Shrewsbury: A Romance

by Stanley John Weyman

  CHAPTER XL

  When I recovered my senses I was on my back in one of eighteen beds,in a long white-walled room, having barred windows, and a vaultedceiling. A woman, garbed strangely in black, and with a queer whitecap drawn tight round her face, leaned over me, and with her fingerlaid to her lips, enjoined silence. Here and there along the wall werepictures of saints; and at the end two candles burned before a kind ofaltar. I had an idea that I had been partly conscious, and had laintossing giddily with a burning head, and a dreadful thirst throughdays and nights of fever. Now, though I could scarcely raise my head,and my brain reeled if I stirred, I was clear-minded, and knew thatthe bone of my leg was broken, and that for that reason I had a bed tomyself where most lay double. For the rest I was so weak I could onlycry in pure gratitude when the nun came to me in my turn, and fed me,and plain, stout, and gentle-eyed, laid her fingers on her lip, orsmiling, said in her odd English "Quee-at, quee-at, monsieur!"

  In face of the blessings which the Protestant Succession, as settledin our present House of Hanover, has secured to these islands, itwould little become me to find a virtue in papistry; and my late lord,who early saw and abjured the errors of that faith, would have beenthe last to support or encourage such a thesis. Notwithstanding which,I venture to say that the devotion of these women to their calling isa thing not to be decried, merely because we have no counterpart ofit, nor the charity of that hospital, simply because the burning ofcandles and worshipping of saints alternate with the tendance of thewretched. On the contrary, it seems to me that were such a profession,the idolatrous vows excepted, grafted on our Church, it might redoundalike to the credit of religion--which of late the writings of LordBolingbroke have somewhat belittled--and to the good of mankind.

  So much with submission; nor will the most rigid of our divines blameme, when they learn that I lay ten weeks in the Maison de Dieu atDunquerque, dependent for everything on the kind offices of those goodwomen; and nursed during that long period with a solicitude andpatience not to be exceeded by that of wife or mother. When I had sofar recovered as to be able to leave my bed, and move a few yards oncrutches, I was assisted to a shady courtyard, nestled snugly betweenthe hospital and the old town wall. Here, under a gnarled mulberrytree which had sheltered the troops of Parma, I spent my time in adream of peace, through which nuns, apple-faced and kind-eyed, flittedladen with tisanes, or bearing bottles that called for the immediateattention of M. le Medecin's long nose and silver-rimmed spectacles.Occasionally their Director would seat himself beside me, and silentlyrun through his office: or instruct me in the French tongue, and theevils of Jansenism--mainly by means of the snuff-box which rarely lefthis fine white hands. More often the meagre apothecary, young, yellow,dry, ambitious, with a hungry light in his eyes, would take an Englishlesson, until the coming of his superior routed him, and sent him tohis gallipots and compounding with a flea in his ear.

  Such were the scenes and companions that attended my return to health;nor, my spirits being attuned to these, should I have come to seek ordesire others, though enhanced by my native air--a species of inertia,more easily excused by those who have viewed French life near at hand,than by such as have never travelled--but for an encounter asimportant in its consequences as it was unexpected, which broke theeven current of my days.

  It was no uncommon thing for the nuns to bring one of my owncountrymen to me, in the fond hope that I might find a friend. But asthese persons, from the nature of the case, were invariably Jacobites,and either knowing something of my story, thought me well served, orcoming to examine me, shied at the names of Mr. Brome and LordShrewsbury, such efforts had but one end. When I heard, therefore, forthe fourth or fifth time that a compatriot of mine, amiable, and of avivacity _tout-a-fait marveilleuse_ was coming to see me, I was as farfrom supposing that I should find an acquaintance, as I was fromanticipating the interview with pleasure. Imagine my surprise,therefore, when S[oe]ur Marie called me into the garden at theappointed time; and, her simple face shining with delight, led me tothe old mulberry tree, where, who should be sitting but Mary Ferguson!

  She had as little expected to meet me as I to meet her, but coming onme thus suddenly, and seeing me lame, and in a sense a cripple,reduced, moreover, by the long illness through which I had passed, shelet her feelings have way. Such tenderness as she had entertained forme before welled up now with irresistible force, and giving the lie toa certain hoydenish hardness, inherent in a disposition which wasnever one of the most common, in a moment she was in my arms. If shedid not weep herself, she pardoned, and possibly viewed with pleasure,those tears on my part, which weakness and surprise drew from me,while a hundred broken words and exclamations bore witness to thegratitude she felt on the score of her escape.

  Thus brought together, in a strange country, and agitated by a hundredmemories, nothing was at first made clear, except that we belonged toone another, and S[oe]r Marie had long fled to carry the tale withmingled glee and horror into the house, before we grew sufficientlycalm to answer the numberless questions which it occurred to each toask.

