Shrewsbury Part 11

"You _will_ write it!" he answered in a terrible tone. "And within a very few seconds. Write it at once, sirrah! 'I hereby abjure my allegiance to Prince William!'"

I wrote it with a shaking hand, after a glance at the pistol muzzle.

"And swear that I regard King James as my lawful sovereign. And I undertake to obey the rules of the St. Germain's Club, and to forward its interests. Good! Now sign it."

I did so.

"Date it," cried the tyrant; and when I had done so he s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from me and flourished it in the air, "There is my pa.s.sport!"

quoth he, with an exultant laugh. "When I am taken that will be taken, and when that is taken the worse for Mr. Richard Price if he is taken.

He will taste of the hangman's lash. So! You are a clever fellow, Richard Price, but Robert Ferguson is your master, as he has been better men's!"

The man was so much in love with cruelty, that even when he had gained his point he could not bear to give up the pleasure of torturing me; and for half an hour he continued to flout and jeer at me, sometimes picturing my fate if the paper fell into the Secretary's hands, and sometimes threatening me with his pistol, and making sport of my alarm. At last, reluctantly, and after many warnings of what would happen to me if I informed, he took himself off; and I heard him go into the opposite rooms, and slam the door.

Be sure I was not long in securing mine after him! I was in a pitiable state of terror; shaking at thought of the man's return, and in an ague when I considered the power over me, which the paper I had signed gave him. I could hardly believe that, in so short a time, anything so dreadful had happened to me! Yet it were hard to say whether, with all my terror, I did not hate him more than I feared him; for though at one time my heart was water when I thought of betraying him, at another it glowed with rage and loathing, and to spite him, and to free myself from him, I would risk anything. And as I was not wanting in foresight, and could picture with little difficulty the slavery in which he would hold me from that day forward--and wherein his cruel spirit would delight--it was the latter mood that prevailed with me, and determined my action when morning came.

Reflecting that I could expect no mercy from him, but had little to fear from the Government, if I told my tale frankly, I determined at all risks to go to the Secretary. I would have done so, the moment I rose, the thought that at any moment he might burst in upon me keeping me in a cold sweat; but I was prudent enough to abide by my habits, and refrain from antic.i.p.ating by a second the hour at which it was my custom to descend. I waited in the utmost trepidation, therefore, until half-past seven, when with a quaking heart, but a mind made up, I ventured down to the street.

It was barely light, but the coffee-houses were open, and between early customers to these, and barbers pa.s.sing with their curling tongs, and milkmen and hawkers plying morning wares, and apprentices setting out their masters' goods, the ways were full and noisy; so that I had no reason to fear pursuit, and in the hubbub gained courage the farther I left my oppressor behind me. Nevertheless, I took the precaution of going first to Mr. Brome's, opposite St. Dunstan's; and pa.s.sing in there, as was my daily custom, lingered a little in the entry. When by this ruse I had made a.s.surance doubly sure, I slipped out, and went through the crowded Strand to Whitehall.

Mr. Brome had a species of understanding with the Government; and on one occasion being ill, had made me his messenger to the Secretary's.

I knew the place therefore, but none the less gave way to timidity when I saw the crowd of ushers, spies, tipstaves, and busybodies that hung about the door of the office, and took curious note of everyone who went in or out. My heart failed me at the sight, and I was already more than half inclined to go away, my business undone, when someone touched my sleeve, and I started and turned. A girl still in her teens, with a keen and pinched face, and a handkerchief neatly drawn over her head, handed a note to me.

"For me?" I asked.

"Yes," said she.

I took it on that and opened it, my hands shaking. But when I read the contents, which were these--"Mr. Robert Ferguson's respects to the Secretary, and he has to-day changed his lodging. He will to-morrow be pleased to supply the bearer's character"--I thought I should have fallen to the ground. Nor was my alarm the less for the reflection which immediately arose in my mind that the note had of necessity been written and despatched before I left Mr. Brome's door; and consequently before I had taken any step towards the execution of my design!

