Shrewsbury Part 4

Then, when it was too late, I took fright; recognising him for a gentleman of a good estate in the neighbourhood, who had two sons at Mr. D----'s school, and enjoyed great influence with my master, he being by far the most important of his patrons. As he belonged to the fanatical party, and in common with most of that sect had been a violent Exclusionist, I as little expected to see him in that company, as he to see me. But whereas he was his own master, and besides was there--this I learned afterwards--to rescue a young relative, while I had no such excuse, he had nothing to fear and I all. I found myself, therefore, ready to sink with confusion; and even when he repeated his challenge could find no words in which to answer.

"Very well," he said, nodding grimly at that. "Perhaps Mr. D---- may be able to answer me. I shall take care to visit him to-morrow, sir, and learn whether he is aware how his usher employs his nights. Good evening."

So saying, he left me horribly startled, and a prey to apprehensions, which were not lessened by the guilt, that already lay on my conscience in another and more serious matter. For such is the common course of ill-doing; to plunge a man, I mean, deeper and deeper in the mire. I now saw not one ridge of trouble only before me, but a second and a third; and no visible way of escape from the consequences of my imprudence. To add to my fears, the gentleman on leaving me joined the same courtier who had spoken to Dorinda on the occasion of our former visit, and who had just come out; so that to my prepossessed mind nothing seemed more probable than that the latter would tell him in whose company he had seen me and the details of our adventure. As a fact, it was from this person's clutches my master's patron was here to rescue his nephew. But I did not know this; and seeking in my panic to be rea.s.sured, I asked a servant beside me who the stranger was.

"He?" he said. "Oh, he is a gentleman from the Temple. Been playing with him?" and he looked at me, askance.

"No," I said.

"Oh," he replied, "the better for you."

"But what is his name?" I urged.

"Who does not know Mat. Smith, Esquire, of the Temple, is a country b.o.o.by--and that is you!" the man retorted quickly; and went off laughing. Still this, seeing that I did not know the name, relieved me a little; and the next moment I was aware of Dorinda waiting for me at the door. Deducing from the smile that played on her countenance the happiest omens of success, I forgot my other troubles in the relief which this promised; and I sprang to meet her. Guiding her as quickly as I could through the crowd, I asked her the instant I could find voice to speak, what luck she had had.

"What luck?" she cried; and then pettishly, "there, clumsy! you are pulling me into that puddle. Have a care of my new shoes, will you?

What luck, did you say? Why, none!"

"What? You have not lost?" I exclaimed, standing still in the road; and it seemed to me that my heart stood still also.

"Yes, but I have!" she answered hardily.

"All?" I groaned.

"Yes, all! If you call two guineas all," she replied carelessly. "Why, you are not going to cry for two guineas, baby, are you?"

CHAPTER VI

But I was going to cry and did, breaking down like a child; and that not so much at the thought of the desperate strait to which she had brought me--though this was no other than the felon's dock, with the prospect of disgrace, and to be whipped or burned in the hand, at the best, and if I had my benefit--but at the sudden conviction, which came upon me, perfect and overwhelming, that my mistress, for whom I had risked so much, did not love me! In no other way, and on no other theory, could I explain callousness so complete, thoughtlessness so cruel! Nor did her next words tend to heal the mischief, or give me comfort.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, flouncing from me with impatient contempt, and walking on the other side of the way, "if you are going to be a cry-baby, thank you for nothing! I thought you were a man!" And she began to hum an air.

"My G.o.d! I don't think you care!" I sobbed, aghast at her insensibility.

"Care?" she retorted indifferently, swinging her visor in her hand.

"For what?"

"For me! Or for anything!"

With a coolness that appalled me, she finished the verse she was humming; then, "Your finger hurts, therefore you are going to die!"

she said, with a sneer. "You see the fire and therefore you must be burned. Why, you have the courage of a hen! A flea! A mouse! You are not worthy the name of a man."

"I am man enough to be hanged," I answered miserably.

"Hanged?" quoth she, quite cheerfully. "Do you think that man was ever hanged for three guineas?"

"Ay, scores," I said, "and for less!"

"Then they must have been cravens like you!" she retorted, perfectly well satisfied with her answer. "And spun their own ropes. Come, silly, cheer up! A great many things may happen in a week! And if that vixen is back under a week, I will eat her!"

"A week won't make three guineas," I said dolefully.

"No, but a good heart will," she rejoined. "And not three but thirty!

Only," she continued, looking askance at me, "you have not the spirit of a man. You are just Tumbledown d.i.c.k, as they say, and as well named as nine-pence!"

It seemed inconceivable to me that she could jest so merrily and carry herself so gaily, after such a loss; and I stopped short in sudden hope and new-born expectation; and peered at her, striving to read her thoughts. "I don't believe you have lost them!" I exclaimed at last.

"Every groat, d.i.c.k!" she answered, curtly--yet still in the best of spirits. "Never doubt that!"

