Shrewsbury: A Romance

"Yet I do not know," answered the Duke, who stood between the two with his eyes on the fire, and his back towards me. "If we go too fast, people may say, my lord, that we fear what they might disclose."

The Earl laughed blandly. "You had little gain by Preston," said he, "and you kept him long enough."

"My Lord Devonshire is anxious to go into the matter thoroughly."

"Doubtless he has his reasons," Lord Marlborough answered, shrugging his shoulders. "The question is-whether your Grace has the same."

"I know none why we should not go into it," the Duke answered in measured tones which showed pretty clearly that in spite of his good-nature he was not to be led blindfold. "They can have nothing to say that will reflect on me. And I am sure," he continued, slightly inclining his head in courteous fashion, "that the same may be said of Lord Marlborough."

"Cela va sans dire!" answered the Earl in a voice so unconstrained and with a gesture so proud and easy that if he lied-as some have been found ready to assert-he showed a mastery of that art alike amazing and incredible. "And of Lord Godolphin also."

"By God, yes!" that peer exclaimed, in such a hurry to assent that his words tumbled over one another.

"Just so. I say so, my lord," the Earl repeated with a faint ring of scorn in his tone, while Lord Godolphin wiped his forehead. "But innocence is no shield against calumny, and if these rogues can prolong their lives by a lie, do you think that they will not tell one? Or even ten?"

"Ay, by God, will they!" cried Godolphin. "Or twenty. I'll lay thee long odds to that."

My lord bowed and admitted that it was possible.

"So possible," Lord Marlborough continued, lightly and pleasantly, "that it is not long since your Grace, unless I am mistaken, suffered after that very fashion. I have no mind to probe your secrets, Duke-God forbid! I leave such tasks to my Lord Portland! But, unless I am in error, when you last left office advantage was taken of some" – he paused, and then with an easy motion of his white hands-"some trifling indiscretion. It was exaggerated and increased tenfold, and placed in a light so false that" – he paused again to take a pinch of snuff from his box-"that for a time even the King was induced to believe-that my Lord Shrewsbury was corresponding with France. Most amusing!"

The Duke did not answer for a moment; then in a voice that shook a little, "It is an age of false witnesses," he said.

"Precisely," Lord Marlborough answered, shrugging his shoulders with charming bonhomie. "That is what I say. They do not greatly hurt you or me. We have clear consciences and clean hands; and can defy these ruffians. But the party must be considered."

"There is something in that," said the Duke, nodding and speaking in his natural tone.

"And smaller men, as innocent, but more vulnerable-they too should be considered."

"True," said Lord Godolphin, nodding. "True, by God."

The Duke assented thoughtfully. "I will bear it in mind," he said. "I think it is a questionable policy."

"In any event I am sure that your Grace's prudence will steer the matter to a safe issue," Lord Marlborough answered in his courtliest fashion. "I thank Heaven that you are here in this emergency, and not Portland or Auverquerque, who see a foe to the King in every Englishman."

"I should be sorry to see any but an Englishman in the Secretary's office," the Duke said, with a little heat.

"And yet that is what we have to expect," Lord Marlborough answered placidly. "But we are detaining your Grace. Come, my lord, we must be going. I suppose that Sir John is not taken?"

"Sir John Fenwick?"

"Yes."

"It has not been reported."

With that the two noblemen took a formal farewell, and the Duke begging them to go out by his private door that they might avoid the press in the hall, they were crossing the room in that direction, when a sudden hubbub arose outside and a cry of alarm, and before they had more than raised their eyebrows, asking one another politely what it meant, the door beside which I stood was opened, and a gentleman came in. He looked with a flustered face at the Duke. "Your Grace's pardon," he said hurriedly. "One of the prisoners has escaped!"

"Escaped!" said the Duke. "How?"

"The woman has somehow slipped away. Through the crowd it is believed, your Grace. The messenger-"

But at that moment the unfortunate official himself appeared in the doorway, looking scared out of his life, "What is this?" said the Duke sharply.

The man whimpered. "'Fore God it is not my fault," he cried. "She never passed through the door! May I die if she did, your Grace."

"She may be still in the hall?"

"We have searched it through and through!" the man answered desperately. "It remains only to search the house, your Grace-with your permission."