  At length Mary, pressed to tell me how she had fared since her escape,made one of the odd faces I could so well remember. And "Not as Iwould, but as I could," she said, dryly. "By crossing with letters."

  "Crossing?" I exclaimed.

  "To be sure," she answered. "I go to and from London with letters."

  "But should you be taken?" I cried, with a vivid remembrance of theterror into which the prospect of punishment had thrown her.

  She shrugged her shoulders; yet suppressed, or I was mistaken, ashudder. Then "What will you?" she said, spreading out her littlehands French fashion, and making again that odd grimace. "It is theold story. I must live, Dick. And what can a woman do? Will LadyMiddleton take me for her children's _governante?_ Or Lady Melfortfind me a place in her household? I am Ferguson's niece, a backstairswench of whom no one knows anything. If I were handsome now, _bien!_As I am not--to live I must risk my living."

  "You are handsome enough for me!" I cried.

  She raised her eyebrows, with a look in her eyes that, I remember,puzzled me. "Well, may be," she said a trifle tartly. "And the otheris neither here nor there. For the rest, Dick, I live at CaptainGill's, and his wife claws me Monday and kisses me Tuesday."

  "And you have taken letters to London?" I said, wondering at hercourage.

  "Three times," she answered, nodding soberly. "And to Tunbridgeonce. A woman passes. A man would be taken. So Mr. Birkenhead says.But----" and with the word she broke off abruptly, and stared at me;and continued to stare at me, her face which was rounder and morewomanly than in the old days, falling strangely.

  SHE LISTENED IN SILENCE, STANDING OVER ME WITHSOMETHING OF THE SEVERITY OF A JUDGE]

  It wore such a look indeed, that I glanced over my shoulder thinkingthat she saw something. Finding nothing, "Mary!" I cried. "What is it?What is the matter?"

  "Are you the man who came with Sir John Fenwick to the shore?" shecried, stepping back a pace--she had already risen, "And betrayed him?Dick! Dick, don't say it!" she continued hurriedly, holding out herhands as if she would ward off my words. "Don't say that you are_that_ man! I had forgotten until this moment whom I came to see; who,they said, was here."

  Her words stung me, even as her face frightened me. But while I winceda kind of courage, born of indignation and of a sense of injusticelong endured, came to me; and I answered her with spirit. "No," Isaid, "I am not that man."

  "No?" she cried.

  "No!" I said defiantly. "If you mean the man that betrayed Sir JohnFenwick. But I will tell you what man I am--if you will listen to me."

  "What are yon going to tell me?" she answered, the troubled lookreturning. And then, "Dick, don't lie to me!" she cried quickly.

  "I have no need," I said. And with that, beginning at the beginning, Itold her all the story which is written here, so far as it was notalready known to her. She listened in silence, standing over me withsometh
ing of the severity of a judge, until I came to the start fromLondon with Matthew Smith.

  There she interrupted me. "One moment," she said in a hard voice; andshe fixed me with keen, unfriendly eyes. "You know that Sir JohnFenwick was taken two days later, and is in the Tower?"

  "I know nothing," I said, holding out my hands and trembling with theexcitement of my story, and the thought of my sufferings.

  "Not even that?"

  "No, nothing; not even that," I said.

  "Nor that within a month, in all probability, he will be tried andexecuted!"

  "No."

  "Nor that your master is in peril? You have not heard that Sir Johnhas turned on him and denounced him before the Council of the King?"

  "No," I said. "How should I?"

  "What?" she cried incredulously. "You do not know that with which allEngland is ringing--though it touches you of all men?"

  "How should I?" I said feebly. "Who would tell me here? And for weeksI have been ill."

  She nodded. "Go on," she said.

  I obeyed. I took up the thread again, told her how we reached Ashford,how I saw Sir John, how I fled, and how I was pursued; finally how Iwas received on board the boat, and never, until the following day,when Birkenhead flung it in my teeth, guessed that I had forestalledSir John, and robbed him of his one chance of escape. "For if I hadknown," I continued warmly, "why should I fly from him? What had I tofear from him? Or what to gain, if Smith with a pistol were not at myheels, by leaving England? Gain?" I continued bitterly, seeing that Ihad convinced her. "What _did_ I gain? This! This!" And I touched mycrippled leg.

  "Thank God!" she said, with emotion. "Thank God, Dick. But----"

  "But what!" I retorted sharply; for in the telling of the story I hadcome to see more clearly than before how cruelly I had been treated."But what?"

  "Well, just this," she said gently. "Have you not brought it onyourself in a measure? If you had been more--that is, I mean, if youhad not been so----"

  "So what?" I cried querulously, seeing her hesitate.

