in the end, however, that presently I w
as stealing downthe stairs again.
I knew that it was impossible I could pass down the main staircase andthrough the servants unobserved, but I took it that in such a housethere must be a backstairs; and coming to the first floor I turnedcraftily down the main corridor leading into the heart of the house,and pretty quickly found that staircase--which was as good as dark--and crept down it still meeting no one; a thing that surprised meuntil I stood in the long passage on the ground floor correspondingwith the corridor above, and found that the door, which from itsposition should cut it off from the front hall, was fastened.Tantalised by the murmur of voices in the hall, and my proximity, Itried the lock twice; but the second effort only confirming the resultof the first, I was letting down the latch as softly as I could,hoping that I should not be detected, when the door was sharply flungopen in my face, all the noise and heat of the hall burst on me, andin the opening appeared a stout angry man, who glared at me as if hewould eat me.
"What are you doing here?" he cried, "when twice I have told you----"There he stopped, seeing who it was, and "Hallo!" he continued in adifferent and more civil tone, "it is you, is it? Are you better?"
Afterwards I learned that he was Mr. Martin, my lord's house-steward,but at the time I knew him only for someone in authority; and Imuttered an excuse. "Well, come through, now you are here," hecontinued sharply. "But the orders are strict that this door be keptlocked while this business is going. You can see as well, or better,from the stairs. There, those are the men. And a rare set ofFrenchified devils they look! Charnock is in with my lord now, and Ihope he may not blow him up with gunpowder or some fiendish trick."
He had scarcely told me when, a stir in the body of the hallannouncing a new arrival, a cry was raised of "Room for my LordMarlborough and my Lord Godolphin!" and the press falling to eitherside out of respect, I had a glimpse of two gentlemen in the act ofentering; one, a stout and very noble-looking man of floridcomplexion, the other stout also and personable, but a trifle smug andsolemn. The steward had no sooner heard their names announced, than ina great fluster he bade me keep the door a minute; and pushing himselfinto the throng, he went with immense importance to receive them.
So by a strange piece of luck at the moment that the check of hispresence was withdrawn, I found myself standing within three feet ofthe girl, whose seat was close to the door; moreover, the movement, bythrusting those who had before occupied the floor back upon the lineof prisoners, had walled us in, as it were, from observation. Underthese circumstances our eyes met, and I looked for a flush of joy andsurprise, a cry of recognition at least; but though Mary started, andfor an instant stared at me wide-eyed, her gaze fell the next moment,and muttering something inaudible, she let her chin sink back on herbreast.
I did not remember that she, supposing I had informed, and ignorant ofthe scene which had bound me to the Duke of Shrewsbury, would seenothing surprising in my presence in his house, and more deeplywounded than I can now believe possible by her demeanour, I bent overher.
"Don't you know me?" I whispered. "Mary!"
She shivered, but retained the same attitude, her eyes on the floor.
"Can I do anything for you?" I persisted; but this time I spoke morecoldly; her silence began to annoy me.
She looked up then with a wan smile; and, with lips so dry that theyscarcely performed their office, spoke. "You can let me escape," shesaid.
"That is impossible," I answered promptly--to put an end to suchnotions. And then to comfort her, "Besides, what can they do to you!"I said confidently. "Nothing! You are not a man, and they do not burnwomen for treason now, unless it is for coining. Cheer up! They----"
"They will send me to the Compter--and whip me," she muttered,shuddering so suddenly and violently that the chair creaked under her.And then, "If you can get me away," she continued, moistening her lipsand speaking with her eyes averted, "Well! But if not you had betterleave me. You do me no good," she added, after a slight pause, andwith a sob of impatience in her voice.
I knew that it was not unlikely that the House of Correction would beher fate; and that such a fate, even to a decent woman--and she was agirl!--might be less tolerable than death. And I felt something of thehorror and lurking apprehension that parched her mouth and strainedher eyes. The hall was growing dark round us, and the throng ofpersons of all sorts that filled it, poisoning the air with theirbreathing and the odour of their clothes, I experienced an astonishingloathing of the confinement and the place. I saw this the beginning ofthe dreary road which she had to travel; and my heart revolting withthe pity of it, and the future of it, I fell into a passion, and did athing I very seldom did. I swore.
And then--heaven knows how I went on to a thing so unwise andreckless, and in every way so unlike me! Certainly it was not the mereopportunity tempted me--though a chance more favourable, the generalattention being completely engrossed by the two noblemen, could nothave been conceived--yet it was certainly not that, I say, for I didit on the impulse of the moment, in sheer blind terror, not looking tosee whether I were watched or not. Nor did it arise from any farthersuggestion on the girl's part. In fact, all I remember of it is that,in a paroxysm of pity, feeling rather than seeing that the peopleround us completely hid us, I touched the girl's shoulder, and thatshe looked up with a wild look in her eyes--and that determined me. Sothat without thinking I unlocked the door in a trembling, fumblingsort of manner, and passed her through it, and followed her, no oneexcept Cassel, the prisoner who sat next her, being the wiser. Had Ibeen prudent, or acted under anything but the impulse of the moment, Ishould have let her go through, and trusting to her woman's wits toget her clear of the house, have remained on guard myself as ifnothing had happened; and certainly this would have been the saferway, since I could have sworn, when I was challenged, that no one hadpassed through the door. But I had not the nerve to think of this orremain, and I went with her.
