Shrewsbury Part 36

"The King is served in many ways," my lord answered with a fine air of contempt. "Martin, the door! And remember, another time I am not within to Captain Porter. At three in the office, sir, if you please."

The man slunk away at that; but as he pa.s.sed through the doorway, I heard him mutter that when Sir John Fenwick was taken he would see; and that proud as some people were now, they might be glad to save their necks when the time came. He pa.s.sed out of sight then, and hearing my lord speak, I turned, and saw Matthew Smith, whom I had not before noticed, waiting on him with a letter. The Duke, pausing on the threshold of the library, broke the seal, and ran his eye over the paper.

"I will send an answer," he said, "later in the day. Or----" and he looked up quickly. "Are you returning, sir?"

"If your Grace pleases."

"It shall be ready then by two o'clock," my lord answered stiffly.

"Good-morning."

"Good-morning, your Grace."

And my lord went in. The colloquy had been of the slightest; but I had noted that my patron's tone, when he spoke to Smith, was guarded and civil, if distant, and that through the few formal words they had exchanged peered a sort of understanding. This shook me; and when Smith turned to me, a faint sneer on his lips, and told me that I was a bold man, my heart was water. He was at home here as everywhere; what could I do against him?

"Do you understand, Mr. Price?" he repeated. "Or are you a bigger fool than I take you for?"

"Why?" I stammered.

"Why? Why, to push in on Porter after that fashion," he muttered under his breath--for Martin was making towards us. "Lucky he did not recognize you and denounce you! For a groat he would do it--or to spite the Duke! Take care, man," he continued seriously, "if you do not want to join Charnock, whose head is in airy quarters to-night."

This left me the prey of a new terror; for remembering that I had once seen Porter at Ferguson's lodging, I could not shut my eyes to the reasonableness of the warning. I saw myself beset by dangers on that side also, went for a time on eggs, and trembled at every sound; indeed, for a full fortnight I never pa.s.sed the threshold--excusing myself on the ground of vertigo, if ordered to go on errands. In the course of that fortnight I had a thousand opportunities of contrasting the quiet in which I lived, behind the dull windows of the great house, with the dangers into which I might at any moment be flung; and if any man ever repented of anything, I repented of my lack of candour respecting Smith. From time to time I saw him pa.s.s--grim, reserved, a walking menace. When he looked up at the windows, I read mastery and a secret knowledge in his eye; while the way in which he went and came, free and unquestioned, was itself a monition; was it to be wondered that I feared this man, who, while Charnock's head mouldered on a spike on Temple Bar, and Friend and Perkins pa.s.sed to the gallows, walked the Strand, and lounged in the Mall, as safe in appearance as my lord himself?

I knew that at any moment he might call upon me to fulfil my word.

Whether in that case, the demand being such as to allow me leisure to forecast the consequences, I should have complied, or taking my courage in my hands, have thrown myself on my lord's indulgence, I cannot now say; for in the issue a sudden and unforeseen shifting of scene prevented my calculations, and hurried me onwards, whether I would or no.

It happened, I have said, suddenly. One afternoon there came a great bustle in the Square; and who should it be but the Countess, my lord's mother, come to visit him in her coach-and-six, with such a paraphernalia of gentlewomen and negro pages, outriders, and running footmen, as drew together all the ragam.u.f.fins from the mews, and fairly brought back King Charles's days. As the great coach, which held six inside, swung and lumbered to a stand at the door, I saw a painted face, with bold black eyes, glaring from the window, cheek by jowl with a parrot and three or four spaniels; and I waited to see little more, a single glance sufficing to certify me that this was the same lady to whose house Smith had taken me. Smith was in attendance on her, and a gentleman in a plain black suit and wig--who was a Papist priest if I ever saw one--and Monterey, and two or three other gentlewomen; and, as I had no mind to be recognised by these, or for that matter, by their mistress, I made haste to retire behind the flock of servants whom Martin had marshalled in the hall to do the honours.

My lord went out to the coach and brought the Countess in, with a great show of reverence; and for three-quarters of an hour they were closeted together in his room. I took advantage of this to retire upstairs, and had been wiser had I stayed there, or better still, slipped out at the back. But a craving came on me to see Monterey again, and with the knowledge I now had, ascertain if she really was my old mistress. This drew me to the hall again, where, the crowd being great, and the servants taken up with teasing the Countess's parrot and blackamoors, I managed to avoid observation, and at the same time see what I wanted. The woman who had once been all the world to me--and of whom I could not now think without a tender regret, directed, not to her, but to the state of blissful, dawning pa.s.sion, of which she had been the cause, and whereof no man is twice capable--was still handsome in a coa.r.s.e fashion, and when seen at a distance. I could not deny that. But if I desired revenge, I had it; for not only was her complexion gone, so that her good looks vanished when the viewer approached, but her lips had grown thin, and her face hard, with the indescribable hardness which speaks of past sin long grown bitter--and an hourly, daily recognition that the wage of sin is death.

