Shrewsbury Part 18

"Could you not hear?"

"I could hear that they were drinking," she answered. "I knew that, and therefore I thought that you should go to them."

"And run the risk?"

"Well, you are a man," she answered coolly.

At that I stood so taken aback--for she spoke it with meaning and a sort of sting--that for a minute I did not answer her. Then, "Is not a man's life as much to him, as a woman's is to her?" I said with indignation.

"A man's!" she replied. "Aye, but not a mouse's! I will tell you what, Mr. Taylor, or Mr. Price, or whatever your name is----"

"Call me what you like!" I said. "Only let me go!"

"Then I will call you Mr. Craven!" she retorted bitterly. "Or Mr.

Daw in Peac.o.c.k's feathers. And let you go. Go, go, you coward! Go, you craven!"

It was not the most gracious permission, and stung me; but I took it sullenly, and getting away from her went down the pa.s.sage towards the Strand, leaving her there; not gladly, although to go had been all I had asked a moment before. No man, indeed, could have more firmly resolved to wrench himself from the grasp of the gang whose tool this little spitfire was; nor to a man bred to peaceful pursuits (as I had been) and flung into such an imbroglio as this--wherein to dance on nothing seemed to be the alternative whichever way I looked--was it a matter of so much consequence to be called coward by a child, that I must hesitate for that. Add to this, that the place and time, a dingy pa.s.sage on a dark night with rain falling and a chill wind blowing, and none abroad but such as honest men would avoid, were not incentives to rashness or adventure.

And yet--and yet when it came to going, _nullis vestigiis retrorsum_, as the Latins say, I proved to be either too much or too little of a man, these arguments notwithstanding; too little of a man to weigh reason justly against pride, or too much of a man to hear with philosophy a girl's taunt. When I had gone fifty yards, therefore, I halted; and then in a moment, went back. Not slowly, however, but in a gust of irritation; so that for a very little I could have struck the girl for the puling face and helplessness that gave her an advantage over me. I found her in the same place, and asked her roughly what she wanted.

"A man," she said.

"Well," I answered sullenly, "what is it?"

"Have I found one? that is the question," she retorted keenly. And at that again, I could have had it in my heart to strike her across her scornful face. "My uncle is at least a man."

"He is a bad one, curse him!" I cried in a fury.

She looked at me coolly. "That is better," she said. "If your deeds were of a piece with your words you would be no man's slave. His least of all, Mr. Price!"

"You talk finely," I said, my pa.s.sion cooling, as I began to read a covert meaning in her tone and words, and that she would be at something. "It comes well from you, who do his errands day and night!"

"Or find someone to do them," she answered with derision.

"Well, after this you will have to find someone else," I cried, warming again.

"Ah, if you would keep your word!" she cried in a different tone, clapping her hands softly, and peering at me. "If you would keep your word."

Seeing more clearly than ever that she would be at something, and wishing to know what it was, "Try me," I said. "What do you mean?"

"It is plain," she answered, "what I mean. Carry no more messages! Be sneak and spy no longer! Cease to put your head in a noose to serve rogues' ends! Have done, man, with cringing and fawning, and trembling at big words. Break off with these villains who hold you, put a hundred miles between you and them, and be yourself! Be a man!"

"Why, do you mean your uncle?" I cried, vastly surprised.

"Why not?" she said.

"But--if you feel that way, why do his bidding yourself?" I answered, doubting all this might be a trap of that cunning devil's. "If I sneak and spy, who spies on me, miss?"

"I do," she said, leaning against the wall of Bedford Garden, where one of Heming's new lights, set up at the next corner, shone full on her face. "And I am weary of it."

"But if you are weary of it----"

"If I am weary of it, why don't I free myself instead of preaching to you?" she answered. "First, because I am a woman, Mr. Wiseman."

"I don't see what that has to do with it," I retorted.

"Don't you?" she answered bitterly. "Then I will tell you. My uncle feeds me, clothes me, gives me a roof--and sometimes beats me. If I run away as I bid you run away, where shall I find board and lodging, or anything but the beating? A man comes and goes; a woman, if she has not someone to answer for her, must to the Justice and then to the Round-house and be set to beating hemp; and her shoulders smarting to boot. Can I get service without a character?"

"No," I said, "that is true."

"Or travel without money?"

"No."

"Or alone--except to Whetstone Park?"

"No."

"Well, it is fine to be a man then," she answered, leaning her little shawled head farther and farther back against the wall, and slowly moving it to and fro, while she looked at me from under her eyelashes, "for he can do all. And take a woman with him."

I started at that, and stared at her, and saw a little colour come into her pale face. But her eyes, far from falling under my gaze, met my eyes with a bold, mischievous look; that gradually, and as she still moved her head to and fro, melted into a smile.

It was impossible to mistake her meaning, and I felt a thrill run through me, such as I had not known for ten years. "Oh," I said at last, and awkwardly, "I see now."

"You would have seen long ago if you had not been a fool," she answered. And then, as if to excuse herself she added--but this I did not understand--"Not that fine feathers make fine birds--I am not such a fool myself, as to think that. But----"

"But what?" I said, my face warm.

"I am a fool all the same."

Her eyes falling with that, and her pale face growing to a deeper colour, I had no doubt of the main thing, though I could not follow her precise drift. And I take it, there are few men who, upon such an invitation, however veiled, would not respond. Accordingly I took a step towards the girl, and went, though clumsily, to put my arm round her.

But she pushed me off with a vigour that surprised me; and she mocked me with a face between mischief and triumph; a face that was more like a mutinous boy's than a girl's. "Oh, no," she said. "There is a good deal between this and that, Mr. Price."

"How?" I said shamefacedly.

"Do you go?" she asked sharply. "Is it settled? That first of all, if you please."

As to the going--somewhere--I had made up my mind long ago; before I met her, or went into the Seven Stars, or knew that a dozen mad topers were roaring treason about the town, and bidding fair to hang us all.

But being of a cautious temper, and seeing conditions which I had not contemplated added to the bargain, and having besides a shrewd idea that I could not afterwards withdraw, I hesitated. "It is dangerous!"

I said.

"I will tell you what is dangerous," she answered, wrathfully, showing her little white teeth as she flashed her eyes at me, "and that is to be where we are. Do you know what they are doing there--in that house?" And she pointed towards the Market, whence we had come.

"No," I said reluctantly, wishing she would say no more.

"Killing the King," she answered in a low voice. "It is for Sat.u.r.day, or Sat.u.r.day week. He is to be stopped in his coach as he comes from hunting--in the lane between Turnham Green and the river. You can count their chances. They are merry plotters! And now--now," she continued, "do you know where you stand, Mr. Price, and whether it is dangerous?"

"I know"--I said, trembling at that b.l.o.o.d.y design, which no whit surprised me since everything I had heard corroborated it--"I know what I have to do."