Shrewsbury: A Romance. Weyman Stanley John

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СКАЧАТЬ is his accomplice? Pooh; there must be one!" he said.

      "The girl, may it pleasure your lordship," the constable answered.

      "The girl? Then why should she leave him to be taken? How did he enter?"

      "By a ladder, it is supposed, my lord."

      "It is supposed?"

      "Yes, my lord."

      "But ladder or no ladder, why did she leave him?"

      The constable scratched his head.

      "Perhaps they were surprised, please your lordship," he ventured at last.

      "But the boy was found in the room at seven, dolt. And the sun is up before four. What was he doing all those hours? Surprised, pooh!"

      "Well, I don't know as to that, your worship," the man answered sturdily; "but only that the prisoner was found in the room, in which he had not ought to be, and the money was gone from the room where it had ought to be!"

      "And the bureau was broken open," Mr. D- cried eagerly. "And what is more, he has never denied it, my lord! Never."

      At that and at sight of the change that came over my judge's face the hope that had risen in me died suddenly; and I saw again the grim prospect of the prison and the gibbet; and to be led from one to the other, dumb, one of a drove, unregarded. And, it coming upon me strongly that in a moment it would be too late, I found my voice and cried to him, "Oh, my lord, save me!" I cried. "Help me! For the sake of God, help me!"

      Whether my words moved him or he had not yet given up my case, he looked at me attentively, and with a shade as of recollection on his face. Then he asked quietly what I was.

      "Usher in a school, my lord," someone answered.

      "Poor devil!" he exclaimed. And then, to the others, "Here, you! Withdraw a little to the passage, if you please. I would speak with him alone."

      The constable opened his mouth to demur; but the young gentleman would not suffer it; saying with a fine air that there was no resisting, "Pooh, man, I am Lord Shrewsbury. I will be responsible for him." And with that he got them out of the room.

      CHAPTER IX

      I know now that there never was a man in whom the natural propensity to side with the weaker party was by custom and exercise more highly developed than in my late lord, in whose presence I then stood; who, indeed, carried that virtue to such an extent that if any fault could be found with his public carriage-which I am very far from admitting, but only that such a colour might be given to some parts of it by his enemies-the flaw was attributable to this excess of generosity. Yet he has since told me that on this occasion of our first meeting, it was neither my youth nor my misery-in the main at any rate-that induced him to take so extraordinary a step as that of seeing me alone; but a strange and puzzling reminiscence, which my features aroused in him, and whereto his first words, when we were left together, bore witness. "Where, my lad," said he, staring at me, "have I seen you before?"

      As well as I could, for the dread of him in which I stood, I essayed to clear my brain and think; and in me also, as I looked at him, the attempt awoke a recollection, as if I had somewhere met him. But I could conceive one place only where it was possible I might have seen a man of his rank; and so stammered that perhaps at the Rose Inn, at Ware, in the gaming-room I might have met him.

      His lip curled, "No," he said coldly, "I have honoured the Groom-Porter at Whitehall once and again by leaving my guineas with him. But at the Rose Inn, at Ware-never! And heavens, man," he continued in a tone of contemptuous wonder, "what brought such as you in that place?"

      In shame, and aware, now that it was too late, that I had said the worst thing in the world to commend myself to him, I stammered that I had gone thither-that I had gone thither with a friend.

      "A woman?" he said quickly.

      I allowed that it was so.

      "The same that led you into this?" he continued sharply.

      But to that I made no answer: whereon, with kindly sternness he bade me remember where I stood, and that in a few minutes it would be too late to speak.

      "You can trust me, I suppose?" he continued with a fine scorn, "that I shall not give evidence against you. By being candid, therefore, you may make things better, but can hardly make them worse."

      Whereon I have every reason to be thankful, nay, it has been matter for a life's rejoicing that I was not proof against his kindness; but without more ado, sobbing over some parts of my tale, and whispering others, I told him my whole story from the first meeting with my temptress-so I may truly call her-to the final moment when, the money gone, and the ladder removed, I was rudely awakened, to find myself a prisoner. I told it, I have reason to believe, with feeling, and in words that carried conviction; the more as, though skilled in literary composition, and in writing secundum artem, I have little imagination. At any rate, when I had done, and quavered off reluctantly into a half coherent and wholly piteous appeal for mercy, I found my young judge gazing at me with a heat of indignation in cheek and eye, that strangely altered him.

      "Good G-!" he cried, "what a Jezebel!" And in words which I will not here repeat, he said what he thought of her.

      True as the words were (and I knew that, after what I had told him, nothing else was true of her), they forced a groan from me.

      "Poor devil," he said at that. And then again, "Poor devil, it is a shame! It is a black shame, my lad," he continued warmly, "and I would like to see Madam at the cart-tail; and that is where I shall see her before all is done! I never heard of such a vixen! But for you," and on the word he paused and looked at me, "you did it, my friend, and I do not see your way out of it."

      "Then must I hang?" I cried desperately.

      He did not answer.

      "My lord! My lord!" I urged, for I began to see whither he was tending, and I could have shrieked in terror, "you can do anything."

      "I?" he said.

      "You! If you would speak to the judge, my lord."

      He laughed, without mirth. "He would whip you instead of hanging you," he said contemptuously.

      "To the King, then."

      "You would thank me for nothing," he answered; and then with a kind of contemptuous suavity, "My friend, in your Ware Academy-where nevertheless you seem to have had your diversions-you do not know these things. But you may take it from me, that I am more than suspected of belonging to the party whose existence Sir Baldwin denies-I mean to the Whigs; and the suspicion alone is enough to damn any request of mine."

      On that, after staring at him a moment, I did a thing that surprised him; and had he known me better a thing that would have surprised him more. For the courage to do it, and to show myself in colours unlike my own, I had to thank neither despair nor fear, though both were present; but a kind of rage that seized me, on hearing him speak in a tone above me, and as if, having heard my story, he was satisfied with the curiosity of it, and would dismiss the subject, and I might go to the gallows. I know now that in so speaking he had not that intent, but that brought up short by the certainty of my guilt, and the impasse as to helping me, in which he stood, he chose that mode of repressing the emotion he felt. I did not understand this however: and with a bitterness born of the misconception, and in a voice that sounded harsh, and anyone's rather than mine, I burst into a furious torrent of reproaches, СКАЧАТЬ