Shrewsbury Part 17

However, I was not to get off so easily. Though the hour was late, the market closed, and the pavement in front of the taverns deserted, or fringed only by a chair waiting for a belated gamester, I ran a greater risk of being recognised, as I pa.s.sed, than I thought; and had not gone ten paces along King Street before I heard a light foot following me, and a hand caught my arm. Turning in a fright I found it was only a girl; and, at first sight, was for wresting myself from her, glad that it was no worse: but she muttered my name, and looking down I recognised to my astonishment the girl I had seen at Ferguson's earlier in the evening.

At that, I remember, a dread of the man and his power seized me and chilled my very heart. This was the third time this girl, whom I never saw at other seasons, had arisen out of the ground to confront me and pluck me back when on the point of betraying him. I stared at her, thinking of this, with I know not what of affright and shrinking; and could scarcely command either voice or limbs.

And yet as she stood looking at me with the dark length of the street stretching to the market behind her, it must be confessed that there was little in her appearance to cause terror. The night being cold, and a small rain falling, she had a shawl drawn tightly over her head, whence her face, small and pale as a child's, peered at me. I thought to read in it a sly and elfish triumph such as became Ferguson's minion: instead I discerned only a weariness that went ill with her years--and a little flicker of contempt in eye and lip. The weariness was also in her voice when she spoke. "Well met, Mr. Price," she said.

"I am in luck to light on you."

I shivered in my shoes; but without seeming to mark me, "I want this note taken to Mr. Watkins," she continued, rapidly pressing a sc.r.a.p of paper into my hand. "He is in the tavern there, the Seven Stars. Ask for the Apollo Room, and you will find him."

"But, one minute," I protested, as in her eagerness she pushed me that way with her hand, "did Mr. Ferguson----Is it from him?"

"Of course, fool," she answered, sharply. "Do you think that I have been standing here for the last half-hour in cold and wet for my own pleasure?"

"But if he sent it?" I remonstrated, feebly, "perhaps he may not like me to interfere--to----"

"Like me to?" she retorted, sharply, mocking my tone. "Who said he would? Cannot you understand that it is I who do not like to? That I am not going into that place at this time of night, and half in the house drunken brutes? It is bad enough to be here, loitering up and down as if I were what I am not--and free to be spoken to by every impudent blood that pa.s.ses! Go, man, and do it, and I will wait so long. What do you fear?"

"The rope," said I, "to be plain with you." And I looked with abhorrence at the sc.r.a.p of paper she had given me. "I have taken too many of these," I said.

"Well, you will take one more!" she answered, doggedly. "Or you are no man. See, there is the door. Ask for the Apollo Room, give it to him, and the thing is done!" And with that she set both hands to me and pushed me the way she would have me move--I mean towards the tavern.

"Go!" she said. "Go!"

Hate the thing as I might, and did, I could not resist persuasions addressed to me in such a tone; nor fail to be moved by the girl's shrinking from the task, which had to be done, it seemed, by one of us. After all, it was no more than I had done several times before; and my reluctance having its origin in the resolution, to which I had just come, to break off from the gang, yielded to the reflection that the design lay as yet in my own breast, and might be carried out as well to-morrow as to-day. In a word, I complied out of pity, went to the tavern, and walked boldly in.

I had been in the house before, and knew where I should find a waiter of whom I might enquire privately; I pa.s.sed by the public room, therefore, and was for going to the place I mean. I had scarcely advanced three paces beyond the threshold, however, before a great noise of voices and laughter and beating of feet met my ears and surprised me; the hubbub was so loud and boisterous as to be unusual even in places of that kind. I had no more than taken this in, and set it down to an orgy beyond the ordinary, when I came on a pale-faced group standing at gaze at the foot of the stairs, the landlord, two or three drawers, and as many women being among them. It was easy to see that they were in a fever about the noise above; for while the host was openly wringing his hands and crying that those devils would ruin him, a woman who seemed to be his wife was urging first one and then another of the drawers to ascend and caution the party. That something more than disorderliness or a visit from the constable was in question I gathered from the host's pale face; and this was confirmed when on seeing me they dispersed a little, and affected to be unconcerned.

Until I asked for the Apollo Room, whereon they all came together again and fell on me with complaints and entreaties.

