Shrewsbury Part 26

In the meantime we moved on; and at first my companion seemed to be unconscious of my sluggish pace and my perturbation. But presently I felt rather than saw that from minute to minute he glanced at me askance, and that after each of these inspections he laughed silently.

The knowledge that I lay under this observation immeasurably increased my embarra.s.sment. I could no longer put a fair face on the matter, but every time he looked at me looked away guiltily, unable to support his eyes. This presently grew so insupportable that to escape from my embarra.s.sment I coughed and affected to choke.

"You have a cold, I am afraid," he said, scarcely concealing the sneer in his tone. "And yet you look warm. You must have walked fast, my friend?"

I muttered that I had.

"To overtake me, perhaps! It was good of you," he said in the same tone of secret badinage. "But we are here. What part of the Fields do you want? Whitecross Street?"

"No," I muttered.

"Then it must be Baxter's Rents."

"No."

"Bunhill Row?"

"No."

"No? Well, there is not much else here," he said; and he shrugged his shoulders, "except the Fields and the burial-ground. Your business does not lie with the latter, I suppose?"

"No," I said faintly. And we stood.

At another time I must have shuddered at the dreary expanse on this uttermost fringe of the town that stretched before us under a waning light; an expanse of waste land broken only by the wall of the burial-ground, or the chimney of a brick-kiln, and bordered, where its limits were visible, by half-built houses, and squatter huts, and vast piles of refuse. Ugly as the prospect was, however, and far from rea.s.suring to the timorous, I asked nothing better than to look at it.

and look at it, and continue to look at it. But Mr. Smith, who did not understand this mood, turned with an impatient laugh.

"I suppose that you did not come here to look at that," said he.

Like a fool I jumped at the absurd, the flimsy pretext.

"Yes," I said. "I--I merely came to take the air."

The moment the words were spoken I trembled at my audacity. But he took it better than I expected, for he merely paused to stare at me, and then chuckled grimly.

"Well," he said, "then, now that you have taken the air let us go back. Have you anything to object to that, Mr. Taylor?"

I could find nothing.

"I will come with you," he continued. "I want to see Ferguson, and we can settle my business there."

But this only presented to me a dreadful vision of Ferguson, released from his bonds, and mad with rage and the desire to avenge himself; and I stopped short.

"I am not going there," I said.

"No? Then where, may I ask, are you going?" he answered, watching me with a placid amus.e.m.e.nt, which made it as clear as the daylight, that he saw through my evasions. "Where is it my lord's pleasure to go?"

"To Brome's, in Fleet Street," I said hoa.r.s.ely. And if he had had his back to me at that instant, and I a knife in my hand, I could have run him through! For as I said it, and he with mocking suavity a.s.sented, and we stepped out together to return the way we had come through Long Lane--over which the sky hung low in a dull yellow haze, the last of the western light--I had a swift and stinging recollection of the King and my lord, and the letter, and the pa.s.sage of time; and could have sprung from his side, and poured out curses on him in the impotence of my rage and impatience. For the hour of grace which the King had granted was gone, and a second was pa.s.sing, and still the letter that should warn the Duke of Berwick lay in my pocket, and I saw no chance of delivering it.

That Smith discerned the chagrin which this enforced companions.h.i.+p caused me--though not the ground of it--was as plain as that the fact gave him pleasure of no common kind. I had no longer such a command of my features that I could trust myself to look at him; but I was conscious, using some other sense, that he frequently looked at me, and always after these inspections, smiled like a man who finds something to his taste. And I hated him.

How long with these feelings I could have borne to go with him, or what I should have done in the last resort had he continued the same tactics, remains unproved; for at the same corner half-way down Long Lane, where I had first espied him, he paused. "I want to go in here,"

he said coolly. "I need only detain you a moment, Mr. Taylor."

"I will wait for you," I muttered, tingling all over with sudden hope.

While he was inside I could run for it.

"Very well," he said. "This way."

I fancied that he suspected nothing, and that perhaps I had been wrong throughout; and overjoyed I went with him to the door of the house from which I had seen him emerge; my intention being to begone hotfoot the instant his back was turned. The house was three-storied high, narrow and commonplace, one of a row not long built, and but partially inhabited. Apparently he was at home there, for taking a key from his pocket, he opened the door; and stood aside for me to enter.

"I will wait," I muttered.

"Very well. Yon can wait inside," he answered.

If I had been wise I should have turned there and then, in the open street, and taking to my heels have run for my life and stayed for nothing. But, partly fool and partly craven, clinging to a hope which was scarcely a belief, that when he went upstairs or into another room, I might stealthily unlatch the door and begone, I let myself be persuaded; and I entered. The moment I had done so, he whipped out the key and thrusting the door to with his shoulder, locked it on the inside.

Then the man threw off all disguise. He turned with a laugh of triumph to where I stood trembling in the half-dark pa.s.sage. "Now," he said, "we will have that letter, if you please, Mr. Taylor. I have a fancy to see what is in it."

"The letter!" I faltered.

"Yes, the letter!"

"I have no letter," I said.

"Tut-tut, letter or no letter, out with it! Do you think I could not see you touching your breast every half minute, to make sure that you had it safe--and not know what was in the wind! You are a poor plotter, Mr. Taylor, and I doubt if you will ever be of any use to me.

But come, out with it! Unless you want me to be rough with you. Out with whatever it is you have there, and no tricks!"

He had a way with him when he spoke in that tone, not loudly but between his teeth, his eyes at the same time growing towards one another, that was worse than Ferguson's pistol; and I was alone with him in an empty house. Some, who would have done what I did, may blame me; but in the main the world is sensible, and I shall forfeit no prudent man's esteem when I confess that, after one attempt at evasion which he met by wrenching my coat open, and thrusting me against the wail so violently that my head spun again, I gave up the letter.

"I warn you! I warn you!" I cried, in a paroxysm of rage and grief.

"It is for the Duke of Berwick, and if you open it----"

"For the Duke of Berwick?" he answered, pausing and gazing at me with his finger on the seal. "Why, you fool, why did you not tell me that before? From whom? From that sc.u.m, Ferguson?"

"From the Duke of Shrewsbury," I cried, rendered reckless by my rage.

"What?" he cried, in a voice of extraordinary surprise.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "NOW WE WILL HAVE THAT LETTER, IF YOU PLEASE"]

"From the Duke of Shrewsbury," I repeated; thinking that he had not understood me.

"My G.o.d!" he said, with a deep breath. "And have I caught the fox at last!"

"You are more likely to be caught yourself!" I answered, furiously.

Nevertheless, his words were a puzzle to me; but his tone of slow growing, almost incredulous triumph told something. Taking very little heed of me, and merely signing to me to follow him, he sprang up the stairs, and opening a door led the way into a back-room bare and miserable, but lighted by the last yellow glow of the western sky. It was possible to read here, and without a moment's hesitation he broke the seal of the letter, and tearing the packet open, read the contents.