Shrewsbury Part 6

"Have you searched?" she gasped.

"Everywhere," the neighbours answered her.

"He must have thrown it through the window."

They shook their heads.

On that she jumped up, and looked at me with a cold spite in her face that made me s.h.i.+ver. "Then I will tell you what it is," she said, "he has given it to that hussy, and she has taken it! But I will have it out of him; where the money is, and she is, and how he got in! Mr.

D----, when you have done standing there like a gaby, fetch your stoutest cane; and do you, my friends, lay him across that bed! And if we do not cut it out of his skin, his name is not Richard Price. I wish I had the wench here, and I would serve her the same!"

I screamed, and fell on my knees as they laid hands on me; but Mrs.

D---- was a woman without bowels, and the men were complaisant and not unwilling to see the cruel sport of the usher flogged, and the schoolmaster disciplined; and it would have gone hard with me, in spite of my prayers, if the constable had not arrived at that moment, and requested with dignity to see his prisoner. Introduced to me, he stared; and, moved I believe by an impulse of pity, said I was young to hang.

"Ay, but not too good!" Mrs. D---- answered shrilly, her head trembling with pa.s.sion. "He and the hussy, that is gone, have robbed me of eighty guineas in a green bag, as I am prepared to swear!"

"Sixty, Mrs. D----," said her husband, looking a warning at her and then askance at his neighbours.

"Rot take the man, does it matter to a guinea or two?" she retorted--but her sallow face flushed a little. "At any rate," she continued, pressing her thin lips together, and nodding her head viciously, "sixty or eighty, they have taken them."

It seemed, however, that even to that one of the neighbours had a word to say. "As to the girl, I am not so sure, Mrs. D----," he struck in ponderously. "If she is the wench that has been carrying on with the gentleman at the 'Rose,' she has had other fish to fry. Though I don't say, mind you, that she has _not_ been in this. Only----"

But Mrs. D---- could restrain herself no longer. "Only! only!

Gentlemen at the 'Rose'!" she cried. "Why, man, are you mad? What do you think has my maid--though maid she is not, but a dirty drab, and more is the pity I took her out of charity from the parish--she was Kitty Higgs's base-born brat as you know--what has she to do with gentlemen at the 'Rose'?"

"Well, that is not for me to say," the man answered quietly. "Only I know that for a week or more a wench has been walking with the gentleman in the roads and so forth, by night as well as by day. I came on them twice myself hard by here; and though she was dressed more like a fine madam than a serving girl, I watched her into your house. And for the rest, Mrs. Harris must know more than I do."

But Mrs. Harris, when Mrs. D---- turned on her in a white rage, could only cover her head and weep in a corner; as much, I believe, out of sorrow for me as on her own account. However, the fact that the good-natured woman had left Jennie pretty much to her own devices could not be gainsaid; and Mrs. D---- had much to say on it. But when she talked of sending after the baggage and jailing her, ay, and the gentleman at the "Rose" too, if he could not pay the money, the constable pursed up his lips.

"It is to be remembered that he came with His Royal Highness, our gracious Prince," he said, swelling out his chest and puffing out his cheeks with importance. "And though it is true he ordered his horses and went for London last evening--as I know myself, having seen him go, and seen him before for the matter of that at Hertford a.s.sizes, for he is a Counsellor--it does not follow that the wench went with him. Or, if she did, Mrs. D----, ----"

"That she had anything to do with this money," the neighbour who had spoken before put in.

"Precisely, Mr. Jenkins," the constable answered. "You are a man of sense. For my part," he continued, looking round a little defiantly, "I am no Whig, and I am not for meddling with Court gentlemen, and least of all lawyers. And if you will take my advice, Mr. D----, you will be satisfied to lay this young jail-bird by the heels; and if he does not speak before the rope is round his neck, it is not likely that you will get your money other ways. But, lord," the good man went on, standing back from me, to view me the better, "he is young to be such a villain! It is 'broke and entered,' too, and so he will swing for it." And he took off his hat and wiped his bald head, while he gazed at me between pity and admiration.