Still, what I held was but a piece of paper bearing a message from a man proscribed, who dared not show his face where I stood. A word to the doorkeepers and I might even now go in and lay my information. But the man's omniscience cowed my spirit, terrified me, and broke me down. a.s.sured after this, that whatever I did or wherever I went he would know and be warned in time, and I gain by my information nothing but the name of a gull or a cheat, I turned from the door. Then seeing that the girl waited, "There is no answer," I said.

"Will you please to go to the gentleman?" quoth she.

My jaw dropped. "G.o.d forbid!" I said, beginning to tremble.

"I think you had better," said she.

And this time there was that in her voice roused doubts in me and made me waver--lest what I had done prove insufficient, and he betray me, though I refrained from informing. Sullenly, therefore, and after a moment's thought, I asked her where he was.

"I am not to tell you," she answered. "You can come with me if you please."

"Go on," I said.

She cast a sharp glance at the group about the office, then turned, and walking rapidly north by Charing Cross led me through St. Martin's Lane and Bedford Bury to Covent Garden. Skirting this, she threaded Hart Street and Red Lion Court, and crossing Drury Lane conducted me into Lincoln's Inn Fields, where she turned sharply to the left and through Ralph Court to the Turnstile. Seeing that she lingered here and from time to time looked back, I fancied that we were near our destination; but starting afresh, she led me along Holborn and through Staple Inn. Presently it struck me that we were near Bride Lane, and I cried "He is in my room?"

"Yes," she said gravely, and without explanation. "If he pleases you will find him there." And without more she signed to me to go on, and disappeared herself in the mouth of an alley by Green's Rents.

It did please him. When I entered with the air, doubtless, of a whipped hound, I found him sitting on my table swinging his legs and humming an air; and with so devilish a look of malice and triumph on his face as sent my heart into my boots. Notwithstanding, for a while it was his humour not to speak to me but to leer at me askance out of the corner of his eyes, and keep me on tenterhooks, expecting what he would say or do; and this he maintained until he had finished his tune, when with a grin he asked after his friend the Secretary.

"Was it Trumball you saw, or the new Duke?" said he; and when I did not answer he roared out an oath, and s.n.a.t.c.hing up the pistol which lay on the table beside him, levelled it at me. "Answer, will you? Do you think that I am to speak twice to such uncovenanted dirt as you?

Whom did you see?"

"No one," I stammered, trembling.

"And why not?" he cried. "And why not, you sp.a.w.n of Satan?"

"I received your note," I said.

"Oh, you received my note!" he whimpered, dropping his voice and mocking my alarm. "Your lords.h.i.+p received my note, did you? And if you had not got my note, you would have informed, would you? You would have informed and sent me to the gallows, would you? Answer! Answer, or----"

"Yes!" I cried in an agony of terror; for he was bringing the pistol nearer and nearer to my face, while his finger toyed with the trigger, and at any moment might press it too sharply.

"So! And you tell me that to my face, do you?" he answered, eyeing me so truculently, that I held up my hands and backed to the door. "You dare tell me that, do you? Come here, sirrah!"

I hesitated.

"Come here!" he cried. "Or by ---- I will shoot you! For the last time, come here!"

I went nearer.

"Oh, but I would like to see you in the boot!" he said. "It would be the finest sight! It would not need a turn of the screw to make you cry out! And mind you," he continued, suddenly seizing my ear in his great hand, and twisting it until I screamed, "in a boot of some kind or other I shall have you--if you play me false! Do yon understand, eh? Do you understand, you sheep in wolf's clothing?"

"Yes!" I cried. "Yes, yes!" He had forced me to my knees, and brought his cruel sneering face close to mine.

"Very well. Then get up--if you have learned your lesson. You have had one proof that I know more than others. Do not seek another. But, umph--where have I seen you before. Master Trembler?"

I said humbly, my spirit quite broken, that I did not know.

"No?" he answered, staring at me with his face puckered up. "Yet somewhere I have. And some day I shall call it to mind. In the meantime--remember that you are my slave, my dog, my turnspit, to fetch or carry, cry or be merry at my will. You will sleep or wake, go or come as I bid you. And so long as you do that--Richard Price, you shall live. But on the day you play me false, or whisper my name to living soul--on that day, or within the week, you will hang! Do you hear, hang, you Erastian dog! Hang, and be carrion: with Ayloffe, and many another good man, that would stint me, and take no warning!"

