Shrewsbury: A Romance

At that my master broke out afresh, cursing the other's impudence, and frantically swearing to be even with him; but I lost what he said, in a sudden consternation that seized me, as I crossed the threshold; a kind of shiver, which came over me at the prospect of the night, and the dark coach ride, and the uncertainty of this new adventure. The lights in the room, and Mr. Smith's politeness, had given me a courage which the dark staircase dissipated; and but for the hold which my new employer, perhaps unconsciously, laid on my arm, I think I should have stood back and refused to go. Under his gentle compulsion, however, I went down and took my seat in the coach that awaited us; and my companion following me and closing the door, someone unseen raised the steps, and in a moment we were jolting out of Bride Lane, and turned in the direction of the Strand.

More than this I could not distinguish with all my curiosity, and look out as I might; for Mr. Smith muttering something I did not catch, drew the curtain over the window on my side, and, for the other, interposed himself so continually and skilfully between it and my eyes, that the coach turning two or three corners, in a few minutes I was quite ignorant where we were, or whether we still held a westward direction. A hundred notions of footpads, abductions, Mr. Thynne, and the like passed through my mind while the coach rumbled on, and rumbled on, and rumbled on endlessly; nor was the fact that we appeared to avoid the business parts of the town, and chose unlighted ways, calculated to steady my nerves. At length, and while I still debated whether I wished this suspense at an end, or feared more what was to follow, the coach stopped with a jerk, which almost threw me out of my seat.

"We are there," said my companion, who had been some time silent. "I must trouble you to descend, Mr. Taylor. And have no fears. The matter in hand is very simple. Only be good enough to follow me closely, and quickly."

And without releasing my arm he hurried me out of the coach, and through a door in a wall. This admitted us only to a garden; and that so dark, and so completely obscured by high walls and the branches of trees, which showed faintly overhead, feathering against the sky, that but for the guidance of his hand, I must have stood, unable to proceed. Such an overture was far from abating my fears; nor had I expected this sudden plunge into a solitude, which seemed the more chilling, as we stood in London, and had a little while before passed from the hum of the Strand. I tried to consider where we could be, and the possibilities of retreat; but my conductor left me little room for indecision. Still holding my arm, he led me down a walk, and to a door, which opened as we approached. A flood of light poured out and fell on the pale green of the surrounding trees; the next moment I stood in a small, bare lobby or ante-room, and heard the door chained behind me.

My eyes dazzled by a lamp, I saw no more at first than that the person who held it, and had admitted us, was a woman. But on her setting down the lamp, and proceeding to look me up and down deliberately, the while Mr. Smith stood by, as if he had brought me for this and no other, I took uneasy note of her. She appeared to be verging on forty but was still handsome after a coarse and full-blown fashion, with lips over-full and cheeks too red; her dark hair still kept its colour, and the remains of a great vivacity still lurked in her gloomy eyes. Her dress, of an untidy richness worn and tarnished, and ill-fastened at the neck, was no mean match for her face; and led me to think her-and therein I was right-the waiting-woman of some great lady. Perhaps I should, if let alone, have come something nearer the truth than this, and quite home; but Mr. Smith cut short my observations by falling upon her in a tone of anger, "Hang it, madam, if you are not satisfied," he cried, "I can only tell you-"

"Who said I was not satisfied?" she answered, still surveying me with the utmost coolness. "But-"

"But what?"

"I cannot help thinking- What is your name, sir, if you please?" This to me.

"Taylor," I said.

"Taylor? Taylor?" She repeated the name as if uncertain. "I remember no Taylor; and yet-"

"You remember? You remember? You know very well whom you remember!" Mr. Smith cried, impatiently. "It is the likeness you are thinking of! Why, it is as plain, woman, as the nose on his face. It is so plain that if I had brought him in by the front door-"

"And kept his mouth shut!" She interposed.

"No one would have been the wiser."

"Well," she said, grudgingly, and eyeing me with her head aside, "it is near enough."

"It is the thing!" he cried, with an oath.

"As a Chelsea orange is a China orange!" she answered, contemptuously.