Presently, while Mr. Martin was pressing his civilities on her, and I, from a corner near the door through which I had let Mary escape, was curiously reading her countenance, the door of my lord's room opened, and the Countess came out, supported on the one side by the Duke's arm, on the other by her great ebony cane. The servants hurried to form two lines; and I suppose curiosity led me to press nearer than was prudent, or her eyes were of peculiar sharpness; or perhaps she looked for me, and had I not been there would have called for me. At any rate, she had not moved three steps towards her coach before her gaze, roving along the line of servants, alighted on me; and she stood.

"I'll have _that_ rascal!" she cried in her high, shrill voice--and she pointed at me with her cane, and stood. "He looks as if b.u.t.ter would not melt in his mouth, but if he is not a lad of wax, call me a street s.l.u.t! Hark you, my man; you come with me. Bid him, Shrewsbury!"

My lord, his face flushing, spoke low, and seemed to make demur; but she persisted.

"Odd's life; you make me sick!" she cried irritably. "You will not this, and you fancy that! The servants---- Go to for a fool! In my time master was master, and if any blabbed, man or maid, it was strip and whip! But now--do you quarrel with me, or do you not?"

The Duke shrugged his shoulders, and smiled uneasily. "Times are somewhat changed, madam," he said.

"Ay, by our lord, they are," she cried, swearing roundly. "And why?

Because there are no men nowadays, but mealy-mouthed Josephs, like that trembler yonder, whose heart is in his boots because I want him carry a message." And she pointed to me with her long cane, while her head quivered with excitement and age. "Sort him out; sort him out and send him with me; or we quarrel, my lord."

"Well, madam, your will is law in this house," the Duke said; "but----"

"But no lies!" she cried. "D'ye send him."

My lord bowed reluctantly. "Go," he said, looking at me.

"And bid him do as I tell him," she cried sharply. "But he had better, or---- Still, tell him, tell him."

"Price," my lord said soberly, "the Countess is good enough to wish you to do an errand for her. Be good enough to consider yourself at her disposal, and go with the coach now. Be easy," he continued, nodding pleasantly--it was impossible for me to hide my apprehensions--"her ladyship needs you for a week only."

"Ay, sure!" she cried. "After that he may go to the devil for me!"

CHAPTER x.x.xV

Rightly has the Latin poet sung of the _dura ilia_ of the Fates, who either resistless rout all human resolutions, or, where the mind has been hardened to meet the attack, turn the poor wretch's flank, and lo! while he squares his shield, and shortens his spear to meet the occasion, _habet_--he has it under the fifth rib.

So it was with me. While I dreamed of resistance, and would harden my heart and set fast my feet, fate cross-b.u.t.tocked me; and I fell, not knowing. The Countess's coach bore me away, unresisting; and Smith, whom I hated as I never hated even Ferguson, gave me the word. From my plain clothes, to the long curled peruke, the cravat, ruffles, and fine suit in which I had once before paraded myself, was but a step; I took it perforce, and being conducted, when I was ready, into the Countess's chamber, to wait her pleasure, could have fancied the last six months a dream--could have fancied the conspirators still at work, Captain Barclay still pacing the Piazza, my lord still a stranger to me, the library a vision; in a word, I could have fancied all those events, which had filled half a year, to be no more than creatures of the imagination, so unchanged was the great silent room, where my lady, while I waited, played piquet with Monterey, amid the gorgeousness of her rose-and-silver suite.

The monkey gibbered as of old, and the parrot vied with the broidered parrots on the wall; and now, as then, the air was heavy with scent and musk, while the light, cunningly arranged, fell on the part where the Countess sat, now grumbling and now swearing, or now, while the cards were dealing, thumping the floor impatiently with her stick. She had so perfectly the grand air of a past generation, that when her eye turned in my direction I trembled, and thought no more of resistance; yet when she resumed the game, she gradually--and more and more completely, as I watched--sank into a querulous, feeble, fierce old woman, whose pa.s.sion, where it did not terrify, moved to derision, and whose fads and fancies, as patent as the day, placed her at the mercy of all who cared to flatter or cozen her.