CHAPTER XIV

Alas, the secret subjection into which I fell from that day onwards, to a man who knew neither pity nor scruple--and wielded his power with the greater enjoyment and the less remorse for the piquant contrast it afforded to his position, as a proscribed and hunted traitor, in hiding for his life--exceeded all the antic.i.p.ations of it which I had entertained. Having his favourite lodging in the rooms opposite mine, he was ready, when the cruel humour seized him, to sally forth and mock and torment me; while the privacy of his movements and the number of his disguises (whence it arose that I never knew until I saw him whether he was there or not) kept me in a state of suspense and misery well nigh intolerable. Yet such was the spell of fear under which he had contrived to lay me--he being a violent and dangerous man and I no soldier--and so crafty were the means, no less than the art, by which he gradually wound a chain about me, that in spite of my hatred I found resistance vain; and for a long time, and until a _deus ex machina_, as the ancients say, appeared on the scene, saw no resource but to bear the yoke and do his bidding.

He had one princ.i.p.al mode of strengthening his hold upon me; which stood the higher in his favour, as besides effecting that object and rendering me serviceable, it amused him with the spectacle of my alarms. This consisted in the employing me in his treasonable designs: as by sending me with letters and messages to Sam's Coffeehouse, or to the Dog in Drury Lane, or to more private places where the Jacobites congregated; by making me a go-between to arrange meetings with those of his kidney who dared not stir abroad in daylight, and came and went between London and the coast of France under cover of night; or lastly, by using me to drop treasonable papers in the streets, or fetch the same from the secret press, in a court off St. James's, where they were printed.

He took especial delight in imposing this last task upon me, and in depicting, when I returned fresh from performing it, the penalties to which I had rendered myself liable. It may occur to some that when I pa.s.sed through the streets with such papers in my hands I had an easy way out of my troubles; and could at any moment by conveying the letters to the Secretary's office procure the tyrant's arrest, and my own freedom. But besides the fact that his frequent change of lodging, his excellent information, and the legion of spies who served him, rendered it doubtful whether with the best will in the world the messengers would find him where I had left him, he frequently boasted--and the boast, if unfounded, added to my distrust of all with whom I came into contact--that the very tipsters and officers were in his pay, and that Cutts himself dared not arrest him! Besides, I more than suspected that often the letters he gave me were blank, and the errands harmless: and that the one and the other were feigned only for the purpose of trying me, or out of pure cruelty--to the end that when I returned he might describe with gusto the process of hanging, drawing, and quartering, and gloat over the horror with which I listened to his relation; a practice which he carried to such an extent as more than once to reduce me to tears of rage and anguish.

Such was my life at home, where if my tyrant was not always at my elbow I was every hour obnoxious to his appearance; for early in our connection he forbade me to lock my door. Abroad I was scarcely more easy, seeing that, besides an impression I had that wherever I went I was dogged, there was scarcely an item of news which it fell to my lot to record that did not throw me into a panic. One day it would be Mr.

Bear arrested on a charge of high treason, and in possession of I knew not what compromising letters: another, the suicide in the Temple of a gentleman to whom I myself had a week earlier taken a letter, and who had in my presence let fall expressions which led me to think him in the same evil case with me. Another day it would be an announcement that the Government had discovered a new Conspiracy; or that letters going for France had been seized in Romney Marshes; or that the Lancas.h.i.+re witnesses were speaking more candidly; or that Dr. Oates had been taken up and held to bail for a misdemeanour. All these and many other rumours punished me in turn; and filling my mind with the keenest apprehensions, must in a short time have rendered my life intolerable.

As it was, Mr. Brome, within a month, saw so great a change in me that he would have me take a holiday; advising me to go afield either to my relations, or to some village on the Lea, to which neighbourhood Mr.

Izaak Walton's book had given a reputation exceeding its deserts. He reinforced the advice with a gift of two guineas, that I might spend the month royally; then in a great hurry added an injunction that I should not waste the money. But I did worse; for I had the simple folly to tell the whole by way of protest and bitter complaint to my other master; who first with a grin took from me the two guineas, and then made himself merry over the increased time I could now place at his disposal.

"And it is timely, d.i.c.k, it is timely," he said with ugly pleasantry.