At that he looked at her in a sort of dark fury, precisely, so it seemed to me, as Ferguson had looked at him an hour before. "By heaven, you vixen," he cried in the end, surprise and rage contending in his tone, "I believe you love him still!"

Her back being towards me I did not see her face, but the venom in her tone when she answered, made my blood creep. "Well," she said, slowly, "and if I do? Much good may it do him!"

Ambiguous as were the words-but not the tone-the man shrugged his shoulders. "Then what are we waiting for?" he asked, irritably.

"Madam's pleasure," she answered. And I could see that she loved to baulk him. However, her pleasure was, this time, short-lived, for at that moment a little bell tinkled in a distant room, and she took up the lamp. "Come," she said. "And do you, sir," she continued, turning to me and speaking sharply, "hold up your head and look as if you could cut your own food. You are going to see an old woman. Do you think that she will eat you?"

I let the gibe pass, and wondering of whom and what it was she reminded me, whenever she spoke, I followed her up a short dark flight of stairs to a second ante-room, or closet, situate, as far as I could judge, over the other. It was hung with dull, faded tapestry and smelled close, as if seldom used and more seldom aired. Setting down the lamp on a little side-table whereon a crumpled domino, a couple of masks, and an empty perfume bottle already lay, she bade us in a low voice wait for her and be silent; and enforcing the last order by placing her finger on her lip, she glided quietly out through a door so skilfully masked by the tapestry as to seem one of the walls.

Left alone with Mr. Smith, who seated himself on the table, I had leisure to take note of the closet. Remarking that the wall at one end was partly hidden by a couple of curtains, between which a bare bracket stood out from the wall, I concluded that the place had been a secret oratory and had witnessed many a clandestine mass. I might have carried my observations farther; but they were cut short at this point by the return of the woman, who nodding, in silence, held the door open for us to pass.

CHAPTER XVI

The first to enter, and prepared for many things-among which the gloomy surroundings of an ascetic, devoted to the dark usages of the old faith, held the first place in probability-I halted in surprise on the threshold of a lofty and splendid room suffused with rose-tinted light, and furnished with a luxury to which I had been hitherto a stranger. The walls, hung with gorgeous French tapestry, presented a succession of palaces and hunting scenes, interspersed with birds of strange and tropical plumage; between which and the eyes were scattered a profusion of Japanese screens, cabinets, and tables, with some of those quaint Dutch idols, brought from the East, which, new to me, were beginning at this time to take the public taste. Embracing the upper half of the room, and also a ruelle, in which stood a stately bed with pillars of silver, a circle of stronger light, dispersed by lamps cunningly hidden in the ceiling, fell on a suite of furniture of rose brocade and silver; in the great chair of which, with her feet on a foot-stool set upon the open hearth, sat an elderly lady, leaning on an ebony stick. A monkey mowed and gibbered on the back of her chair; and a parrot, vieing in brilliance with the broidered birds on the wall, hung by its claws from a ring above her head.

Nor was the lady herself unworthy of the splendour of her surroundings. It is true, her face and piled-up hair, painted and dyed into an extravagant caricature of youth, aped the graces of sixteen, and at the first glance touched the note of the grotesque rather than the beautiful; but it needed only a second look to convince me that with all that she on whom I looked was a great lady of the world, so still she sat, and so proud and dark was the gaze she bent on me over her clasped hands.

At first, it seemed to me, she gazed like one who, feeling a great surprise, has learned to hide that and all other emotions. But presently, "Come in, booby," she cried, in a voice petulant and cracking with age. "Does a woman frighten you? Come nearer, I say. Ay, I have seen your double. But the lamp has gone out."

The woman who had admitted me rustled forward. "It has sunk a little perhaps, madam," she said in a smooth voice. "But I-"

"But you are a fool," the lady cried. "I meant the lamp in the man, silly. Do you think that anyone who has ever seen him would take that block of wood for my son? Give him a brain, and light a fire in him, and spark up those oyster eyes, and-turn him round, turn him round, woman!"

"Turn," Smith muttered, in a fierce whisper.

"Ay," the lady cried, as I went to obey, "see his back, and he is like enough!"

