Shrewsbury Part 5

"My G.o.d!" I cried, horror-stricken.

"If not," she continued hardily, "you have taught me to read, and that may save my neck. I suppose I shall be sent to the plantations, to be beaten weekly, and work in the sun, and----"

"Four guineas!" I groaned.

"Yes, seven in all!" she answered with a sneer.

"Have you got them?"

"No, nor a groat!" I answered, overwhelmed by the discovery that instead of giving help she needed it. "Not a penny!"

"Then it must be got!" she answered fiercely. "It must be got!" and as she repeated the words, she dropped her mocking tone, and spoke with feverish energy. "It must be got, d.i.c.k!" and she seized my hands and held them. "It must be, and can be, if you have a spark of spirit, if you are not the poor mean thing I sometimes think you. Listen! Listen!

In the old man's room upstairs--the door is locked and double-locked, I have tried it--are sixty guineas, in a bag! Sixty guineas, in a drawer of the old bureau by the bed!"

"It is death," I cried feebly, recoiling from her as I spoke. "It is death! I dare not! I dare not do it!"

"Then we hang! We hang, man!" she answered fiercely. "You and I! Will it be better to hang for a lamb than a sheep? For seven guineas than for sixty?"

"But if we take it, what shall we be the better for it?" I said weakly. "He returns in the morning."

"By the morning, given the money, we shall be a score of miles away!"

she answered, flinging her arms round my neck, and hanging on my breast, while her hot breath fanned my cheek. No wonder I felt my brain reel, and my will melt. "Away from here, d.i.c.k," she repeated softly. "Away---and together!"

Yet I made an effort to withstand her. "You forget the door," I said.

"If the door is locked, and Mrs. Harris sleeps in the next room, how can it be done?"

"Not by the door, but by the window," she replied. "There is a ladder in the second garden from this; and the latch of the window is weak.

The old fool indoors sleeps like a hog. By eleven she will be sound.

And oh, d.i.c.k!" my mistress cried, breaking down on a sudden and s.n.a.t.c.hing my hands to her bosom, "will you see me shamed? Play the man for ten minutes only--for ten minutes only, and by morning we shall be safe, and far from here! And--and together, d.i.c.k! Together!"

Was it likely, I ask, was it possible that I should long resist pleading such as this? That holding her in my arms, in the warm summer night, with her hair on my breast, while the moon sailed overhead and a cricket chirped in the wall hard by--was it likely or possible, I say, that I should steel my heart against her; that I should turn from the cup of pleasure, who had tasted as yet so few delights, and drudged and been stinted all my life? Whose appet.i.te had known no daintier relish than the dull round of dumpling and bacon, or at the best salt meat and spinach; and who for sole companionship had been shut in, June days and December nights alike, with a band of mischievous boys, whom the ancients justly called _genus improb.u.m_. At any rate I did not; to my shame, great or small, according as I shall be harshly or charitably judged--I did not; but with a beating heart and choked voice, I gave my word and left her; and an hour later I crept down the creaking stairs for the last time, guilty and shivering, a bundle in my hand, and found her waiting for me in the old place.

I confess that the flurry of my spirits in this crisis was such as to disturb my judgment; and my pa.s.sion for my mistress being no longer of the higher kind, these two things may account for the fact that I felt no wonder or repulsion when she explained to me, coolly and in detail, where the bureau stood, and in what part of it lay the money; even adding that I had better bring away a pair of silver candlesticks which I should find in another place. By the time she had made these things clear to me, the favourable moment was come; the lights of the town had long been extinguished, and the house obscuring the moon cast a black shadow on the garden, that greatly seconded our movements. Yet for myself, and though all went well with us, I trembled at the faintest sound, and started if a leaf stirred; nay, to this day I willingly believe that the smallest trifle, a light at a window or a distant voice, would have deterred me from the adventure. But nothing occurred to hinder or alarm; and the darkness cloaking us only too effectually, and my accomplice directing me where to find the ladder, I fetched it, and with her help thrust it over the fence and climbed over after it.

This was a small thing, the worst being to come. The part of the garden under the wall of the house was paved; it was only with the greatest exertion therefore and the utmost care that we could raise the ladder on it without noise; and but for the surprising strength which Jennie showed, I doubt if we should have succeeded, my hands trembled so violently. In the end we raised it, however; the upper part fell lightly beside the second floor cas.e.m.e.nt, and Jennie whispered to me to ascend.

I had gone too far now to retreat, and I obeyed, and had mounted two steps, when I heard distinctly--the sound coming sharp and clear through the night--the shod hoof of a horse paw the ground, apparently in the road beyond the house. Scared by such a sound at such a time, I slid rapidly down into Jennie's arms. "Hush!" I cried. "Did you hear that? There is someone there!"

