Shrewsbury: A Romance. Weyman Stanley John

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the stupor that clouded my mind, and I awoke to all the tortures that love outraged by treachery can feel; with such pangs and terrors added as only a faithful beast, bound and doomed and writhing under the knife of its master, may be supposed to endure.

      For a while, it is true, imagining that Jennie, terrified by someone's approach, had lowered the ladder and withdrawn herself, and so would presently return to free me, I hoped against hope. But as minutes passed, and yet more minutes, laden only with the cricket's even chirp, and the creepy rustling of the wind in the poplars, and still failed to bring her, the sound of retreating hoofs which I had heard recurred to my mind, with dreadful significance, and on the top of it a hundred suspicious circumstances; among which, as her sudden passion when I had taken fright at the foot of the ladder, was not the least, so her avoidance of me during the last few days and her frequent absences from the house, spoken to by Mrs. Harris, had their weight. In fine, by the light of her desertion after receiving the plunder, and while I sought the candlesticks-which I had now convinced myself were not there-many things obscure before, or to which I had wilfully shut my eyes-as her callousness, her greed, her recklessness-stood out plainly; while these again, being coolly considered, reflected so seriously on her, as to give her sudden departure the worst possible appearance, even in a lover's eyes. The days had been when I would not have believed such a thing of her at the mouth of an angel from Heaven. But much had happened since, to which my passion had blinded me, temporarily only; so that it needed but a flash of searing light to make all clear, and convince me that she had not only left me, but left me trapped-I who had given up all and risked all for her!

      In the first agony of pain and rage wrought by a conviction so horrible, I could think only of her treachery and my loss; and head to knees on the bare floor of the room, I wept as if my heart would break, or choked with the sobs that seemed to rend my breast. And little wonder, seeing that I had given her a boy's first devotion, and that of all sins ingratitude has the sharpest tooth! But to this paroxysm, when I had nearly exhausted myself, came an end and an antidote in the shape of urgent fear; which suddenly flooding my soul, roused me from my apathy of grief, and set me to pacing the room in a dreadful panic, trying now the door and now the window. But on both my attacks were in vain, the former being locked and resisting the chisel, while the latter hung thirty feet above the paved yard.

      Thus caught and snared, as neatly as any bird in a springe, I had no resource but in my wits; and for a time, as I had nothing of which I could form a rope, I busied myself with the expedient of throwing out the featherbed and leaping upon it. But when I had dragged it to the window, and came to measure the depth, I recoiled, as the most desperate might, from the leap; and softly returning the bed to its place, I fell to biting my nails, or fitfully roamed from place to place, according as despair or some new hope possessed me.

      In one or other of these moods the dawn found me; and then in a surprisingly short time I heard the dreaded sounds of life awaken round me, and creeping to the window I closed it, and crouched down on the floor. Presently Mrs. Harris began to stir, and a boy walked whistling shrilly across the adjacent yard; and then-strangest of all things, and not to be invented-in the crisis of my fate, with the feet of those who must detect me almost on the stairs, I fell asleep; and awoke only when a key grated in the lock of the room, and I started up to find Mr. D- in the doorway staring at me, and behind him a crowd of piled-up faces.

      "Why, Price?" he cried, with a look of stupefaction, as he came slowly into the room, "what is the meaning of this?"

      Then I suppose my shame and guilty silence told him, for with a sudden scowl and an oath he strode to the bureau and dragged out the drawer. A glance showed him that the money was gone, and shouting frantically to those at the door to keep it-to keep it, though they were half-a-dozen to one! – he clutched me by the breast of my coat, and shook me until my teeth chattered.

      "Give it up," he cried, spluttering with rage. "Give it up, you beggar's brat! Or, by heaven, you shall hang for it."

      But as I had nothing to give up, and could not speak, I burst into tears; which with the odd part I had played in staying in the room to be taken, and perhaps my youth and innocent air, aroused the neighbours' surprise; who, crowding round, asked him solicitously what was missing. He answered after a moment's hesitation, sixty guineas. One had already clapped his hands over my clothes, and another had forced my mouth open; but on this they desisted, and stood, full of admiration.

      "He cannot have swallowed that," said the most active, gaping at me.

      "No, that is certain. But what beats me," said another, looking round, "is how he got here."

      "To say nothing of why he stayed here!" replied the former.

      "I'll tell you what," quoth a third, shaking his head. "There is some hocus-pocus in this. And I should not wonder, neighbours, if the Catholics were at the bottom of it!"

      The theory appeared to commend itself to more than one-for they were all of the fanatical party; but it was swept to the winds by the entrance of Mrs. D-, who having heard of robbery, came in like a whirlwind, her face on fire, and made no more ado, but rushed upon me, and tore and slapped my cheeks with all her might, crying with each blow, "You nasty thief, will that teach you better manners? That for your roguery! and that! Oh, you jail bird, I'll teach you!"

      How long she would have continued to chastise me I cannot say, but her husband presently stepped in to protect me, and being thoroughly winded, she let me go pretty willingly. But when she learned, having hitherto been under the impression that I had been seized in the act with the money upon me, that the latter could not be found, her face turned yellow and she sat down in a chair.

      "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 shiver. "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 passion. "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 СКАЧАТЬ