"And perhaps, madam, strangers-"

"Strangers? They'd be strange, indeed, man, to be taken in by him! But walk him, walk him. Do you hear, fellow," she continued, nodding peevishly at me, "hold up your head, and cross the room like a man if you are one. Do you think the small-pox is in the air that you fear it! Ha! That is better. And what is your name, I wonder, that you have that nose and mouth, and that turn of the chin?"

"Charles Taylor," I made bold to answer, though her eyes went through me, and killed the courage in me.

"Ay, Charles, that is like enough," she replied. "And Taylor, that was your mother's. It is a waiting-woman's name. But who was your father, my man?"

"Charles Taylor too," I stammered, falling deeper and deeper into the lie.

"Odds my eyes, no!" she retorted with an ugly grin, and shook her piled-up head at me, "and you know it! Come nearer!" and then when I obeyed, "take that for your lie!" she cried; and, leaning forward with an activity I did not suspect, she aimed a blow at me with her ebony cane, and, catching me smartly across the shins, made me jump again. "That is for lying, my man," she continued with satisfaction, as I stooped ruefully to rub myself. "Before now I have had a man stopped and killed in the street for less. Ay, that have I! and a prettier man than you, and a gentleman! And now walk! walk!" she repeated, tapping the floor imperiously, "and fancy that you have money in your purse."

I obeyed. But naturally the smart of the cane did not tend to set me at my ease, or abate my awe of the old witch; and left to myself I should have made a poor show. Both the man and the woman, however, prompted and drilled me with stealthy eagerness, and whispering me continually to do this and that, to hold up my chin, to lay back my shoulders, to shake out my handkerchief, to point my toes, I suppose I came off better in this strange exhibition than might have been expected. For by-and-by, the lady, who never ceased to watch me with sharp eyes, grunted and bade me stand. "He might pass," she said, "among fools, and with his mouth shut! But odds my life," she continued, irritably, "God have mercy on us that there should be need of all this! Is there no royalty left in the world, that my son, of all people, should turn traitor to his lawful King, and spit on his father's faith? Sometimes I could curse him. And you, woman," she cried with sudden fierceness, "you cajoled him once. Can you do nothing now, you Jezebel?"

But the woman she addressed stood stiffly upright, looking before her, and answered nothing; and the mistress, with a smothered curse, turned to the man. "Well," she said, "have you nothing to say?"

"Only, madam, what I said before," he answered smoothly and gravely; "my lord's secession is no longer in issue. The question is how he may be brought back into the path of loyalty. To be frank, he is not of the stuff of those, whom your ladyship knows, who will readily lick both sides of the trencher. And so, without some little pressure, he will not be brought back. But were he once committed to the good cause, either by an indiscretion on his own part, if he could be induced to that-"

"Which he cannot, man, he cannot," she struck in impatiently. "He made one slip, and he will make no second."

"True, madam," the man answered. "Then there remains only the way which does not depend on him; and which I before indicated; some ruse which may lead both the friends and enemies of the good cause to think him committed to it. Afterwards, this opinion being brought to his notice, and with it, the possibility of clearing himself to the satisfaction both of St. Germain's and St. James's, he would, I think, come over."

"'Tis a long way round," said madam, dryly.

"It is a long way to Rome, madam," said the man, with meaning in his voice.

She nodded and shifted uneasily in her seat. "You think that the one means the other?" she said at last.

"I do, madam. But there is a new point, which has just arisen."

"A new point! What?"

"There is a design, and it presses," the man answered in a low voice, and as if he chose his words with care. "It will be executed within the month. If it succeed, and my lord be still where he is, and unreconciled, I know no head will fall so certainly. Not Lord Middleton's influence, no, nor yours, my lady, will save him."

"What, and my Lord Marlborough escape?"

"Yes, madam, for he has made his peace, and proved his sincerity."

"I believe it," she said, grimly. "He is the devil. And his wife is like unto him. But there's Sidney Godolphin-what of him?"

"He has made his peace, madam."

"Russell?"

"The same, madam, and given proofs."

"But, odds my soul, sir," she cried, sharply and pettishly, "if everybody is of one mind, where does it stick that the king does not come over?"

"On a life, madam," Smith answered, letting each word fall slowly, as if it were a jewel. "One life intervenes."