"'Fore G.o.d, sir, I think your friends are mad!" the host cried, in a perfect fury. "Go up! Go up, and tell them that if they want to be hanged, and to hang me as well, they are going the right way about it."

"It is well it is night," said the head waiter grimly, "or the Market porters would have broken our windows before now."

"And got us all in the Compter!" the women wailed. And then to me, "Go up, sir, go up and tell them that if they would not have the mob pull the house down----"

But the tumult above, waxing loud at that moment, drowned her words, and certainly took from me what little good-will to ascend I had.

However, the host, having me there, a person who had enquired for the room, would take no denial, but, delighted to have found a deputy, he fairly set me on the stairs and pushed me up. "Go up and tell them! Go up and tell them!" he kept repeating. "You asked for the room and there it is."

In a word I had no choice, and with reluctance went up. The noise was such I could not fail to find the door and the room; I knocked and opened, a roar of voices poured out, and even before I entered the room I knew what was afoot, and could swear to treason. Such cries as "Down with the Whigs and d.a.m.n their King!" "The 29th of May and a glorious Restoration!" "Here's to the Hunting Party!" poured out in a confused medley; with half-a-dozen others equally treasonable, and equally certain, were they overheard in the street, to bring down the mob and the messengers on the speakers.

True, as soon as the half-muddled brains of the company took in the fact that the door was open, and a stranger standing on the threshold--which they were not quick to discern owing to the cloud of tobacco-smoke that filled the room--nine-tenths quavered off into silence and gaped at me; that proportion of the company having still the sense to recognise the risk they were running, and to apprehend that judgment had taken them in the act. Two men in particular, older than the rest--the one a fat, infirm fellow with a pallid face and the air of a rich citizen, the other a peevish, red-eyed atomy in a green fur-lined coat--were of this party. They had not, I think, been of the happiest before, seated in the midst of that crew; but now, sinking back in their high-backed chairs, they stared at me as if I carried death in my face. A neighbour of theirs, however, went beyond them; for, with a howl that the Secretary was on them and the officers were below, he kicked over his chair and dashed for a window, pausing only when he had thrown it up.

But with all this the recklessness of some was evident: for while I stood, uncertain to whom to speak, one of the more drunken staggered from his seat, and giving a shrill view-halloa that might have been heard in Bedford House, made towards me with a cup in his hand.

"Drink!" he cried, with a hiccough as he forced it upon me. "Drink! To the squeezing of the Rotten Orange! Drink, man, or you are no friend of ours, but a snivelling, sneaking, white-faced son of a Dutchman like your master! So drink, and----Eh, what is it? What is the matter?"

CHAPTER XIX

It was no small thing could enlighten that brain clouded by the fumes of drink and conceit; but the silence, perfect and clothing panic--a silence that had set in with his first word, and a panic that had grown with a whisper pa.s.sed round the table--came home to him at last.

"What is it? What is the matter?" he cried, with a silly drunken laugh. And he turned to look.

No one answered; but he saw the sight which I had already seen--his fellows fallen from him, and huddled on the farther side of the table, as sheep huddle from the sheep-dog; some pale, cross-eyed, and with lips drawn back, seeking softly in their cloaks for weapons; others standing irresolute, or leaning against the wall, shaking and unnerved.

Cooled, but not sobered by the sight, he turned to me again. "Won't he drink the toast?" he maundered, in an uncertain voice. "Why--why not, I'd like to know. Eh? Why not?" he repeated; and staggered.

At that someone in the crowd laughed hysterically; and this breaking the spell, a second found his voice. "Gad! It is not the man!" the latter cried with a rattling oath. "It is all right! I swear it is!

Here you, speak, fool!" he went on to me. "What do you here?"

"This for Mr. Wilkins," I answered, holding out my note.

I meant no jest, but the words supplied the signal for such a roar of laughter as well-nigh lifted the roof. The men were still between drunk and sober; and in the rebound of their relief staggered and clung to one another, and bent this way and that in a paroxysm of convulsive mirth. Vainly one or two, less heady than their fellows, essayed to stay a tumult that promised to rouse the watchmen; it was not until after a considerable interval--nor until the more drunken had laughed their fill, and I had asked myself a hundred times if these were men to be trusted with secrets and others' necks--that the man with the white handkerchief, who had just entered, gained silence and a hearing. This done, however, he rated his fellows with the utmost anger and contempt; the two elderly gentlemen whom I have mentioned, adding their quavering, pa.s.sionate remonstrances to his.