Mrs. D----, who was very far from sharing either of these feelings, would have had me taken at once before a Justice and committed. But the constable, partly to prove his importance, and partly, I believe, to give me a chance of disclosing where the money lay, before it was too late, would have the house and garden searched, and all the boys examined; under the impression that I might have had one of these for my accomplice. Naturally, however, nothing came of this, except the discovery that I had been out of nights lately; which had scarcely been made when who should appear on the scene, in an unlucky hour for me, but the gentleman who had identified me outside the gaming room at the "Rose." As he had come for the very purpose of laying a complaint against me, his story destroyed the last sc.r.a.p of my credit, by exhibiting me as a secret rake; and this removing all doubt of my guilt, if any were still entertained even by Mrs. Harris, it was determined to convey me, dinner over, to Sir Baldwin Winston's, at Abbot's Stanstead, to be committed; the two Justices who resided in Ware being at the moment disabled.

All this time, and while my fate was being decided, I listened to one and another in a dull despair, which deprived me of the power to defend myself; and from which nothing less than Mrs. D----'s atrocious proposal to flog me, until I gave up the money, could draw me, and that only for a moment. Conscious of my guilt, and seized in the act and on the scene of my crime, I beheld only the near and certain prospect of punishment; while I had not the temptation to tell all, and inform against my crafty accomplice, to which a knowledge of her destination must have exposed me. Besides--and I think a great part of my apathy was due to this--I still felt the stunning effects of the blow which her cruel treachery had dealt me. I saw her in her true light; and as I sat, weeping silently, and seeming to those who watched me, little moved, I was thinking at least as much of the past and my love, and her craft, as of the fate that lay before me.

Though this was presently brought vividly before me, and of all persons by Mrs. Harris. Mrs. D---- of herself would have given me neither bit nor sup in the house; but the constable insisting that the King's prisoner must be fed, Mrs. Harris, tearful and shaking, was allowed to bring me some broken victuals. These set before me, the good soul, instead of retiring, pottered aimlessly about the room; and by and by got behind me; on which, or rather a moment later, I felt something cold and sharp at the nape of my neck and started up.

Bursting into a flood of tears she plumped down on a seat, and I saw that she had a pair of scissors and a sc.r.a.p of my hair in her hand.

"Good Lord!" I said.

Doubtless the tone in which I spoke betrayed me, for the constable's man who was in charge of me laughed brutally. "Gad, if he does not think she did it out of love!" he cried, speaking to a friend who was sitting with him. "When all the old dame wants is a charm for the rheumatics; and she thinks the chance too good to be lost."

Then I remembered that the hair of a hanged man is in that part held to be sovereign for the rheumatics; and I sat down feeling cold and faint.

CHAPTER VIII

That saying, though a small thing, and a foolish one, brought my state home to me; and, moreover, filled me with so grisly a foreboding of the gibbet, that henceforth I gave my treacherous mistress no more thought than she deserved--which was little; but I became wholly taken up with my own fate, and especially with the recollection of a man, whom I had once seen, pitched and hanging in chains, at Much Hadham Crossroads. The horrible spectacle he had become, ten days dead, grew on my mind, until I grovelled and sweated in a green terror, and that not so much at the prospect of death--though this sent me hot and cold in the same instant--as of the harsh rope about my neck, and the sacking bands, and the dreadful apparatus, and the grinning loathsome thing I must become.

Near swooning at these thoughts, I sank huddled into the chair; and was presently plucked up by the constable's a.s.sistant, who, seeing my state, came forward, and though he was naturally a coa.r.s.e fellow, strove to hearten me, saying that there was always hope until the cart moved, and that many a man cast for death was drinking the King's health in the Plantations. With an oath or two and in a loud voice.

On that a last flicker of pride came to my aid, and trying to meet his eye I muttered that it was not that; that I was not afraid, and that at worst I should be burned in the hand.

"To be sure!" he said nodding, and looking at me curiously. "To be sure. It is well to be a scholar!"

I was athirst, however, to get some further and better a.s.surance from him; and fixing my eyes on his face, I asked hoa.r.s.ely, "You think that it is certain? You think there is no doubt?"

"Certain sure, my Toby!" he answered. But I saw that, as he moved away, he winked to his comrade, and I heard the latter ask him softly, as he took his seat again, "Is't so? Will the lad cheat the hangman?"

"Not he!" was the reply, uttered in a whisper--but terror sharpened my ears. "There was so long a list at the last a.s.sizes, and half of them _legit_, that it was given out they would override it this time, and make examples. And ten to one he will swing, Ben."

"But is it the law?"