"What!" the Duke cried, really or apparently startled. "Why the house?"

"She must have slipped into the house, for she never went out!" the man answered doggedly. "She never went out!"

The Duke shrugged his shoulders and turned to Lord Marlborough. "What do you think?" said he.

The Earl raised his eyebrows. By this time half the concourse in the hall had pressed to the doorway, and were staring into the room. "Call Martin," said the Duke. "And stand back there a little, if you please," he continued haughtily. "This is no public court, but my house, good people."

It seemed to me-but I, behind the door, was in a boundless fright-that the steward would never come. He did come at last, and pushing his way through the crowd, presented himself with a bustling confidence that failed to hide his apprehensions. Nor was the Duke's reception of him calculated to set him at his ease.

"Stand out, man!" he said harshly, and with a nearer approach to the tyrannical than I had hitherto seen in a man, who was perhaps the best-natured of his species. "Stand out and answer me, and no evasions. Did I not give you an order of the strictest character, to lock the inner door and leave it for nothing, and no one-while this business was forward?"

Martin gasped. "May it please your Grace," he said, "I-"

"Answer, fool, what I ask," the Duke cried, cutting him short with the utmost asperity. "Did I not give you those orders?"

The man was astonished, and utterly terrified. "Yes," he said. "It is true, your Grace."

"And did you obey them?"

Poor Martin, seeing that all the trouble was like to rest on his back, answered as in all probability the Duke expected. "I did, your Grace," he said roundly. "I have not been an arm's length from the door, nor has it been unlocked. I have the key here," he continued, producing it and holding it up.

"Has anyone passed through the door while you have been on guard?"

The steward had gone too far to confess the truth now, and swore positively and repeatedly that no one had passed through the door or could have passed through the door; that it was impossible; that the door had been locked all the time, and the key in his possession: finally, that if the girl had gone through the door she must have gone through the keyhole, and was a witch. At which some present crossed themselves.

"I am satisfied," said the Duke, addressing the messenger. "Doubtless she slipped through the crowd. But as you are responsible and will have to answer for the girl, I would advise you to lose no time in searching such of Mr. Ferguson's haunts as are known to you. It is probable that she will take refuge in one or other of them. However, I will report the matter as favourably as I can to the council. You can go. Lodge the others according to the warrants, and make no second blunder. See these people out, Martin. And for you, my lords, I am sorry that this matter has detained you."

"La fille-ne velait pas beaucoup?" said the Earl curiously.

"Pas de tout!" my lord answered, and smiling, shrugged his shoulders. "Rien!"

CHAPTER XXXII

With the least inclination towards merriment I must have laughed at the face of horror with which Mr. Martin, when he went a few minutes later, to expel the last stragglers, came on me where I stood, trying to efface myself behind the door. He dared not speak, for the Duke was standing at the table a few paces from him; and I would not budge. Fortunately I remembered that a still tongue was all he need wish; and I laid my finger on my lips and nodded to him. This a little encouraged him, but not much; and in his fear of what I might, in spite of my promise, let out, if I were left alone with his master, he was still in two minds whether he should eject me or not, when the Duke spoke.

"Is Price there?" he said with his face averted, and his hands still busy with the papers. "The man I sent for."

"Yes, your Grace," Martin answered, making hideous faces at me.

"Then leave us. Shut the door."

If my lord had spoken the moment that was done and we were alone, I think it would have relieved me. But he continued to search among the papers on the table, and left me to sink under the weight of the stately room with its ordered rows of books, its ticking dial, and the mute busts of the great dead. The Duke's cloak lay across a chair, his embroidered star glittering on the breast; his sword and despatch-box were on another chair; and a thing that I took to be the signet gleamed among the papers on the table. From the lofty mantel-piece of veined marble that, supported by huge rampant dogs, towered high above me (the work as I learned afterwards of the great Inigo Jones), the portrait of a man in armour, with a warden in his mailed hand, frowned down on me, and the stillness continuing unbroken, and all the things I saw speaking to me gravely and weightily, of a world hitherto unknown to me-a world wherein the foot exchanged the thick pile of carpets for the sounding tread of Parian, and orders were obeyed unspoken, and sable-vested servants went to and fro at a sign-a world of old traditions, old observances, and old customs revolving round this man still young, I felt my spirits sink-the distance was so great from the sphere I had known hitherto. Every moment the silence grew more oppressive, the ticking of the clock more monotonous; it was an immense relief when the Duke suddenly spoke, and addressing me in his ordinary tone, "You can write?" said he.

