Shrewsbury Part 10

I suppose that there never was an abrupt change in the government of a nation more quietly, successfully, and bloodlessly carried through than our great Revolution. But it is the way of the pendulum to swing back; and it was not long before those who had been most deeply concerned in the event began to reflect and compare, nor, as they had before them the example of the Civil War and the subsequent restoration besides, and were persons bred for the most part in an atmosphere of Divine Right and pa.s.sive obedience (whether they had imbibed those doctrines or not), was it wonderful if a proportion of them began to repent at leisure what they had done in haste. The late King's harsh and implacable temper, and the severity with which he had suppressed one rising, were not calculated to rea.s.sure men when they began to doubt. The possibility of his return hung like a thick cloud over the more timid; while the favours which the new King showered on his Dutchmen, the degradation of the coin and of trade, and the many disasters that attended the first years of the new government were sufficient to shake the confidence and chill the hearts even of the stoutest and most patriotic.

So bad was the aspect of things that it was rumoured that King William would abdicate; and this aggravating the general uncertainty, many in high places spent their days in a dreadful looking forward to judgment; nor ever, I believe, slept without dreaming of Tower Hill, the axe, and the sawdust. The result that was natural followed. While many hastened to make a secret peace with St. Germain's, others, either as a matter of conscience or because they felt that they had offended too deeply, remained constant; but perceiving treachery in the air, and being in daily fear of invasion, breathed nothing but threats and slaughter against the seceders. This begot a period of plots and counter-plots, of perjury and intrigue, of denunciations and accusations real and feigned, such as I believe no other country has ever known; the Jacobites considering a restoration certain, and the time only doubtful; while the Whigs in their hearts were inclined to agree with them and feared the worst.

During seven such years I lived and worked with Mr. Brome; who, partly, I think, because he had come late to his political bearings, and partly because the Tories and Jacobites had a newswriter in the notorious Mr. Dyer--to whose letters Mr. Dryden, it was said, would sometimes contribute--remained steadfast in his Whig opinions; and did no little in the country parts to lessen the stir which the Nonjurors'

complaints created. I saw much of him and little of others; and being honestly busy and honourably employed--not that my style made any noise in the coffee-houses, which was scarcely to be expected, since it pa.s.sed for Mr. Brome's--I began to regard my life before I came to London as an ugly dream. Yet it had left me with two proclivities which are not common at the age which I had then reached; the one a love of solitude and a retired life, which, a matter of necessity at first, grew by-and-by into a habit; the other an averseness for women that amounted almost to a fear of them. Mr. Brome, who was a confirmed bachelor, did nothing to alter my views on either point, or to reconcile me to the world; and as my life was pa.s.sed between my attic in Bride Lane and his apartment in Fleet Street, where he had a tolerable library, few were better acquainted with public affairs or had less experience of private, than I; or knew more intimately the order of the signs and the aspect of the houses between the Fleet Prison and St. Dunstan's Church.

Partly out of fear, and partly out of a desire to be done with my former life, I made myself known to no one in Hertfords.h.i.+re; but, some five years after my arrival in London, having a sudden craving to see my mother, I walked down one Sunday to Epping. There making cautious enquiries of the Bishop Stortford carrier, I heard of her death, and on the return journey burst once into a great fit of weeping at the thought of some kind word or other she had spoken to me on a remembered occasion. But with this tribute to nature I dismissed my family, and even that good friend from my mind; going back to my lodging with a contentment which this glimpse of my former life wondrously augmented.

Of Mr. D---- or of the wicked woman who had deceived me I was not likely to hear; but there was one, and he the only stranger who _ante Londinium_ had shown me kindness, whose name my pen was frequently called on to transcribe, and whose fame was even in those days in all men's mouths. With a thrill of pleasure I heard that my Lord Shrewsbury had been one of the seven who signed the famous invitation: then that the King had named him one of the two Secretaries of State; and again after two years, during which his doings filled more and more of the public ear--so that he stood for the government--that he had suddenly and mysteriously resigned all his offices and retired into the country. Later still, in the same year, in the sad days which followed the defeat of Beachy Head, when a French fleet sailed the Channel, and in the King's absence, the most confident quailed, I heard that he had ridden post to Kensington to place his sword and purse at the Queen's feet; and, later still, 1694, when three years of silence had obscured his memory, I heard with pleasure, and the world with surprise, that he had accepted his old office, and stood higher than ever in the King's favour.

The next year Queen Mary died. This, as it left only the King's life between the Jacobites and a Restoration, increased as well their activity as the precautions of the government; whose most difficult task lay in sifting the wheat from the chaff and discerning between the fictions of a crowd of false witnesses (who thronged the Secretary's office and lived by this new trade) and the genuine disclosures of their own spies and informers. In the precarious position in which the government stood, ministers dared neglect nothing, nor even stand on scruples. In moments of alarm, therefore, it was no uncommon thing to close the gates and prosecute a house to house search for Jacobites; the most notorious being seized and the addresses of the less dangerous taken. One of these searches which surprised the city in the month of December, '95, had for me results so important that I may make it the beginning of a consecutive narrative.