  "Well, so quick to think that it was Matthew Smith--and a pistol," sheanswered, smiling rather heartlessly. "That is all."

  "There was a mist," I said.

  She laughed in her odd way. "Of course, Dick, there was a mist," sheagreed. "And you cannot make bricks without straw. And after all youdid make bricks in St. James's Square, and it is not for me to findfault. But there is a thing to be done, and it must be done." And herlips closed firmly, after a fashion I remembered, and still remember,having seen it a hundred times since that day, and learned to humourit. "One that must be done!" she continued. "Dick, you will not leavethe Duke to be ruined by Matthew Smith? You will not lie here and letthose rogues work their will on him? Sir John has denounced him."

  "And may denounce me!" I said, aghast at the notion. "May denounceme," I continued with agitation. "_Will_ denounce me. If it was notthe Duke who was at Ashford, it was I!"

  "And who are you?" she retorted, with a look that withered me."Who will care whether you met Sir John at Ashford or not? KingWilliam--call him Dutchman, boor, drunkard, as it's the fashion thisside, call him I say what you will--at least he flies at high game,and does not hawk at mice!"

  "Mice?"

  "Ay, mice!" she answered with a snap of her teeth--and she looked allover the little vixen she could be. "For what are we? What are we now?Still more, what are we if we leave the Duke to his enemies, leave himto be ruined and disgraced, leave him to pay the penalty, while you,the cause of all this, lie here--lie safe and snug? For shame, Dick!For shame!" she continued with such a thrill in her voice that thepigeons feeding behind her fluttered up in alarm, and two or threenuns looked out inquisitively.

  I had my own thoughts and my own feelings about my lord, as he wellknew in after years. I challenge any to say that I lacked eitherrespect or affection for him. But a man's wits move more slowly than awoman's, and the news came on me suddenly. It was no great wonder if Icould not in a moment stomach the prospect of returning to risk andjeopardy, to the turmoil from which I had been so long freed, and thehazards of a life and death struggle. In the political life of twentyyears ago men carried their necks to market. Knowing that I might savethe Duke and suffer in his place--the fate of many a poor dependant;or might be confronted with Smith; or brought face to face withFerguson; or perish before I reached London in the net in which mylord's own feet were caught, I foresaw not one but a hundred dangers;and those such as no prudent man could be expected to regard withequanimity, or any but a harebrained girl would encounter with a lightheart.

  Still I desired to stand well with her; and that being so I confessthat it was with relief I remembered my lameness; and named it to her.Passing over the harshness of her last words, "You are right," I said."Something should be done. But for me it is impossible at present. Iam lame, as you see."

  "Lame?" she cried.

  "More than lame," I answered--but there was that in her tone whichbade me avoid her eyes. "A cripple, Mary."

  "No, not a cripple," she answered.

  "Yes," I said.

  "No, Dick," she answered in a voice low, but so grave and firm that Iwinced. "Let us be frank for once. Not a cripple, but a coward."

  "I never said I was a soldier," I answered.

  "Nor I," she replied, wilfully misunderstanding me. "I said, a coward!And a coward I will not marry!"

  With that we looked at one another: and I saw that her face was white."Was it a coward saved your life--in the Square?" I muttered at last.

  "No," she answered. "But it was a coward played the sneak forFerguson. And a coward played the rogue for Smith! It was a cowardlost Fenwick--because he dare not look behind! And a coward who willnow sacrifice his benefactor, to save his own skin. And _you_ onlyknow in how many other things you have played the craven. But therather for that, up, now, and play the man! You have a chance now! Dothis one brave thing and all will be forgiven. Oh, Dick, Dick!" shecontinued--and with a sudden blaze in her face she stooped and threwher arms round me, "if you love me, do it! Do it for us both! Doit--or if you cannot, God knows it were better we were hung, thanmarried!"

  I cannot hope to describe the fervour, which she threw into these lastwords, or the effect which they wrought on me, weakened as I was bylong illness. In a voice broken by tears I conjured her to give metime--to give me time; a few days in which to consider what I woulddo.

  "Not a day!" she answered, springing from me in fresh excitement, andas if my touch burned her. "I will give you no time. You have had alifetime, and to what purpose? I will give you no time. Do you give meyour word."

  "To go to England?"

  "Yes."

  I was ashake from head to foot; and groaned aloud. In truth if I hadknown the gallows to be the certain and inevitable end of the road, onwhich I was asked to enter, I could not have been more sorely beset;between rage and fear, and shame of her and desire for her. But whileI hung in that misery, she continuing to stand over me, I looked, asit happened, in her face; and I saw that it was no longer hot withanger, but sad and drawn as by a sharp pain. And I gave her my word,trembling and shaking.

  "Now," said she, "are you a brave man; and perhaps the bravest."