"Ha!" she said, sitting up and looking straight before her. "Sits the wind in that quarter? Well, I thought so."

"And therefore time presses."

"Still, man," she said, "our family has done much for the throne; and his Gracious Majesty has-"

"Has many virtues, my lady, but he is not forgiving," quoth the tempter, coolly.

On that she sighed, and deeply; and I, hearing the sigh, and seeing how uneasily she moved in her chair, comprehended that in old age the passions, however strong they may have been in youth, become slaves to help others to their aims; ay, and I comprehended also that, sharply as she had just rated both the man and the woman, and great lady as she was, and arrogant as had been her life-whereof evidence more than enough was to be found in every glance of her eye and tone of her voice-she was now being pushed and pushed and pushed, into that to which she was but half inclined. But half inclined, I repeat; and yet the battle was over, and she persuaded. I think, but I am not quite sure, that some assenting word had actually fallen from her-or she was in the act of speaking one-when a gentle knock at the door cut short our conference. Mr. Smith raised his hand in warning, and the woman, gliding to the door, opened it, and after speaking a word to someone without, returned.

"My lord is below," said she.

It was strange to see how madam's face changed at that; and how, on the instant, eagerness took the place of fatigue, and hope of ennui. There was no question now of withstanding her; or of any other giving orders. The parrot must be removed, because he did not like it; and we fared no better. "Let him up," she cried, peremptorily, striking her stick on the floor; "let him up. And do you, Monterey," she continued to the woman, "begone, and quickly. It irks him to see you. And, Smith, to-morrow! Do you hear me? come to-morrow, and I will talk. And take away that oaf! Ugh, out with him! My lord must not be kept waiting for such canaille. To-morrow! to-morrow!"

CHAPTER XVII

Truth to tell, I desired nothing so much as to be gone and be out of this imbroglio; and the woman, whom madam had called Monterey, twitching my sleeve and whispering me, I followed her, and slipped out as quickly as I could through the door by which we had entered. Even so we were not a moment too soon, if I was to retreat unseen. For as the curtain dropped behind me I heard a man's voice in the room I had left, and the woman with me chancing to have the lamp, which she had lifted from the table, in her hand at the instant-so that the light fell brightly on her face-I was witness of an extraordinary change which passed over her features. She grew rigid with rage-rage, I took it to be-and stood listening with distended eyes, in perfect forgetfulness of my presence; until, seeming at last to remember me, she glanced from me to the curtain and from the curtain to me in a kind of frantic uncertainty; being manifestly torn in two between the desire to hear what passed, and the desire to see me out that I might not hear. But as, to effect the latter she must sacrifice the former, it did not require a sage to predict which impulse, curiosity incited by hatred or mere prudence, would prevail with a woman. And as the sage would have predicted so it happened; after making an abortive movement as if she would place the lamp in my hands, she stealthily laid it on the table beside her, and making me a sign to wait and be silent, bent eagerly to listen.

I fancy that it was the mention of her own name turned the scale; for that was the first word that caught my ear, and who that was a woman would not listen, being mentioned? The speaker was her mistress, and the words "What, Monterey?" uttered in a voice a little sharp and raised, were as clearly heard as if we had been in the room.

"Yes, madam," came the answer.

"Well," my lady replied with a chuckle, "I do not think that you are the person who ought to-"

"Object? Perhaps not, my lady mother," came the answer. The speaker's tone was one of grave yet kindly remonstrance; the voice quite strange to me. "But that is precisely why I do," he continued. "I cannot think it wise or fitting that you should keep her about you."

"You kept her long enough about you!" madam answered, in a tone between vexation and raillery.

"I own it; and I am not proud of it," the new-comer rejoined. Whereat, though I was careful not to look at the woman listening beside me, I saw the veins in one of her hands which was under my eyes swell with the rage in her, and the nail of the thumb grow white with the pressure she was placing on the table to keep herself still. "I am very far from proud of it," the speaker continued, "and for the matter of that-"

"You were always a bit of a Puritan, Charles," my lady cried.

"It may be."

"I am sure I do not know where you get it from," madam continued irritably, stirring in her chair-I heard it crack, and her voice told the rest. "Not from me, I'll swear!"

