Shrewsbury Part 42

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 other is neither here nor there. For the rest, d.i.c.k, I live at Captain Gill's, and his wife claws me Monday and kisses me Tuesday."

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

"Three times," she answered, nodding soberly. "And to Tunbridge once. A woman pa.s.ses. 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 more womanly than in the old days, falling strangely.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHE LISTENED IN SILENCE, STANDING OVER ME WITH SOMETHING OF THE SEVERITY OF A JUDGE]

It wore such a look indeed, that I glanced over my shoulder thinking that 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 sh.o.r.e?" she cried, stepping back a pace--she had already risen, "And betrayed him?

d.i.c.k! d.i.c.k, don't say it!" she continued hurriedly, holding out her hands 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 winced a kind of courage, born of indignation and of a sense of injustice long endured, came to me; and I answered her with spirit. "No," I said, "I am not that man."

"No?" she cried.

"No!" I said defiantly. "If you mean the man that betrayed Sir John Fenwick. 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 look returning. And then, "d.i.c.k, don't lie to me!" she cried quickly.

"I have no need," I said. And with that, beginning at the beginning, I told her all the story which is written here, so far as it was not already known to her. She listened in silence, standing over me with something of the severity of a judge, until I came to the start from London with Matthew Smith.

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

"I know nothing," I said, holding out my hands and trembling with the excitement 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 and executed!"

"No."

"Nor that your master is in peril? You have not heard that Sir John has 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 all England is ringing--though it touches you of all men?"

"How should I?" I said feebly. "Who would tell me here? And for weeks I 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 I was received on board the boat, and never, until the following day, when Birkenhead flung it in my teeth, guessed that I had forestalled Sir John, and robbed him of his one chance of escape. "For if I had known," I continued warmly, "why should I fly from him? What had I to fear from him? Or what to gain, if Smith with a pistol were not at my heels, by leaving England? Gain?" I continued bitterly, seeing that I had convinced her. "What _did_ I gain? This! This!" And I touched my crippled leg.

"Thank G.o.d!" she said, with emotion. "Thank G.o.d, d.i.c.k. But----"

"But what!" I retorted sharply; for in the telling of the story I had come 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 on yourself in a measure? If you had been more--that is, I mean, if you had not been so----"

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

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

"There was a mist," I said.

She laughed in her odd way. "Of course, d.i.c.k, there was a mist," she agreed. "And you cannot make bricks without straw. And after all you did make bricks in St. James's Square, and it is not for me to find fault. But there is a thing to be done, and it must be done." And her lips closed firmly, after a fashion I remembered, and still remember, having seen it a hundred times since that day, and learned to humour it. "One that must be done!" she continued. "d.i.c.k, you will not leave the Duke to be ruined by Matthew Smith? You will not lie here and let those rogues work their will on him? Sir John has denounced him."

"And may denounce me!" I said, aghast at the notion. "May denounce me," I continued with agitation. "_Will_ denounce me. If it was not the 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? King William--call him Dutchman, boor, drunkard, as it's the fashion this side, 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 all over 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 him to 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, d.i.c.k!

For shame!" she continued with such a thrill in her voice that the pigeons feeding behind her fluttered up in alarm, and two or three nuns looked out inquisitively.

I had my own thoughts and my own feelings about my lord, as he well knew in after years. I challenge any to say that I lacked either respect or affection for him. But a man's wits move more slowly than a woman's, and the news came on me suddenly. It was no great wonder if I could not in a moment stomach the prospect of returning to risk and jeopardy, to the turmoil from which I had been so long freed, and the hazards of a life and death struggle. In the political life of twenty years ago men carried their necks to market. Knowing that I might save the Duke and suffer in his place--the fate of many a poor dependant; or might be confronted with Smith; or brought face to face with Ferguson; or perish before I reached London in the net in which my lord'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 with equanimity, or any but a harebrained girl would encounter with a light heart.

Still I desired to stand well with her; and that being so I confess that it was with relief I remembered my lameness; and named it to her.

Pa.s.sing over the harshness of her last words, "You are right," I said.

"Something should be done. But for me it is impossible at present. I am lame, as you see."

"Lame?" she cried.

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

"No, not a cripple," she answered.

"Yes," I said.

"No, d.i.c.k," she answered in a voice low, but so grave and firm that I winced. "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.