The thing once done, my first thought, and the natural, if foolish,impulse on which I acted was to take her to my room, hers to followwhere I led. The passage beyond the door was dark, but taking nothought of slip or stumble, in a moment I had her up the smallstaircase which led to the first floor, and through the door at thehead of the flight into the long corridor, which, spacious, lofty, andcomparatively light--in every way the strangest opposite to thecrowded hall below--ran from the well of the great staircase into thedepths of the house. By involving her in this upper part of the house,whence escape was impossible, and where prolonged search mustinevitably discover her, I was really doing a most foolish thing. Butin the event it mattered nothing, for as we reached the corridor, andpaused to cast a wary glance down its length this way and that--I, formy part, shaking like an aspen, and I doubt not as white as a sheet--asingle footstep rang on the marble floor that edged the matting of thepassage, and the next moment the Duke himself, issuing from a doorwayno more than five paces away, came plump upon us.
The surprise was so complete that we had no time to move, and we stoodas if turned to stone. Yet even then, if I had retained perfectpresence of mind, and bethought me that he might not know the girl,and would probably deem her one of his household--a still-room maid ora seamstress--all might have been well. For though he did, in fact,know the girl, having questioned her not half an hour before, it wason me that his eye alighted; and his first words were proof that hesuspected nothing.
"Are you better?" he said, pausing with the kindness and considerationthat so well became him--nay, that became no other man so well. "I amglad to see that you are about. We shall want you presently. What wasit?"
And then, if I had answered him at once, I have no doubt that hewould have passed on; but my teeth chattered so pitiably that I couldonly gape at him; and on that, seeing in a moment that something waswrong, he looked at my companion, and recognised her. I saw his eyesopen wide with astonishment, and his mouth grew stern. Then, "Butwhat--what, sir, is this?" he cried. "And what do you----"
He said no more, for as he reached that word the door
beside me openedgently, and a man slid round it, looked, saw the Duke, and stood, hismouth agape, a stifled oath on his lips. It was Cassel, his handsshackled.
At this fresh appearance the Duke's astonishment may be imagined, andcould scarcely be exceeded. He stared at the door as if he questionedwho still remained behind it, or who might be the next to issue fromit. But then, seeing, I suppose, something whimsical and bizarre inthe situation--which there certainly was, though at the time I was farfrom discerning it--and being a man who, in all circumstances,retained a natural dignity, he smiled; and recovering himself beforeany one of us, took a tone between the grave and ironical. "Mr.Cassel?" he said. "Unless my eyes deceive me? The gentleman I saw afew minutes ago?"
"The same," the conspirator answered jauntily; but his anxious eyesroving beside and behind the Duke belied his tone.
"Then, perhaps," my lord answered, taking out his snuff-box, andtapping it with a good-humoured air, "you will see, sir, that yourpresence here needs some explanation? May I ask how you came here?"
"The devil I know or care, your Grace!" Cassel answered. "Except thatI came into your house with no good-will, and if I could have foundthe door should not have outstayed my welcome."
"I believe it," said my lord drily, "if I believe nothing else. Butyou have lost the throw. And that being so, may I beg that you willdescend again? I am loth to use force in my own house, Mr. Cassel, andto call the servants would prejudice your case. If you are wise,therefore, I think that you will see the wisdom of retiring quietly."
"Have no fear, I will go," the man answered with sufficient coolness."I should not have come up, but that I saw that Square-toes theresmuggle out the girl, and as no one was looking it seemed natural tofollow."
"Oh!" said the Duke, flashing a glance at me that loosened myknee-joints. "He smuggled her out, did he?"
"He could not do much less," the conspirator answered. "She saved hislife yesterday."
"Indeed!"
"Ay, when Ferguson would have hung him like a dog! And not far wrongeither! But mum! I am talking. And save him or no, I did not think thecreature had the spunk to do the thing. No, I did not."
"Ah!" said my lord, looking at him attentively.
"No, and as for the wench, your Grace----" and with the word Casseldropped his voice, "she is no more than a child. You have enough. Itis all over. _Sacre nom de Dieu_, let her go, my lord. Let the girlgo."
The Duke raised his eyebrows. "I see no girl," said he, slowly. "Ofwhom are you talking, Mr. Cassel?"
I do not know who was more astonished at that, Cassel or I. True, thegirl was gone; for a moment before, the Duke's back being half-turned,she had slipped into a doorway a couple of paces away, and there Icould hear her breathing even now. But that my lord had failed todetect the movement I could no more believe than that he had failed tosee the girl two minutes before, when, as clearly as I ever sawanything in my life, I had seen him examine her features.
Nevertheless, "I see no girl," he repeated coolly. "But I see you, Mr.Cassel; and as the alarm maybe given at any moment, and I do notchoose to be found with you, I must beg of you to descend at once. Doyou, sir," he continued, addressing me sharply, "go with him, and whenyou have taken him back to the hall bring me the key of the door."
"Well, I am d----d!" said Cassel.
For the first time the Duke betrayed signs of anger. "Go, sir"; hesaid. "And do you"--this to me--"bring me the key of that door."
Cassel turned as if to go; then with difficulty lifting his hands tohis head he took off his hat. "My lord," he said, "you are well calledthe King of Hearts. For a Whig you are a d----d good fellow!"
Shrewsbury: A Romance Page 31