Shrewsbury: A Romance. Weyman Stanley John

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 sunshine 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 sturdily. "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.

      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 That they had had companions, lately withdrawn, was clear; and this, not only from the length of the table, which, bestrewn with plates and glasses and half-empty flagons, stretched up the room from us to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 sunshine 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 noble 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 damns 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!"

      "Then I am afraid that your theory does not apply to him, Sir Winston," the young man said with a smile. "Here is one martyr already; and if one martyr, why not many?"

      "Martyr?" the Justice answered, with half-a-dozen oaths. "He? No one less! He goes to church as you and I do, and does not smart to the tune of a penny! It is true he pulls a solemn face and abhors mince-pies and plum-porridge. But why? Because he keeps a school, and the righteous, or what are left of them, who are just such hypocrites as himself, resort unto his company with boys and guineas! Resort unto his company, eh, D-?" the Justice repeated gleefully, addressing the schoolmaster. "That is the phrase, isn't it? Oh, I have chopped Scripture with old Noll in my time. And so it pays, do you see, my lord? When it does not, he'll damn the Whigs and turn Tantivy or Abhorrer, or something that does. And so it is with all; they are loyal. Never were Englishmen more loyal; but to what are they loyal? Themselves, my lord!"

      "Yet there are Whigs who do not keep schools," the young lord said, after a hearty laugh.

      "Ay, my lord, and why?" Sir Winston answered, in high good humour, "because we are all trimmers to the wind, but some trim too late, and some too soon. And those are your Whigs. Never you turn Whig, my lord, whatever you do, or you will die in a Dutch garret like Tony Shiftsbury! And if anyone could have made Whiggery pay nowadays, clever Anthony would have. Here's his health, but I doubt he is in hell, these eight months."

      And Sir Winston, going to the table, filled and drank off a bumper of claret. Then he filled again. "The King-God bless him-is not very well, I hear," said he, winking at the young lord. "So I will give you another toast. His Highness's health, and confusion to all who would exclude him! And now what is this business, Dyson? Who is the lad? What has he been doing?"

      The constable began to explain; but before he had uttered many words, the baronet, whose last draught had more than a little fuddled him, cut him short. "Oh, come to me to-morrow!" he said. "Or stay! You are in the Commission for the county, my lord?"

      "I am, but I have not acted," the young man answered.

      "Rot it, man, but you shall act now! Burglary, is it? Broke and entered, eh? Then that is a hanging matter, and a young hound should be blooded. I am off! My lord will do it, Dyson. My lord will do it."

      With which the Justice lurched out of the window so quickly, not to say unsteadily, that he was gone before his companion could remonstrate. The young lord, thus abandoned, looked at first at a nonplus, and seemed for a while more than half-inclined to follow. But changing his mind, and curious, I am willing to believe, to hear the case of a prisoner so much out of the common as I must have appeared to him, he turned to us, and adopting a certain stateliness, which came easily to him, young as he was, he told the constable he would hear him.

      Then it was that, hanging for my life on the nods and words of intelligence that from time to time fell from him, and whereby he lifted the constable out of the slough of verbiage in which he floundered, I dared again to hope; and noting with eyes sharpened by terror the cast of his serious handsome features, and the curves of his mouth, sensitive as a woman's yet wondrously under control, saw a prospect of life. For a time indeed I had nothing more substantial on which to build than such signs, so damning seemed the tale that branded me as taken in the act and on the scene of my crimes. But when the young peer, after eyeing me gravely and pitifully, asked if they had found the money on me, and the constable answered, "No," and my lord retorted, "Then where was it?" and got no answer; and again when he enquired as to the lock on the door and the height of the window, and who had aided me to enter, and learned that a girl was suspected and no one else-then I felt the blood beat hotly in my head, and a mist come before my eyes.

      "Who СКАЧАТЬ