Madame was about it now; letting her win, and again gaining a slight advantage; mingling hints at old vanities and conquests (whereat my lady grew garrulous) with new scandals, coa.r.s.e and spiteful; whining a little when my lady, in a fury caused by a bad hand, struck her across the face with a fan to teach her to be awkward, but cheering up at once when the Countess's mood changed with the cards. In a word, as she had betrayed me young, she cozened my lady old; but seeing her features grown hard with time, and her eyes grown lifeless, and the devil grinning more plainly from behind the mask, that once had been so fair, it was a wonder to me that even the Countess was deceived.

Presently my lady threw down her cards in a rage, and calling her opponent a cheating s.l.u.t, proceeded to turn her anger on me.

"What is the gaby doing, standing there like a gawk?" she shrieked.

"Why is he not about his business?"

Monterey whispered her that I had not had my instructions.

"Then give them, and let him go!" she cried. "Where is the ring? Here, you daw in peac.o.c.k's feathers--like my son, indeed? About as like as that squinting vixen Villiers is to a beauty! Take that, and ride with Matthew Smith, and give it to the gentleman you will meet at the inn at Ashford, and say--Monterey, tell him what to say."

"Say, 'Colonel Talbot sends this ring, and his service.' And if the gentleman asks 'Whither?' or this, or that, to whatever he asks, answer thus: 'I am not here. Sir John, to answer questions. Favour me by conveying that ring and my services whither you are going. I do not talk, but when the time comes I shall act.'"

"_C'est tout!_" said the Countess, nodding approval. "If you are not man enough to repeat that, whip you for a noodle! Say it, man."

But when I went to say it, first I could not remember it, and broke down; and then when, my lady storming at me for a fool and an imbecile, I had got the sentences into my head, I but whimpered them, bringing no heart to the task. My lady, when she saw that, flew out at me afresh, and threw first the vapours bottle and then her cane at me, which, breaking a piece of china, put her fairly beside herself. "Come here!" she shrieked, swaying to and fro in her chair. "Do you hear, you puling, psalm-singing canter? Come here, I say!" And when, trembling and scared, I had approached, she leant forward, and seizing hold of my ear, as Ferguson had once seized it, she twisted it with such unexpected strength and spite that I roared with pain, and fairly fell on my knees beside her.

"There is for you, _gros cochon!_" she cried. "So you _can_ speak up when you like! Now go to the end of the room, my man, and play your part again, and play it better! Or, by ----, I will have up those who shall lash your back to the bone. Hoity toity! These are fine times, when sc.u.m like you, my lad, put on airs!"

This was not the discipline, nor were these the threats, to give an actor courage; but in sheer desperation, I spoke up, and, this time, had the good fortune to please her; and, Monterey mocking me, and pushing me this way and that, I went through my part a dozen times. At length the Countess expressed herself satisfied, and with a grim nod, and an "Odds my life, he is not so unlike, after all!" gave me leave to go. But when I was half way to the door, she called me back, and after I had timidly obeyed, she sat awhile, glowering at me in silence. At last, "No," she said irritably, "it is too late!" and she struck on the floor with her stick. "It is too late to turn back! The cross devil did nothing but thwart me to-day, and what he will not do _bon gre_, he shall do perforce. He has brought it on himself, and he must abide his _destin!_ Yet--Monterey!"

The woman was at her side in a moment. "Yes, madam!"

"I suppose that there is no danger of a _contretemps_," she said, stirring restlessly in her chair. "Sir John will get away? They will not take him, and find the ring on him--and learn whose it is?"

On that, if I had been quick, and had had both wits and courage at command, I should have thrown myself at her feet; and so I might have opened her eyes. But I wavered, and before I had found heart to do it, the waiting-woman, smooth and watchful, was in the breach.

"Ashford, my lady, is only three hours' riding from Dymchurch in the Marsh," she said, "where the boat waits for him to-morrow night. Sir John is well mounted, and it will be odd, if, after baffling pursuit for months, he should be taken in that time."

"Yes, yes!" my lady said querulously. "Let him go! Let him go! Though you are a fool to boot. A man is taken or not taken in less than three hours. Even now, if that contrary devil of a son of mine had not argued with me, and argued with me to-day--but, let him go! Let him go!"

The woman lost no time in taking her at her word, and hurrying me out; not by the main entrance through which I had come in, but by the little side door, leading to the dingy closet at the head of the private staircase. In the closet a bright, unshaded lamp burned on the dusty table, and beside it stood Matthew Smith, wearing a cloak, riding-boots, and a great flapped hat. He looked eagerly at the woman, his eyes shining in the glare of the lamp; but he did not speak until she had closed the door behind her. Then, "Is it right?" he whispered.