But angered by my sudden descent which had come near to knocking her down, she whispered in a rage that I was either the biggest fool or the poorest craven in the world. "Go up! Go up!" she continued fiercely, almost striking me in her excitement. "There are sixty guineas awaiting us up there--sixty guineas, man, and you budge, because a horse stirs."

"But what is it doing there?" I remonstrated. "A horse, Jennie--at this time of night!"

"G.o.d knows!" she answered. "What is it to us?"

Still I lingered a moment, unwilling to ascend; but hearing nothing, and thinking I might have been mistaken, I was ashamed to hang back longer, and I went up, though my legs trembled under me, and a bird darting suddenly out of the ivy glued me to the ladder by both hands, with the sweat standing out on my face. Alone, nothing on earth would have persuaded me to it; but with Jennie below I dared not flinch, and the latch of the window proving as weak as she had described it, in a moment the lattice swung open and I climbed over the sill.

Feeling the floor with my feet, I stood an instant in the dark stuffy room, and listened. It smelled strongly of herbs, on which account I hate that smell to this day. I could hear Mrs. Harris snoring next door; and the pendulum of the fine new clock on the stairs, which was Mrs. D----'s latest pride, was swinging to and fro regularly; and I knew that at the slightest alarm the house would be awake. But I had gone too far to recede; and though I feared and sweated, and at the touch of a hand must have screamed aloud, I went forward and groping my way across the floor, found the bureau, and tried the drawer.

It was locked, but crazily; and Jennie foreseeing the obstacle had given me a chisel. Inserting the point, I listened awhile to a.s.sure myself that all was quiet, and then with the resolution of despair forced the drawer open with a single wrench. Probably the noise was no great one, but to my ears it rang through the night loud as the crack of laden ice. I heard the sleeper in the next room cease her snoring and turn in the bed; and cowering down on the floor I gave up all for lost. But in a moment she began to breathe again, and encouraged by that and the silence in the house, I drew the drawer open, and feeling for the bag, discovered it, and clutching it firmly, turned to the window.

I found that Jennie had mounted the ladder, and was looking into the room, her hands on the sill, her head dark against the sky. "Have you got it?" she whispered, thrusting in her arm and groping for me. "Then give it me while you get the candlesticks. They are wrapped in flannel, and are under the bed."

I gave her the bag, which c.h.i.n.ked as it pa.s.sed from hand to hand; then I turned obediently, and groping my way to the bed which stood beside the bureau, I felt under it. I found nothing, but did not at once give up. The candlesticks might lie on the farther side, and accordingly I rose and climbed over the bed and tried again, pa.s.sing my hands through the flue and dust which had gathered under Mrs. D----'s best feather-bed.

How long I might have searched in the dark, and vainly, I cannot say; for my efforts were brought to a premature end by a dull thud that came to my ears apparently from the next room. Certain that it could be caused by nothing less than Mrs. Harris getting out of bed, I crawled out, and got to my feet in a panic, and stood in the dark quaking and listening; so terrified that I am sure if the good woman had entered at that moment, I should have fallen on my knees before her, and confessed all. Nothing followed, however; the house remained quiet; I heard no second sound. But my nerve was gone. I wanted nothing so much now as to be out of the place; not for a thousand guineas would I have stayed; and without giving another thought to the candlesticks, I groped my way to the window, and pa.s.sing one leg over the sill, felt hurriedly for the ladder.

I failed to find it, and tried again; then peering down called Jennie by name. She did not answer. A second time I called, and felt about with my foot; still without success. Then as it dawned upon me at last that the ladder was really gone, and I a prisoner, I thought of prudence no longer, but I called frantically, at first in a whisper, and then as loudly as I dared; called and called again, "Jennie!

Jennie!" And yet again, "Jennie!"

Still no answer came; but listening intently, in one of the intervals of silence, I caught the even beat of hoofs, receding along the road, and growing each moment less marked. They held me; scarcely breathing, I listened to them, until they died away in the distance of the summer night, and only the sharp insistent chirp of the cricket, singing in the garden below, came to my ears.

CHAPTER VII

How long I hung at the window, at one time stunned and stricken down by the catastrophe that had befallen me, and at another feeling frantically for the ladder which I had over and over again made sure was not there, I know no more than another; but only that after a time, first suspicion and then rage darted lightning-like through the stupor that clouded my mind, and I awoke to all the tortures that love outraged by treachery can feel; with such pangs and terrors added as only a faithful beast, bound and doomed and writhing under the knife of its master, may be supposed to endure.