On which it was not wonderful that my disappointment and her cheerfulness agreed so ill, that we came to bitter words, and beginning by calling one another "Thankless," and "Clutch-penny," rose presently to "Fool," and "Jade"; and eventually parted on the latter at the garden fence; where Dorinda, so far from lingering as on the former night, flounced from me in a pa.s.sion, and left me without a single word of regret. How miserably after that I stole to bed, and how wakefully I tossed in the close garret, I cannot hope to convey to my readers; suffice it that a hundred times I cursed the folly that had led me to ruin, a hundred times went hot and cold at thought of the dock and the gallows; and yet amid all found in Dorinda's heartlessness the sharpest pain. I felt sure now, and told myself continually, that she had never loved me; therefore--at the time it seemed to follow--I deemed my own love at an end and cast her off; and heaping the sharpest reproaches on her head, found my one sweet consolation--whereat I wept miserably--in composing a last dying speech and confession that should soften at length that obdurate bosom, and break that unfeeling heart.

But with the day, and the rising to imminent terrors and hourly fear of detection, came first regret, then self-reproach--lest I too should be somewhat in fault--then a revival of pa.s.sion; lastly, a frantic yearning to be reconciled to the only person to whom I could speak freely, or who knew the danger and strait in which I stood. My heart melting like water at the thought, I was ready to do anything or say anything, to abase myself to any depth, in order to regain her favour and have her advice; and the absence of Mr. and Mrs. D----, and Mrs.

Harris's easiness rendering it a matter of no difficulty to seek her, in the course of the afternoon I took my courage in my hands and went into the next house. There I found only Mrs. Harris.

"The little s.l.u.t has stepped out," she said, looking up from the pot over which she was stooping. "She asked leave for half an hour and has been gone an hour. But it is the way of the wenches all the world over. Do you beware of them, Mr. Price," she continued, eyeing me, and laughing jollily.

I made some trifling answer; and returning to my own domain, with all the pangs of loneliness added to those of terror, sat down in the dingy, dreary taskroom and abandoned myself to bitter forebodings. She did not, she never could have loved me! I knew it and felt it now. Yet I must think of her or go mad. I must think of her or of the cart and cord; and so, through the hours that followed, I had only eyes for the next garden, and ears for her voice. The boys and their chattering, and the necessity I was under of playing my part before them, well-nigh mastered me. For, at any hour, on any day, while I sat there among them, Mr. and Mrs. D---- might return, and the loss be discovered; and yet, and though time was everything, all the efforts I made to see Jennie or get speech with her failed; and of myself I seemed to be unable to think out any plan or way of escape.

I am sure that the most ascetic, could he have weighed the tortures of those four days during which I sat surrounded by the boys, and now making frantic efforts to appear myself, now sunk in a staring, pale-faced lethargy of despair, would have deemed them a punishment more than commensurate with my guilt. The unusual air of peace and quietness with which Mrs. D----'s absence invested the school had no more power to soothe me than the presence of Mrs. Harris, nodding over her plain-st.i.tch in the next garden, availed to banish the burning gusts of fear that at times parched my skin. At length, on the fifth day, the immediate warning of coming judgment arrived in the shape of a letter announcing that my employer would return (D.V.) by the night waggon, which in the ordinary course was due to reach Ware about six next morning.

At that I could stand the strain no longer, but flinging appearance and deception to the winds, I rose from the cla.s.s I was pretending to teach, and in a disorder I made no effort to suppress, followed Mrs.

Harris; who, having declared the news, was already waddling back to the next house. She started at sight of me in her train--as she well might, for it was the busiest time of the day; then asked if anything ailed me.

"No," I said. "I want a word with Jennie."

"Do you?" quoth she, looking hard at me. "So, it would seem, do a good many young fellows. She is a nice handful if ever there was one."

"Why?" I stammered.

"Why?" she answered in a tone very sharp for her. "Why, because--but what have you to do with Jennie, young man?"

"Nothing," I said.

"Then have nothing," she answered promptly, and shook her sides at her sharpness. "That is no puzzle! And as it is no more than half-past ten, and I hear your boys rampaging like so many wild Irishmen--suppose you go back to them, young man!"

I obeyed; but whatever effect her warning might have had earlier--and I shrewdly suspect that it would have affected me as much as water affects a duck's back--it came too late; my one desire now being to see the girl, even as my one hope lay in her advice. Nine had struck that evening, however, and night had fallen, and I grown fairly sick with fear, before my efforts were rewarded, and stealing into the garden on a last desperate search--I think for the twentieth time--I came on her standing in the dusk, beside the fence where I had so often met her.

I sprang to her side, relief at my heart, reproaches on my lips; but it was only to recoil at sight of her face, grown hard and old and pinched, and for the moment almost ugly. "Why, child!" I cried, forgetting my own trouble. "What is it?"

She laughed without mirth, looking at me strangely. "What do you suppose?" she said huskily, and I could see that fear was on her. "Do you think that you are the only one in danger?"

"How?" I exclaimed.

"How?" she replied in a tone of mockery. "Why, do you suppose that stockings and shoes are the only things that cost money? Or that vizor masks, and gloves and hoods grow on bushes? Briefly, fool, if you can give me four guineas, I am saved. If not----"