Shrewsbury: A Romance. Weyman Stanley John

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СКАЧАТЬ asking him if it was only for this he had seen me alone, and to make a tale. "To make a tale," I cried, "and a jest? One that with the same face with which you send me out to be strangled and to rot, and with the same smile, you'll tell, my lord, after supper to Sir Baldwin and your like. Oh, for shame, my lord, for shame!" I cried, passionately, and losing all fear of him in my indignation. "As you may some day be in trouble yourself-for great heads fall as well as low ones in these days, and as little pitied-if you have bowels of compassion, my lord, and a mother to love you-"

      He turned on me so swiftly at that word, that my anger quailed before his. "Silence!" he cried, fiercely. "How dare you, such as you, mention-. But there, fellow-be silent!"

      I caught the ring of pain as well as anger in his tone, and obeyed him; though I could not discern what I had said to touch him so sorely. He on his side glowered at me a moment; and so we stood, while hope died within me, and I grew afraid of him again, and a shadow fell on the room as it had already fallen on his face. I waited for nothing now but the word that should send me from his presence, and thought nothing so certain as that I had flung away what slender chance remained to me. It was with a start that when he broke the silence I was aware of a new sound in his voice.

      "Listen, my lad," he said in a constrained tone-and he did not look at me. "You are right in one thing. If I meant to do nothing for you, I had no right to your confidence. I do not know what it was in your face induced me to see you. I wish I had not. But since I have I must do what I can to save you: and there is only one way. Mind you," he continued in a sudden burst of anger, "I do not like it! And I do it out of regard for myself, not for you, my lad! Mind you that!"

      "Oh, my lord!" I cried, ready to fall down and worship him.

      "Be silent," he answered, coldly, "and when my back is turned go through that window. Do you understand? It is all I can do for you. The alley on the left leads to the stables. Pass through them boldly; if you are not stopped you will in a minute be on the high road. The turn, to the left at the cross-roads, leads to Tottenham and London. That on the right will take you to Little Parndon and Epping. That is all I have to say; while I look for a piece of paper to sign your commitment, you would do well to go. Only remember, my man, if you are retaken-do not look to me."

      He suited the action to the words by turning his back on me, and beginning to search in a bureau that stood beside him. But so sudden and so unexpected was the proposal he had made, that though he had said distinctly "Go!" I doubt if, apart from the open window, I should have understood his purpose. As it was I came to it slowly-so slowly that he lost patience, and with his head still buried among the pigeon-holes, swore at me.

      "Are you going?" he said. "Or do you think that it is nothing I am doing for you? Do you think it is nothing that I am going to tell a lie for such as you? Either go or hang, my lad!"

      I heard no more. A moment earlier nothing had been farther from my thoughts than to attempt an escape, but the impulse of his will steadied my wavering resolution, and with set teeth and a beating heart, I stepped through the window. Outside I turned to the left along a shady green alley fenced by hedges of yew, and espying the stable-yard before me, walked boldly across it. By good luck the grooms and helpers were at supper and I saw only one man standing at a door. He stared at me, mouthing a straw, but said nothing, and in a twinkling I had passed him, left the curtilage behind me, and had the park fence and gate in sight.

      Until I reached this, not knowing whose eyes were on me, I had the presence of mind to walk; though cold shivers ran down my back, and my hair crept, and every second I fancied-for I was too nervous to look back-that I felt Dyson's hand on my collar. Arriving safely at the gate, however, and the road stretching before me with no one in sight, I took to my heels, and ran a quarter of a mile along it; then leaping the fence that bounded it on the right, I started recklessly across country, my aim being to strike the Little Parndon highway, to which my lord had referred, at a point beyond the cross-roads, and so to avoid passing the latter.

      I am aware that this mode of escape, this walking through a window and running off unmolested, sounds bald and commonplace; and that if I could import into my story some touch of romance or womanish disguise, such as-to compare great things with small-marked my Lord Nithsdale's escape from the Tower three years ago, I should cut a better figure. Whereas in the flight across the fields on a quiet afternoon, with the sun casting long shadows on the meadows, and for my most instant alarms, the sudden whirring up before me of partridge or plover, few will find anything heroic. But let them place themselves for a moment in my skin, and remember that as I sweated and panted and stumbled and rose again, as I splashed in reckless haste through sloughs and ditches, and tore my way through great blackthorns, I had death always at my heels! Let them remember that in the long shadows that crossed my path I saw the gallows, and again the gallows, and once more the gallows; and fled more quickly; and that it needed but the distant bark of a dog, or the shout of a boy scaring birds, to persuade me that the hue and cry was coming, and to fill me with the last extremity of fear.

      I believe that the adventurer, and the knight of the road, when it falls to their lot to be so hunted-as must often happen, though more commonly such an one is taken securus et ebrius in the arms of his mistress-find some mitigation of their pains in the anticipation of conflict, and in the stern joy which the resolve to sell life dearly imparts to the man of action. But I was unarmed, and worn out with my exertions; no soldier, and with no heart to fight. My flight therefore across the quiet fields was pure terror, the torture of unmitigated fear. Fear spurred me and whipped me; and yet, had I known it, I might have spared my terror. For darkness found me, weak and exhausted, but still free, in the neighbourhood of Epping in Essex, where I passed the night in the Forest; and before noon next day, believing that they would watch for me on the Tottenham Road, I had found courage to slink in to London by way of Chingford, and in the heart of that great city, whose magnitude exceeded all my expectations, had safely and effectually lost myself.

      CHAPTER X

      At this point, it becomes me to pause. I set out, the reader will remember, to furnish such a narrative of the events attending my first meeting with my honoured patron, as taken with a brief account of myself might enable all to pursue with insight as well as advantage the details of my later connection with him. And this being done, and bearing in mind that Sir John Fenwick did not suffer for his conspiracy until 1696, and that consequently a period of thirteen years divided the former events, which I have related, from those which follow-and which have to do, as I intimated at the outset, with my lord's alleged cognisance of that conspiracy-some may, and with impatience, look to me to proceed at once to the gist of the matter. Which I propose to do; but first to crave the reader's indulgence, while in a very hasty and perfunctory manner I trace my humble fortunes in the interval; whereby time will in the end be saved.

      That arriving in London, as I have related, a fugitive, penniless and homeless, in fear of the law, I contrived to keep out of the beadle's hands, and was neither whipped for a vagrant at Bridewell, nor starved outright in the streets, I attribute to most singular good fortune; which not only rescued me (statim) from a great and instant danger that all but engulfed me, but within a few hours found for me honest and constant employment, and that of an uncommon kind.

      It so happened that, perplexed by the clamour of the great city, wherein all faces were new to me and ways alike, I came to a stand about noon in the neighbourhood of Newgate Market; where, confident that in the immense and never-ceasing tide of life that ebbs and flows in that quarter, I was safe from recognition, I ventured to sell an undergarment in a small shop in an alley, and buying a loaf with the price, satisfied my hunger. But the return of strength was accompanied by no return of hope; rather, my prime necessity supplied, I felt the forlornness of my position more acutely. In which condition, having no resource but to wander aimlessly from one street to another while the daylight lasted-and after that no prospect at all except to pass the night in the same manner-I came presently into Little Britain, and stopped, as luck would have it, before one of the bookshops that crowd that part. A number of persons were poring over the СКАЧАТЬ