Shrewsbury Part 13

At that I do not think that I ever saw a man in such a rage.

Fortunately he did not turn it on me; but for two or three minutes he cursed and swore, bit things and foamed at the mouth, trampled on his wig and raged up and down, like nothing so much as a madman; while the imprecations he uttered against his enemies were so horrible I feared to stay with him. At length it seemed to occur to him that the man who could send such a message to him, Ferguson, the great Ferguson, the Ferguson with a thousand guineas on his head, must be a very great man indeed: which while it consoled him in some measure, excited his curiosity in another and inordinate degree. He hastened to put to me a number of questions, as, what were the two like? And did the one pay the other respect? And how were they dressed? And had either a ribbon or a star? And though in answer I could tell him no more than that the youngest was extremely tall and slight, under thirty, and of an easy carriage and bearing, and in appearance the leader, it was enough for him; he presently cried out that he had it, and slapped his thigh.

"Gad! It is Jamie Churchill!" he cried. "It's Berwick, stop my vitals!

He had a villainous French accent, had he not?"

"Something of the kind," I answered. Adding with as much of a sneer as I dared, "If it was not a Scotch one, sir."

He took the gibe and scowled at me--he spoke always like a Sawney, and could never pa.s.s for English; but in his pleasure at the discovery he had made he let the word pa.s.s. "See, man!" he said, "there are fine times coming! It is like Monmouth's day over again. I'll warrant Hunt's, down in the Marshes, is like a penny ferry with their coming over. The fat is fairly in the fire now, and if we do not singe little Hooknose's wig for him, I'll hang for it! He is a better man than his father, is Jamie; ay, the very same figure of a man that his cold-blooded, grease-your-boots, and sell-you-for-a-groat uncle, John Churchill, was at his age! So Jamie is over! Well, well: and if we knew precisely where he was and where he lies nights--there are two ways about it! Ye-es! Ye-es!" And the old rogue, falling first into a drawl and then into silence, looked at me slyly, and, unless I was mistaken, began to ruminate on a new treason; rubbing now one calf and now the other, and now dressing his ragged wig with his fingers, as he continued to smile at his wicked thoughts; so that, as he sat there, one leg over the other knee, he was the veriest baldheaded Judas to be conceived. In the meantime I watched him and hated him, and, I thought, read him.

Whatever the scheme in his mind, however, and whether he was, as I expected, as ready to sell the Duke of Berwick as to plot with him, he said no more to me on the subject; but presently went to his own room.

Thus left, I thought it high time to consider where I stood, being all of a tremble and twitter with what I had heard and seen; and I tossed through the night, fearfully sounding the depths in which I found myself, and striving to gain strength to battle with the stream that day by day was forcing me farther and farther from the land. I was no boy or fool, unaware of the danger of being mixed up with great men and great names; rather the ten years during which I had followed public affairs had presented me with only too many examples of the iron pot and clay pitcher. When, therefore, I slept at last, late in the evening, it was to dream of the sledge and Tyburn road and the Ordinary--who bore in my dream a marvellous likeness to Mr. Brome--and a wall of faces that lined the way and never ceased from St. Giles's Pound to the Edgeware Road.

Such a dream, taken with my night's thoughts, left me eager to put in execution a plan I had more than once considered; which was to give up all, to fly from London, and hiding myself in some quiet place under another name, to live as I best might until Ferguson's capture, or a change in the state of affairs freed me from danger. At a distance from him I might even gain courage to inform against him; but this I left for future decision, the main thing now being to pack my clothes, secure about me the money I had saved, which amounted to thirty guineas, and escape from the town on foot or in a stage-wagon without any of his myrmidons being the wiser.

To adopt this course was to lose Mr. Brome's friends.h.i.+p and the livelihood which his employment provided; but such was the fear I had conceived of Ferguson's schemes and the perils they involved that I scarcely hesitated. Before noon, an hour which I thought least open to suspicion, I had engaged a porter and bidden him wait below, had made all my other arrangements, and in five minutes I should have been safe in the streets with my face set towards Kensington--when, at the last moment, there came a tap at my door and a voice asked if I was in.

It was not an hour at which Ferguson had ever troubled me, and trusting to this I had not been careful to hide the signs of removal which my room presented. For a moment I hung over my trunk, panic-stricken; then the door opened, and admitted the girl who had intervened once before--I mean at the door of the Secretary's office--and whom I had since noticed, but not often, going in at the opposite rooms.

She curtseyed demurely, standing in the doorway, and said that Mr.

Smith--which was one of the names by which Ferguson went--had sent her to me with a message.

"Yes," I said, forcing myself to speak.

"Would you please to wait on him this evening at eight," she answered.

"He wishes to speak with you."

"Yes," I said again, helplessly a.s.senting; and there was an end of my fine evasion. I took it for a warning, and my clothes from my mail; and going down paid the porter a groat, and received in return a dozen porter's oaths. And so dismissed him and my plan together.

CHAPTER XV

It must be confessed that after that it was with a sore shrinking and foreboding of punishment I prepared to obey Mr. Ferguson's summons, and at the hour he had fixed knocked at his door. Hitherto he had always come to me; and even so and on my own ground I had suffered enough at his hands. What I had to expect, therefore, when entirely in his power I failed to guess, but on that account felt only the greater apprehension; so that it was with relief I recognised, firstly, as soon as I crossed the threshold, a peculiar neatness and cleanliness in the rooms, as if Ferguson at home were something different from Ferguson abroad; and secondly, that he was not alone, but entertained a visitor.