"Yes, your Grace."

"Then sit here," he replied, indicating a seat at the end of the table, "and write what I shall tell you."

And before I could marvel at the ease of the transition, I was seated, quietly writing; what I can no longer remember, for it was the first only of many hundred papers, of private and public importance, which I was privileged to write for his signature. My hand shook, and it is unlikely that I exhibited much of the natural capacity for such work which it has been my lot to manifest since; nevertheless, his Grace after glancing over it, was pleased to express his satisfaction. "You learned to do this with Brome?" said he.

"Yes, your Grace."

"Then how," he continued, seating himself-I had risen respectfully-"Tell me what happened to you yesterday."

I had no choice but to obey, but before I told my story, seeing that he was in a good humour and so favourably inclined to me, I spoke out what was in my mind; and in the most moving terms possible I conjured him to promise me that I should not be forced to be an evidence. I would tell him all, I would be faithful and true to him, and ask nothing better than to be his servant-but be an informer in court I dared not.

"You dare not?" he said, with an odd look at me. "And why not, man?"

But all I could answer was, "I dare not!"

"Are you afraid of these villains?" he continued, impatiently. "I tell you, we have them: it is they who have to fear!"

But I still clung to my point. I would tell, but I would give no evidence; I dared not.

"I am afraid, Mr. Price," he said at that, and with an air of some contempt, "that you are something of a coward!"

I answered, grovelling before him, that it might be-it might be; but-

"But-who of us is not?" he answered, with a sudden gesture between scorn and self-reproof. "Do you mean that, man?" And he fixed his eyes on me. "Well, it is true. Who of us is not?" he repeated, slowly; and turning from me, he began to pace the room, his hands clasped behind him; so that before he had made a single turn it was easy to see that he had forgotten my presence. "Who of us is not afraid-if not of these scoundrels, still of the future, of the return, of Jacobus iracundus et ingens, of another 29th of May? To be safe now and to be safe then-who is not thinking of that and living for that, and planning for that?"

He was silent a moment, then with something of anger in his voice, "My Lord Marlborough, dipped to the lips in '88, who shall say that for all that he has not made his peace? And has good reason to urge us to let sleeping dogs lie? And Godolphin, is it only at Newmarket he has hedged-that he says, the less we go into this the better? And Sunderland who trusts no one and whom no one trusts? And Leeds-all things for power? And Clarendon, once pardoned? And Russell, all temper? Who knows what pledges they have given, or may give? Devonshire-Devonshire only has to lose, and stands to lose with me. With me!"

As he spoke thus he seemed to be so human, and through the robe of state and stateliness in which he lived the beating of the poor human heart was so plainly visible, that my heart went out to him, and with an eagerness and boldness that now surprise me, I spoke to him.

"But, your Grace," I said, "while the King lives all goes well, and were anything to happen to him-"

"Yes?" said he, staring at me, and no little astonished at the interruption.

"There is the Princess Anne. She is here, she would succeed, and-"

"And my Lord Marlborough!" said he, smiling. "Well, it may be. But who taught you politics, Mr. Price?"

"Mr. Brome," said I, abashed. "What I know, your Grace."

"Ha! I keep forgetting," he answered, gaily, "that I am talking to one of the makers of opinion-the formers of taste. But there, you shall be no evidence, I give you my word. So tell me all you know, and what befell you yesterday."

I had no desire but to do so-on those terms, and one small matter excepted-and not only to do that, but all things that could serve him. Nevertheless, and though I had high hopes of what I might get by his grace and favour, I was far from understanding that that was the beginning of twenty years of faithful labour at his side; of a matter of fifteen thousand papers written under his eye; of whole ledgers made up, of estate accompts balanced and tallies collected; of many winters and summers spent among his books, either in the placid shades of Eyford or in the dignified quiet of St. James's Square. But, as I have said, though I did not foresee all this, I hoped much, and more as, my tale proceeding, my lord's generous emotion became evident. When I had done, he said many kind things to me respecting the peril I had escaped; and adding to their value by his manner of saying them, and by the charm which no other so perfectly possessed, he left me at last no resource but to quit the room in tears.

