Shrewsbury: A Romance. Weyman Stanley John

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СКАЧАТЬ her, striving to read her thoughts. "I don't believe you have lost them!" I exclaimed at last.

      "Every groat, Dick!" she answered, curtly-yet still in the best of spirits. "Never doubt that!"

      On which it was not wonderful that my disappointment and her cheerfulness agreed so ill, that we came to bitter words, and beginning by calling one another "Thankless," and "Clutch-penny," rose presently to "Fool," and "Jade"; and eventually parted on the latter at the garden fence; where Dorinda, so far from lingering as on the former night, flounced from me in a passion, and left me without a single word of regret. How miserably after that I stole to bed, and how wakefully I tossed in the close garret, I cannot hope to convey to my readers; suffice it that a hundred times I cursed the folly that had led me to ruin, a hundred times went hot and cold at thought of the dock and the gallows; and yet amid all found in Dorinda's heartlessness the sharpest pain. I felt sure now, and told myself continually, that she had never loved me; therefore-at the time it seemed to follow-I deemed my own love at an end and cast her off; and heaping the sharpest reproaches on her head, found my one sweet consolation-whereat I wept miserably-in composing a last dying speech and confession that should soften at length that obdurate bosom, and break that unfeeling heart.

      But with the day, and the rising to imminent terrors and hourly fear of detection, came first regret, then self-reproach-lest I too should be somewhat in fault-then a revival of passion; lastly, a frantic yearning to be reconciled to the only person to whom I could speak freely, or who knew the danger and strait in which I stood. My heart melting like water at the thought, I was ready to do anything or say anything, to abase myself to any depth, in order to regain her favour and have her advice; and the absence of Mr. and Mrs. D-, and Mrs. Harris's easiness rendering it a matter of no difficulty to seek her, in the course of the afternoon I took my courage in my hands and went into the next house. There I found only Mrs. Harris.

      "The little slut has stepped out," she said, looking up from the pot over which she was stooping. "She asked leave for half an hour and has been gone an hour. But it is the way of the wenches all the world over. Do you beware of them, Mr. Price," she continued, eyeing me, and laughing jollily.

      I made some trifling answer; and returning to my own domain, with all the pangs of loneliness added to those of terror, sat down in the dingy, dreary taskroom and abandoned myself to bitter forebodings. She did not, she never could have loved me! I knew it and felt it now. Yet I must think of her or go mad. I must think of her or of the cart and cord; and so, through the hours that followed, I had only eyes for the next garden, and ears for her voice. The boys and their chattering, and the necessity I was under of playing my part before them, well-nigh mastered me. For, at any hour, on any day, while I sat there among them, Mr. and Mrs. D- might return, and the loss be discovered; and yet, and though time was everything, all the efforts I made to see Jennie or get speech with her failed; and of myself I seemed to be unable to think out any plan or way of escape.

      I am sure that the most ascetic, could he have weighed the tortures of those four days during which I sat surrounded by the boys, and now making frantic efforts to appear myself, now sunk in a staring, pale-faced lethargy of despair, would have deemed them a punishment more than commensurate with my guilt. The unusual air of peace and quietness with which Mrs. D-'s absence invested the school had no more power to soothe me than the presence of Mrs. Harris, nodding over her plain-stitch in the next garden, availed to banish the burning gusts of fear that at times parched my skin. At length, on the fifth day, the immediate warning of coming judgment arrived in the shape of a letter announcing that my employer would return (D.V.) by the night waggon, which in the ordinary course was due to reach Ware about six next morning.

      At that I could stand the strain no longer, but flinging appearance and deception to the winds, I rose from the class I was pretending to teach, and in a disorder I made no effort to suppress, followed Mrs. Harris; who, having declared the news, was already waddling back to the next house. She started at sight of me in her train-as she well might, for it was the busiest time of the day; then asked if anything ailed me.

      "No," I said. "I want a word with Jennie."

      "Do you?" quoth she, looking hard at me. "So, it would seem, do a good many young fellows. She is a nice handful if ever there was one."

      "Why?" I stammered.

      "Why?" she answered in a tone very sharp for her. "Why, because-but what have you to do with Jennie, young man?"

      "Nothing," I said.

      "Then have nothing," she answered promptly, and shook her sides at her sharpness. "That is no puzzle! And as it is no more than half-past ten, and I hear your boys rampaging like so many wild Irishmen-suppose you go back to them, young man!"

      I obeyed; but whatever effect her warning might have had earlier-and I shrewdly suspect that it would have affected me as much as water affects a duck's back-it came too late; my one desire now being to see the girl, even as my one hope lay in her advice. Nine had struck that evening, however, and night had fallen, and I grown fairly sick with fear, before my efforts were rewarded, and stealing into the garden on a last desperate search-I think for the twentieth time-I came on her standing in the dusk, beside the fence where I had so often met her.

      I sprang to her side, relief at my heart, reproaches on my lips; but it was only to recoil at sight of her face, grown hard and old and pinched, and for the moment almost ugly. "Why, child!" I cried, forgetting my own trouble. "What is it?"

      She laughed without mirth, looking at me strangely. "What do you suppose?" she said huskily, and I could see that fear was on her. "Do you think that you are the only one in danger?"

      "How?" I exclaimed.

      "How?" she replied in a tone of mockery. "Why, do you suppose that stockings and shoes are the only things that cost money? Or that vizor masks, and gloves and hoods grow on bushes? Briefly, fool, if you can give me four guineas, I am saved. If not-"

      "My God!" I cried, horror-stricken.

      "If not," she continued hardily, "you have taught me to read, and that may save my neck. I suppose I shall be sent to the plantations, to be beaten weekly, and work in the sun, and-"

      "Four guineas!" I groaned.

      "Yes, seven in all!" she answered with a sneer. "Have you got them?"

      "No, nor a groat!" I answered, overwhelmed by the discovery that instead of giving help she needed it. "Not a penny!"

      "Then it must be got!" she answered fiercely. "It must be got!" and as she repeated the words, she dropped her mocking tone, and spoke with feverish energy. "It must be got, Dick!" and she seized my hands and held them. "It must be, and can be, if you have a spark of spirit, if you are not the poor mean thing I sometimes think you. Listen! Listen! In the old man's room upstairs-the door is locked and double-locked, I have tried it-are sixty guineas, in a bag! Sixty guineas, in a drawer of the old bureau by the bed!"

      "It is death," I cried feebly, recoiling from her as I spoke. "It is death! I dare not! I dare not do it!"

      "Then we hang! We hang, man!" she answered fiercely. "You and I! Will it be better to hang for a lamb than a sheep? For seven guineas than for sixty?"

      "But if we take it, what shall we be the better for it?" I said weakly. "He returns in the morning."

      "By the morning, given the money, we shall be a score of miles away!" she answered, flinging her arms round my neck, and hanging on my breast, while her hot breath fanned my cheek. No wonder I felt my brain reel, and my will melt. "Away from here, Dick," she repeated softly. "Away-and together!"

      Yet I made an effort to withstand her. "You forget the door," I said. "If the door is locked, and СКАЧАТЬ