I happened to be sitting in my attic that evening over a little coal fire, putting into shape some Whig reflections on the Coinage Bill; our newsletter tending more and more to take the form of a pamphlet. A frugal supper, long postponed, stood at my elbow, and the first I knew of the search that was afoot, a man without warning opened my door, which was on the latch, and thrust in his head.

Naturally I rose in alarm; and we stared at one another by the light of my one candle. Only the intruder's head and shoulders were in the room, but I could see that he wore bands and a ca.s.sock, and a great bird's nest wig, which overhung a beak-like nose and bright eyes.

"Sir," said he after a moment's pause, during which the eyes leaving me glittered to every part of the room, "I see you are alone, and have a very handy curtain there."

I gasped, but to so strange an exordium had nothing to say. The stranger nodded at that as if satisfied, and slowly edging his body into the room, disclosed to my sight the tallest and most uncouth figure imaginable. A long face ending in a tapering chin added much to the grotesque ugliness of his aspect; in spite of which his features wore a smirk of importance, and though he breathed quickly, like a man pressed and in haste, it was impossible not to see that he was master of himself.

And of me; for when I went to ask his meaning, he shot out his great under-lip at me, and showed me the long barrel of a horse pistol that he carried under his ca.s.sock. I recoiled.

"Good sir," he said, with an ugly grin, "'tis an argument I thought would have weight with you. To be short, I have to ask your hospitality. There is a search for Jacobites; at any moment the messengers may be here. I live opposite to you and am a Nonjuring clergyman liable to suspicion; you are a friend to Mr. Timothy Brome, who is known to stand well with the government. I propose therefore to hide behind the curtain of your bed. Your room will not be searched, nor shall I be found if you play your part. If you fail to play it--then I shall be taken; but you, my dear friend, will not see it."

He said the last words with another of his hideous grins, and tapped the barrel of his pistol with so much meaning that I felt the blood leave my cheeks. He took this for a proof of his prowess; and nodding, as well content, he stood a moment in the middle of the floor, and listened with the tail of his eye on me.

He had no reason to watch me, however, for I was unarmed and cowed; nor had we stood many seconds before a noise of voices and weapons with the trampling of feet broke out on the stairs, and at once confirmed his story and proved the urgency of his need. Apparently he was aware of the course things would take and that the constables and messengers would first search the lower floors; for instead of betaking himself forthwith to his place of hiding--as seemed natural--he looked cunningly round the chamber, and bade me sit down to my papers. "Do you say at once that you are Mr. Brome's writer," he continued with an oath, "and mark me well, my man. Betray me by a word or sign, and I strew your brains on the floor!"

After that threat, and though he went then, and hid his hateful face--which already filled me with fear and repugnance beyond words--behind the curtain, where between bed and wall, there was a slender s.p.a.ce, I had much ado to keep my seat and my self-control. In the silence which filled the room I could hear his breathing; and I felt sure that the searchers must hear it also when they entered.

a.s.sured that the Sancrofts and Kens, and the honest but misguided folk who followed them, did not carry pistols, I gave no credit to his statement that he was a Nonjuring parson; but deemed him some desperate highwayman or plotter, whose presence in my room, should he be discovered and should I by good luck escape his malice, would land me at the best in Bridewell or the Marshalsea. By-and-by the candle-wick grew long, and terrified at the prospect of being left in the dark with him, I went to snuff it. With a savage word he whispered me to let it be; after which I had no choice but to sit in fear and semi-darkness, listening to the banging of doors below, and the alternate rising and falling of voices, as the search party entered or issued from the successive rooms.

In my chamber with its four whitewashed walls and few sticks of furniture there was only one place where a man could stand and be unseen; and that was behind the curtain. There, I thought, the most heedless messenger must search; and as I listened to the steps ascending the last flight I was in an agony. I foresaw the moment when the constable would carelessly and perfunctorily draw the curtain--and then the flash, the report, the cry, the mad struggle up and down the room, which would follow.

So strong was this impression, that though I had been waiting minutes when the summons came and a hand struck my door, I could not at once find voice to speak. The latch was up, and the door half open when I cried "Enter!" and rose.

In the doorway appeared three or four faces, a couple of lanthorns, held high, and a gleam of pike-heads. "Richard Price, servant to Mr.

Brome, the newswriter," cried one of the visitors, reading in a sonorous voice from a paper.

"Well affected," answered a second--evidently the person in command.

"Brome is a good man. I know him. No one hidden here?"

"No," I said, with a loudness and boldness that surprised me.

"No lodger, my man?"

"None!"

"Right!" he answered. "Good-night, and G.o.d save King William!"

"Amen!" quoth I; and then, and not before, my knees began to shake.