Treated thus with a kindness as much above my deserts as it was admirable in one of his transcendent rank, and assured, moreover, by my lord's own mouth that henceforth, in gratitude for the service I had done him in Ferguson's room, he would provide for me, I should have stood, I ought to have stood, in the seventh heaven of felicity. But as suffering moves unerring on the track of weakness, and no man enjoys at any moment perfect bliss, I had first to learn the fate of the girl whose evasion I had contrived. And when a cautious search and questions as crafty had satisfied me that she had really effected her escape from the house-probably in a man's dress, for one of the lacqueys complained of the loss of a suit of clothes-I had still a care; and a care which gnawed more sharply with every hour of ease and safety.

Needless to say, the one matter on which I had been reticent, the one actor whose presence on the scene I had not disclosed to my lord, lay at the bottom of my anxiety. Kind in action and generous in intention as the Duke had shown himself, his magnanimity had not availed to oust from my mind the terror with which Smith's threats had imbued it; nor while confessing all else had I been able to bring myself to denounce the conspirator or detail the terms on which he had set me free. Though I had all the inducement to speak, which the certainty that his arrest would release me, could present, even this, and the security of the haven in which I lay, failed to encourage me to the point of hazard. So strong was the hold on my fears which this man had compassed; and so complete the slavery to which he had reduced my will.

But though at the time of confession, I found it a relief to be silent about him, this same silence presently left me alone to cope with him, and with fears sufficiently poignant, which his memory awakened: the result being that with prospects more favourable and a future better assured than I had ever imagined would be mine, or than any man of my condition had a right to expect, I still found this drop of poison in my cup. It was not enough that all things-and my patron-favouring me, I sank easily into the position of his privy clerk, that I retained that excellent room in which I had first been placed, that I found myself accepted by the household as a fact-so that never a man saved from drowning by a strand had a right to praise his fortune as I had; nor that, the wind from every quarter, seeming at the same time to abate, the prisoners went for trial, and nothing said of me, while Ferguson, of whose complicity no legal proof could be found, lay in prison under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, and kept silence; nor even that a note came from Mary, ostensibly from Dunkirk, and without compromising me informed me of her safety. It was not enough, I say, that each and all of these things happened beyond my hopes; for in the midst of my prosperity, whether I stood writing at my lord's elbow in the stillness of the stately library, or moved at ease through the corridor, greeted with respect by my fellow-servants, and with civility by all, I was alike haunted by the thought and terror of Smith, and the knowledge that at any moment, the conspirator might appear to hurl me from this paradise. The secrecy which I had maintained about him doubled his power; even as the ease and luxury in which I lived presented in darker and fouler colours the sordid scenes and perils through which I had waded to this eminence.

CHAPTER XXXIII

I think that I had spent a week, or it might be more, in this situation of mingled ease and torment, when on coming down one morning after a hag-ridden night I heard a stir in the hall; and, going that way to learn what it meant, met the servants returning in a crowd from the front, and talking low about something. Martin, who was foremost, cried, "Ha, you are too late!" And then drawing me aside, into a little den he had beside the passage, "They have taken him to the office," he said. "But, lord's sakes, Mr. Price," he continued, lifting his eyebrows and pursing up his lips to express his astonishment, "who would have thought it? Her ladyship will be in a taking! I hope that there may be no more in it than appears!"

"In what?" said I.

"In this arrest," he answered, eyeing me with meaning, and then softly closing the door on us. "I hope it may end there. That is all I say! Between ourselves."

"You forget," I cried with irritation, "that I know nothing about it! What arrest? And who is arrested?"

"Mr. Bridges's man of business."

"What Mr. Bridges?" I cried.

"Lord, Mr. Price, have you no wits?" he answered, staring at me. "My lord's mother's husband. The Countess's, to be sure! You must know Mr. Smith."

It needed no more than that; although, without the name, we might have gone on at cross purposes for an hour. But the name-the world held only one Smith for me, and he it seemed was arrested.