Neither of these things, to be sure, altered his bearing towards me, or took from the brutality with which it was his humour to address me; but as his opening words announced that the visitor's business lay with me, they relieved me from my worst apprehension--namely, that I was to be called to account for the steps I had taken to escape; at the same time that they amused me with the hope of better treatment, since no man could deal with me worse than he had.

"This is your man!" the plotter cried, lying back in his chair and pointing to me with the pipe he was smoking. "Never was such a brave conspirator! Name a rope and he will sweat! For my part, I wish you joy of him. Here, you, sirrah," he continued, addressing me, "this gentleman wishes to speak to you, and, mind you, you will do what he tells you, or----"

But at that the gentleman cut him short with a deprecating gesture.

"Softly, Mr. Ferguson, softly!" he said, and rose and bowed to me.

Then I saw that he was the last comer of the three I had met in Covent Garden; and the one who had dismissed me. "You go too fast," he went on, smiling, "and give our friend here a wrong impression of me. Mr.

Taylor, I----"

But it was Ferguson's turn to take him up, which he did with a boisterous laugh. "Ho! Taylor! Taylor!" he cried in derision. "No more Taylor than I am haberdasher! The man's name----"

"Is whatever he pleases," the stranger struck in, with another bow. "I neither ask it nor seek to know it. Such things between gentlemen and in these times are neither here nor there. It is enough and perhaps too much that I came to ask you to do me a favour and a service, Mr.

Taylor, both of which are in your power."

He spoke with a politeness which went far to win me, and the farther for the contrast it afforded to Ferguson's violence. With his appearance I was not so greatly taken; finding in it, though he was dressed well enough, clearer signs of recklessness than of discretion, and plainer evidences of hard living than of charity or study. But perhaps the prayer of such a man, when he stoops to pray, is the more powerful. At any rate I was already half gained, when I answered; asking him timidly what I could do for him.

"Pay a call with me," said he lightly. "Neither more than that, nor less."

I asked him on whom we were to call.

"On a lady," he answered, "who lives at the other end of the town."

"But can I be of any service?" I said, feebly struggling against the inevitable.

"You can," he answered. "Of great service."

"Devil a bit!" said Ferguson testily, and stared derision at me out of a cloud of smoke. It occurred to me then that he was not quite sober, and further that he was no more in the secret of the service than I was. "Devil a bit!" said he again, and more offensively.

"You will let me judge of that," said the gentleman, and he turned to the table. "Will you mind changing the clothes you wear for these?" he said to me with a pleasant air. On which I saw that he had on the table by his hand a suit of fine silk velvet clothes, and surmounted by a grand dress peruque, with a laced steinkirk and ruffles to match.

"Pardon the impertinence," he continued, shrugging his shoulders as if the matter were a very slight one, while I stared in amazement at this new turn. "It is only that I think you will aid me the better in these. And after all, what is a change of clothes?"

Naturally I looked at the things in wonder. I had never worn clothes of the kind. "Do you want me to put them on?" I said.

"Yes," he answered, smiling. "Will you do it on the faith that it will serve me, and trust to me to explain later?"

"If there is no danger in--in the business," I said reluctantly, "I suppose I must." As a fact, whatever he asked me, with Ferguson beside him, I should have to do, so great was my fear of that man.

"There is no danger," he replied. "I will answer for it. I shall accompany you and return with you."

On that, and though I did not comprehend in the least degree what was required of me, I consented, and took the clothes at the stranger's bidding into the next room, where I put off mine and put these on; and presently, seeing myself in a little square of gla.s.s that hung against the wall, scarcely knew myself in a grand suit of blue velvet slashed and laced with pearl-colour, a dress peruque and lace ruffles and cravat. Being unable to tie the cravat, I went back into the room with it in my hand; where I found not only the two I had left but the girl who had summoned me that morning. The two men greeted the change in me with oaths of surprise; the girl, who stood in the background, with an open-eyed stare; but for a moment and until the stranger had tied the cravat for me, nothing was said that I understood. Then Mr. Ferguson getting up and walking round me with a candle, gazing at me from top to toe, the other asked him in a voice of some amus.e.m.e.nt if he knew now who I was.

"A daw in jay's feathers!" said he, scornfully.

"And you do not know him?"

"Not I--except for the silly fool he is!"

"Then you do not know--well, someone you ought to know!" the stranger answered dryly. "You are getting old, Mr. Ferguson."

My master cursed his impudence.

"I am afraid that you do not keep abreast of the rising generation,"

the other continued, coolly eyeing the rage his words excited. "And for your Shaftesburys, and Monmouths, and Ludlows, and the old gang, they don't count for much now. You must look about you, Mr. Ferguson; you must look about you and open your eyes, and learn new tricks, or before you know it you will find yourself on the shelf."

It would be difficult to exaggerate the fury into which this threw my master; he raved, stamped, and swore, and finally, having recourse to his old trick, tore off his wig, flung it on the ground, and stamped on it. "There!" he cried, with horrible imprecations, the more horrible for the bald ugliness of the man, "and that is what I will do to you--by-and-by, Mr. Smith. On the shelf, am I? And need new tricks?

Hark you, sir, I am not so much on the shelf that I cannot spoil your game, whatever it is. And G-- d-- me but I will!"

Mr. Smith, listening, cool and dark-faced, shrugged his shoulders; but for all his seeming indifference, kept a wary eye on the plotter.

"Tut--tut, Mr. Ferguson, you are angry with me," he said. "And say things you do not mean. Besides, you don't know----"

"Know?" the other shrieked.

"Just so, know what my game is."