But as in this kind of a.s.sociation there can be little discipline, and those are most forward who have least to lose, the hotheads only looked silly for a moment, and the next were calling for more liquor.

"Not a bottle!" said he of the white handkerchief, "_Nom de dieu_, not a bottle!"

"Come, Captain, we are not on service now," quoth one.

"Aren't you?" said he, looking darkly at them.

"No, not we!" cried the other recklessly, "and what is more, we will have no 'Regiment du Roi' regulations here! Is not a gentleman to have a second bottle if he wants one?"

"It is twelve o'clock," replied the Captain. "For the love of Heaven, man, wait till this business is over; and then drink until you burst, if you please! For me, I am going to bed."

"But who is this--lord! I don't know what to call him!" the fellow retorted, turning to me with a half-drunken gesture. "This Gentleman Dancing Master?"

"A messenger from the old Fox: Mr.--Taylor, I think he calls himself?"

and the officer turned to me.

"Yes," said I.

"Well, you may go. Tell the gentleman who sent you that Wilkins got his note, and will bear the matter in mind."

I said I would; and was going with that, and never more glad than to be out of that company. But the fellow who had asked who I was, and who, being thwarted of his drink, was out of temper, called rudely to know where I got my wig, and who rigged me out like a lord; swearing that Ferguson's service must be a d----d deal better than the one he was in, and the pay higher than a poor trooper's.

This gave the cue to the man who had before forced the drink on me; who, still having the cup in his hand, thrust himself in my way, and forcing the liquor on me so violently that he spilled some over my coat, vowed that though all the Scotch colonels in the world barred the way, I should drink his toast, or he would skewer me.

"To Sat.u.r.day's work! A straight eye and a firm hand!" he cried. "Drink man, drink! For a hunting we will go, and a hunting we will go! And if we don't flush the game at Turnham Green, call me a bungler!"

I heard one of the elder men protest, with something between a curse and a groan, that the fool would proclaim it at Charing Cross next; but, thinking only to be gone (and the man being so drunk that it was evident resistance would but render him more obstinate, and imperil my skin), I took the cup and drank, and gave it back to him. By that time two or three of the more prudent--if any in that company could be called prudent--had risen and joined us; who when he would have given another toast, forced him away, scolding him soundly for a leaky chatterer, and a fool who would ruin all with the drink.

Freed from his importunities, I waited for no second permission; but got me out and down the stairs. At the foot of which the landlord's scared face and the waiting, watching eyes of the drawers and servants, who still lingered there, listening, put the last touch to the picture of madness and recklessness I had witnessed above. Here were informers and evidences ready to hand and more than enough, if the beggars in the street, and the orange girls, and night walkers who prowled the market were not sufficient, to bring home to its authors the treason they bawled and shouted overhead.

The thought that such rogues should endanger my neck, and good, honest men's necks, made my blood run cold and hot at once; hot, when I thought of their folly, cold, when I recalled Mr. Ashton executed in '90 for carrying treasonable letters, or Anderton, betrayed, and done to death for printing the like. I could understand Ferguson's methods; they had reason in them, and if I hated them and loathed them, they were not so very dangerous. For he had disguises and many names and lodgings, and lurked from one to another under cover of night; and if he sowed treason, he sowed it stealthily and in darkness, with all the adjuncts which prudence and tradition dictated; he boasted to those only whom he had in his power, and used the like instruments. But the outbreak of noisy, rampant, reckless rebellion which I had witnessed--and which it seemed to me must be known to all London within twenty-four hours--filled me with panic. It so put me beside myself, that when the girl who had employed me on that errand met me in the street, I cursed her and would have pa.s.sed her; being unable to say another word, lest I should weep. But she turned with me, and keeping pace with me asked me continually what it was; and getting no answer, by-and-by caught my arm, and forced me to stand in the pa.s.sage beyond Bedford House and close to the Strand. Here she repeated her question so fiercely--asking me besides if I were mad, and the like--and showed herself such a termagant, that I had no option but to answer her.

"Mad?" I cried, pa.s.sionately. "Aye, I am mad--to have anything to do with such as you."

"But what is it? What has happened?" she persisted, peering at me; and so barring the way that I could not pa.s.s.