He was arrested! It was with the greatest difficulty that I could control my joy. Fortunately the little cub, where we stood, was ill-lighted, and Martin, a man too much taken up with his own consequence to be over-observant of his companions. Still, for a moment, I was perfectly overcome, the effervescence of my spirits such that I could do nothing but lean against the wall of the room, my heart bounding with joy and my head singing a pæan of jubilation. Smith was taken! Smith was in the hands of justice! Smith was arrested and I was free.

The first rapture past, however, I began to doubt; partly because the news seemed to be too good to be true, and partly because, though Martin had continued to babble, I had heard not a word. Wild, therefore, to have the thing confirmed, I cut him short; and crying, "But what Smith is it, do you say? Who is he?" I brought him back to the point at which he had left me.

"Why, Mr. Price," he answered, "I thought everyone knew Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith, Mr. Bridges's factotum, land-steward, what you will! He married the Countess's fine madam-madame they call her in the household, though she is no French thing but Hertfordshire born, as I knew by her speech when my lord first took up with her. But not everyone knows that."

"When my lord took up with her?" I said, groping among half-recognised objects, and beginning-so much light may come through the least chink-to see day.

Mr. Martin nodded confidentially. "That is how she came to be with my lady," he said. "And Mr. Smith, too! My lord met her somewhere when he was young and gay and took up with her, and to please her got the place for Mr. Smith, who had been her flame before. However, my lord soon tired of her, for though she was a beauty she had common ways and was bold as brass; so when he parted from her she went back to her old love, who had first made her the mode, and married him. I have heard that my lord was in a pretty taking when he found her planted at the Countess's. But I have nothing to say against her."

"Does my lord-see her now?" I said with an effort.

"When he does he looks pretty black at her. And I fancy that there is no love lost on her side."

"What did you say that-they called her?" I asked.

"Madame-Madame Monterey."

I remembered where I had heard the name before and who had borne it; and saw so much light that I was dazzled. "And my lord's mother-who married Mr. Bridges. She is a Papist?"

"Hush!" he said. "The less said about such things the better, Mr. Price."

But I persisted. "It was she who ran off with my Lord Buckingham in King Charles's time," I cried, "and held his horse while he killed her husband? And who had Mr. Killigrew stabbed in the street; and-"

In a panic he clapped his hand on my mouth. "God, man!" he cried, "do you know where you are, or is your head turned? Do you think that this house is a fit place to give tongue to such things? Lord, you will be but a short time here, and to the pillory when you go, if you throw your tongue that way! I have not blabbed as much in twenty years, and would not for a kingdom! Who are you to talk of such as my lady?"

He was so righteously indignant at the presumption of which I had been guilty in attacking the family that, though it was his own indiscretion that had led me to the point, I made haste to mutter an apology, and doing this with the better grace for the remembrance that Smith was now powerless and his wicked plans abortive, I contrived presently to appease him. But the ferment which the discovery I had made wrought in my spirits moved me to escape as quickly as possible to my room, there to consider at leisure the miserable position in which, but for Smith's timely capture, I must have found myself.

A suspicion of the truth I had entertained before; but this certainty that the man I was to be trepanned into personating was my benefactor, and that in the plot his own mother was engaged, filled me with as much horror, when I considered the necessity of complying under which I might have lain, as thankfulness when I reflected on the escape I had had. Nor did these two considerations, overwhelming as they may well appear, account for all the agitation I was experiencing. Mr. Martin, in speaking of Madame Monterey's origin, had mentioned Hertfordshire; and the name, bringing together two sets of facts hitherto so distant in my mind that I had never undertaken to connect them, had in a flash presented Smith and madame in their true colours. Why I had not before associated the Smith I now knew with that Templar Smith whom I darkly remembered as Jennie's accomplice in my early trouble; why I had not recognised in the woman's coarsely handsome features the charms that thirteen years before had fired my boy's blood and brought me to the foot of the gallows, is not more difficult to explain than why this one mention of Hertfordshire sufficed to raise the curtain; ay, and not only to raise it, but to set the whole drama so plainly before me that I could be no wiser had I followed every scene in madame's life, and, a witness of her shameful débût under Smith's protection, her seduction of my lord and her period of splendour, had attended her in her final declension when, a discarded mistress, she saw no better alternative than a marriage with her former protector.