For a while, it is true, imagining that Jennie, terrified by someone's approach, had lowered the ladder and withdrawn herself, and so would presently return to free me, I hoped against hope. But as minutes pa.s.sed, and yet more minutes, laden only with the cricket's even chirp, and the creepy rustling of the wind in the poplars, and still failed to bring her, the sound of retreating hoofs which I had heard recurred to my mind, with dreadful significance, and on the top of it a hundred suspicious circ.u.mstances; among which, as her sudden pa.s.sion when I had taken fright at the foot of the ladder, was not the least, so her avoidance of me during the last few days and her frequent absences from the house, spoken to by Mrs. Harris, had their weight.

In fine, by the light of her desertion after receiving the plunder, and while I sought the candlesticks--which I had now convinced myself were not there--many things obscure before, or to which I had wilfully shut my eyes--as her callousness, her greed, her recklessness--stood out plainly; while these again, being coolly considered, reflected so seriously on her, as to give her sudden departure the worst possible appearance, even in a lover's eyes. The days had been when I would not have believed such a thing of her at the mouth of an angel from Heaven. But much had happened since, to which my pa.s.sion had blinded me, temporarily only; so that it needed but a flash of searing light to make all clear, and convince me that she had not only left me, but left me trapped--I who had given up all and risked all for her!

In the first agony of pain and rage wrought by a conviction so horrible, I could think only of her treachery and my loss; and head to knees on the bare floor of the room, I wept as if my heart would break, or choked with the sobs that seemed to rend my breast. And little wonder, seeing that I had given her a boy's first devotion, and that of all sins ingrat.i.tude has the sharpest tooth! But to this paroxysm, when I had nearly exhausted myself, came an end and an antidote in the shape of urgent fear; which suddenly flooding my soul, roused me from my apathy of grief, and set me to pacing the room in a dreadful panic, trying now the door and now the window. But on both my attacks were in vain, the former being locked and resisting the chisel, while the latter hung thirty feet above the paved yard.

Thus caught and snared, as neatly as any bird in a springe, I had no resource but in my wits; and for a time, as I had nothing of which I could form a rope, I busied myself with the expedient of throwing out the featherbed and leaping upon it. But when I had dragged it to the window, and came to measure the depth, I recoiled, as the most desperate might, from the leap; and softly returning the bed to its place, I fell to biting my nails, or fitfully roamed from place to place, according as despair or some new hope possessed me.

In one or other of these moods the dawn found me; and then in a surprisingly short time I heard the dreaded sounds of life awaken round me, and creeping to the window I closed it, and crouched down on the floor. Presently Mrs. Harris began to stir, and a boy walked whistling shrilly across the adjacent yard; and then--strangest of all things, and not to be invented--in the crisis of my fate, with the feet of those who must detect me almost on the stairs, I fell asleep; and awoke only when a key grated in the lock of the room, and I started up to find Mr. D---- in the doorway staring at me, and behind him a crowd of piled-up faces.

"Why, Price?" he cried, with a look of stupefaction, as he came slowly into the room, "what is the meaning of this?"

Then I suppose my shame and guilty silence told him, for with a sudden scowl and an oath he strode to the bureau and dragged out the drawer.

A glance showed him that the money was gone, and shouting frantically to those at the door to keep it--to keep it, though they were half-a-dozen to one!--he clutched me by the breast of my coat, and shook me until my teeth chattered.

"Give it up," he cried, spluttering with rage. "Give it up, you beggar's brat! Or, by heaven, you shall hang for it."

But as I had nothing to give up, and could not speak, I burst into tears; which with the odd part I had played in staying in the room to be taken, and perhaps my youth and innocent air, aroused the neighbours' surprise; who, crowding round, asked him solicitously what was missing. He answered after a moment's hesitation, sixty guineas.

One had already clapped his hands over my clothes, and another had forced my mouth open; but on this they desisted, and stood, full of admiration.

"He cannot have swallowed that," said the most active, gaping at me.

"No, that is certain. But what beats me," said another, looking round, "is how he got here."

"To say nothing of why he stayed here!" replied the former.

"I'll tell you what," quoth a third, shaking his head. "There is some hocus-pocus in this. And I should not wonder, neighbours, if the Catholics were at the bottom of it!"

The theory appeared to commend itself to more than one--for they were all of the fanatical party; but it was swept to the winds by the entrance of Mrs. D----, who having heard of robbery, came in like a whirlwind, her face on fire, and made no more ado, but rushed upon me, and tore and slapped my cheeks with all her might, crying with each blow, "You nasty thief, will that teach you better manners? That for your roguery! and that! Oh, you jail bird, I'll teach you!"

How long she would have continued to chastise me I cannot say, but her husband presently stepped in to protect me, and being thoroughly winded, she let me go pretty willingly. But when she learned, having hitherto been under the impression that I had been seized in the act with the money upon me, that the latter could not be found, her face turned yellow and she sat down in a chair.