However, it no longer mattered, for before I could believe that the danger was over they were gone and had closed the door; and I caught a sn.i.g.g.e.ring laugh behind the curtain. Still they had gone no farther than the stairs; I heard them knock on the opposite door and troop in there, and I caught the tones of a woman's voice, young and fresh, answering them. But in a minute they came out again, apparently satisfied, and crowded down stairs; whereon the man behind the curtain laughed again, and swaggering out, Bobadil-like, shook his fist with furious gestures after them.

"d.a.m.n your King William, and you too!" he cried in ferocious triumph.

"One of these days G.o.d will squeeze him like the rotten orange he is; and if G.o.d will not, I will! I, Robert Ferguson! Trot, for the set of pudding-headed blind-eyed moles that you are! Call yourselves constables! Bah! But as for you, my friend," he continued, turning to me and throwing his pistol with a crash on the table, "you have more s.p.u.n.k than I thought you had, and spoke up like a gentleman of mettle.

There is my hand on it!"

My throat was so dry that I could not speak, but I gave him my hand.

He gripped it and threw it from him with a boastful gesture, and stalking to the farther side of the room and back again, "There!"

cried he. "Now you can say that you have touched hands with Ferguson, the famous Ferguson, the Ferguson on whose head a thousand guineas have been set! Ferguson the Kingmaker, who defied three Kings and made three Kings and will yet make a fourth! Fire and furies, do a set of boozing tipstaves think to take the man who outwitted Jeffreys and slipped through Kirke's lambs?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "d.a.m.n YOUR KING WILLIAM, AND YOU TOO!" HE CRIED]

Hearing who he was, I stared at him in astonishment; but in astonishment largely leavened with fear and hatred; for I knew the reputation he enjoyed, and both what he had done, and of what he was suspected. That in all his adventures and intrigues he had borne a charmed life; and where Sidney and Russell, Argyle and Monmouth, Rumbold and Ayloffe had suffered on the scaffold, he had escaped scot free was one thing and certain; but that men accounted for this in strange ways was another scarcely less a.s.sured. While his friends maintained that he owed his immunity to a singular skill in disguise, his enemies, and men who were only so far his enemies as they were the enemies of all that was most base in human nature, a.s.serted that this had little to do with it, but went so far as to say that in all his plots, with Russell and with Monmouth, with Argyle and with Ayloffe, he had played booty, and played the traitor: and tempting men, and inviting men to the gibbet, had taken good care to go one step farther--and by betraying them to secure his own neck from peril!

CHAPTER XIII

Such was the man I saw before me; on whose face, as if heaven purposed to warn his fellows against him, malignant pa.s.sion and an insane vanity were so plainly stamped that party spirit must have gone to lengths, indeed, before it rendered men blind to his quality. His shambling gait seemed a fitting conveyance for a gaunt, stooping figure so awkward and uncouth that when he gave way to gesticulation it seemed to be moved by wires; yet, once he looked askance at you, face and figure were forgotten in the gleam of the eyes that, treacherous and cruel, leered at you from the penthouse of his huge, ill-fitting wig.

Nevertheless, I confess that, while I hated and loathed the man, he cowed me. His latest escape had intoxicated him, and astride on my table, or stalking the floor, he gave way to his vanity. Pouring out a flood of ribald threats and imaginings, he now hinted at the fate which had never failed to befall those who thwarted him; now he boasted of his cunning and his hundred intrigues, and now he touched, not obscurely, on some great design soon to be executed. His audacity, no less than his frankness, bewildered me; for if he did not tell me all, he told enough, were it true, to hang a man. Yet I soon found that he had method in his madness; for while I listened with a shamefaced air, hating him and meditating informing against him the moment I was freed from his presence, he turned on me with a hideous grin, and thrusting the muzzle of his pistol against my temple, swore with endless curses to slay me if I betrayed him.

"You will go to Brome to-morrow, as usual," he said. "The Whiggish old dotard, I could pluck out his inwards! And you will say not one word of Mr. Ferguson! For, mark me, sirrah d.i.c.k, alone or in company I shall be at your elbow, nor will all Cutts's guards avail to save you!

Do you mark me? Then d---- you, down on your knees! Down on your knees, you white-livered dog, and swear by the Gospels you will tell no living soul by tongue or pen that you have seen me."

He pressed the cold steel muzzle to my temple and I knelt and swore.

When it was done, he roared and jeered at me. "You see, I have my oath!" he cried, "as well as Little Hooknose! And no non-jurors! Now say 'Down with King William!'"

I said it.

"Louder! Louder!" he cried.

I could only comply.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE PRESSED THE RING OF COLD STEEL]

"Now, write it! Write it!" he continued, thrusting a piece of paper under my nose, and slapping his huge hand upon it. "I'll have it in black and white! Or write this--ha! ha! that will be better. Are you ready? Write, 'I hereby abjure my allegiance to Prince William.'"

"No," I said faintly, laying down the pen which I had taken up at his bidding. "I will not write it."