I did not hear the answer for the drumming in my ears and the dreadful confusion in my brain; which were such that I was not aware of the constable's entrance or of anything that happened after that, until I found myself in the road climbing clumsily on the back of a pony, in the middle of a throng of staring curious faces. My feet being secured under the beast's belly--at which some gave a hand, while others stood off, whispering and looking strangely at me--the constable mounted himself, and shouting to his wife that he should take me on to Hertford gaol, and should not be back until late, led me out of the crowd, Mr. D---- and Mr. Jenkins bringing up the rear. The last I saw of the school the boys were hanging out of the windows to see me go; and Mrs. D---- was standing in the doorway, and unappeased by my misery, was shrilly denouncing me--hands and tongue, all going--to a group of her gossips.

Our road took us past the Rose Inn, and through a great part of the town, but no impression of either remains with me, my only recollection being of the suns.h.i.+ne that lay over the country, and of the happiness that all creation, all living things, save my doomed self, enjoyed. The bitterness of the thought that yesterday I had been as these, free to move and live and breathe, caused great tears to roll down my cheeks; but my companions, whose thoughts had already gone forward to the Steward's Room at Sir Winston's, and the entertainment they expected there, took little notice of me; and less after the porter at the lodge told them that there were grand doings at the house, and a great company, including a lord, come unexpectedly from London.

"I don't think ye'll be welcome," the porter added, looking curiously at me.

"Justice's business," the constable replied st.u.r.dily. "The King must be served."

"Ay, that is what you all say when you've something to gain by it,"

the porter retorted; and went in.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CONSTABLE LED ME OUT OF THE CROWD]

All which I heard idly; not supposing that it meant to me the difference between life and death, fortune and misery; or that in the company come unexpectedly from London lurked my salvation. If I dwelt on the news at all it was only as it might affect me by adding to the shame I felt. But in this I deceived myself; for when the ordeal of waiting in the servants' hall--where the maids pitied me and would have fed me if I could have eaten--was over, and we were ushered into the parlour in which Sir Winston, who had newly risen from dinner, would see us, we found only one gentleman with him.

The two stood at the farther end of a long narrow room, in the bay of a large window, that, open to the ground, permitted a view of cool sward and yew hedges. That they had had companions, lately withdrawn, was clear; and this, not only from the length of the table, which, bestrewn with plates and gla.s.ses and half-empty flagons, stretched up the room from us to them, but from two chairs, thrown down in the hurry of rising, and six or seven others thrust back, haphazard, against the panels. In the side of the room were four tall straight windows that allowed the suns.h.i.+ne to fall in regular bars on the table; and these, displaying here a little pool of spilled claret, and there a broken tobacco pipe, the ash still smouldering, gave a touch of grimness to the luxurious disorder.

The same incongruity was to be observed in the appearance of the elder and stouter of the two men; who had hung his periwig on the back of a chair, and showed a bald head and flushed face that agreed very ill with his laced cravat and embroidered coat. Standing with his feet apart and his arm outstretched, he was not immediately aware of our entrance; but continued to address his companion in words that were coherent, yet betrayed how he had been employed.

"Crop-eared knaves, my lord, half of them, and I one!" he cried, as we came to a halt a little within the door, to await his pleasure--I with shaking knees and sinking heart. "And ready to become the same again if the times call for it. For why? Because it was only so we could keep or get, my lord. And martyrs have been few in my time, though fools plenty."

"I should be sorry to deny the last, Sir Winston," his companion answered, smiling; for whom at the moment, blind bat as I was, I had no eyes, seeing in him only a n.o.ble youth, handsomely dressed and periwigged, and two, or it might be three years older than myself; whereas I hung on the Justice's nod. "But here is your case," the young man continued, turning to me, and speaking in a pleasant voice.

"And a hard case one of them is," the Justice answered jollily, as he turned to us, and singled out the constable. "That is you, Dyson!" he continued, "one of those of whom I have been telling you, my lord. A psalm-singer in the troubles, sergeant in Lord Grey's regiment, a roundhead, and ran away, with better men than himself, at Cropredy Bridge. To-day he d.a.m.ns a Whig, and goes to bed drunk every twenty-ninth of May."

"Having a good example, your honour!" the constable answered grinning.

"Ay, to be sure. And why don't you follow it also?" Sir Winston continued, turning to the schoolmaster. "But crop-eared you were and crop-eared you are; one of Shaftesbury's brisk boys, my lord! And ought to be fined for a ranter every Monday morning, if all had their deserts!"