"I never accused you, madam."

That answer seemed to please her, for on the instant she went off into such a fit of laughter as fairly choked her. When she had a little recovered from the paroxysm of coughing that followed this, "You can be more amusing than you think, Charles," she said. "If your father had had a spark of your humour-"

"I thought that it was agreed between us that we should not talk of him," the man said gravely, and with a slight suspicion of sternness in his voice.

"Oh, if you are on your high horse!" madam answered, "the devil take you! But, there, I am sure that I do not want to talk of him, poor man. He was dull enough. Let us talk of something livelier, let us talk of Monterey instead; what is amiss with her?"

"I do not think that she is a fit person to be about you."

"Why not? She is married now," my lady retorted. "D'ye know that?"

"Yes, I heard some time ago that she was married; to Mr. Bridges' steward at Kingston."

"Matthew Smith?"

"Yes."

"And who recommended him to my husband, I should like to know?" madam answered in a tone of malice. "Why, you, my friend."

"It is possible. I remember something of the kind."

"And who recommended him to you? Why, she did: in the days when you did not warn people against her." And madam chuckled wickedly.

"It is possible," he answered, "but the matter is twelve years old, and more; and I do not want to-"

"Go back to it," madam cried sharply. "I can quite understand that. Nor to have Monterey about to remind you of it-and of your wild oats."

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps, Mr. Square-Toes? You know it is the case!" was the vivid answer. "For otherwise, as I like the woman, and now, at all events, she is married-what is against her?"

"I do not trust her," was the measured answer. "And, madam, in these days people are more strait-laced than they were; it is not fitting."

"That for people!" my lady cried with a reckless good humour that would have been striking in one half her age. "People! Odds my life, when did I care for people? But come, I will make a bargain with you. Tit for tat. A Roland for your Oliver! If you will give me your Anne I will give you my Monterey."

"My Anne?" he exclaimed, in a tone of complete bewilderment.

"Yes, your Anne! Come, my Monterey for your Anne!"

There was silence for a moment, and then "I do not at all understand you," he said.

"Don't you? I think you do," she answered lightly. "Look you,

'When William king is William king no more.'

Now, you understand?"

"I understand, my lady, that you are saying things which are not fitting for me to hear," the man answered, in a tone of cold displeasure. "The King, thank God, is well. When he ails, it will be time to talk of his succession."

"It will be a little late then," she retorted. "In the meantime, and to please me-"

He raised his hand in protest. "Anything else," he said.

"You have not yet heard what I propose," she cried, her voice shrill with anger. "It is a trifle, and to please me you might well do it. Set your hand to a note which I will see delivered in the proper quarter; promising nothing in the Prince's life-time-there! but only that in the event of his death you will support a Restoration."

"I cannot do it," he answered.

"Cannot do it?" she rejoined with heat. "Why not? You have done as much before."

"It maybe: and been forgiven for it by the best master man ever had!"

"Who feels nothing, forgives easily," she sneered.

"But not twice," he said gravely. "The King-"

"Which King?"

"The only King I acknowledge," he answered, unmoved. "Who knows, believe me, so much more than you give him credit for, that it were well if your friends bethought them of that before it be too late. He has winked at much and forgiven more-no one knows it better than I-but he is not blinded; and there is a point, madam, beyond which he can be as steadfast to punish as your King. If Sir John Fenwick, therefore, who I know well, is in England-"

But at that she cut him short, carried away by a passion, which she had curbed as long as it was in her impetuous nature to curb anything. "Odds my life!" she cried, and at the sound of her voice uplifted in a shriek of anger, the woman listening beside me raised her face to mine, and smiled cruelly-"Odds my life, your King and my King! Kings indeed! Why, mannikin, how many Kings do you think there are! By G-d, Master Charles, you will learn one of these days that there is but one King, sent by God, one King and no more, and that his yea and nay are life and death! You fool, you! I tell you, you are trembling on the edge, you are tottering! A day, a week, a month, at most, and you fall-unless you clutch at the chance of safety I offer you! Sign the note! Sign the note, man! No one but the King and Middleton shall know of it; and when the day comes, as come it will, it shall avail you."