Shrewsbury: A Romance

As it was, Mr. Brome, within a month, saw so great a change in me that he would have me take a holiday; advising me to go afield either to my relations, or to some village on the Lea, to which neighbourhood Mr. Izaak Walton's book had given a reputation exceeding its deserts. He reinforced the advice with a gift of two guineas, that I might spend the month royally; then in a great hurry added an injunction that I should not waste the money. But I did worse; for I had the simple folly to tell the whole by way of protest and bitter complaint to my other master; who first with a grin took from me the two guineas, and then made himself merry over the increased time I could now place at his disposal.

"And it is timely, Dick, it is timely," he said with ugly pleasantry. "For, the good cause, the cause you love so dearly, Dick, is prospering. Another month and you and I know what will happen. Ha! ha! we know. In the meantime, work while it is day, Dick. Put your hand to the plough and look not back. If all were as forward as you, our necks would be in little peril, and we might see a rope without thinking of a cart."

"Curse you!" I cried, almost beside myself between disappointment, and the rage into which his fiendish teasing threw me. "Cannot you keep your tongue off that? Is it not enough that you-"

"Have taught me to limp!" quoth he winking hideously. "Here's to Louis, James, Mary, and the Prince-L. I. M. P., my lad! Oh, we can talk the deealect. We have had good teachers."

I could have burst into tears. "Some day you'll be caught!" I cried.

"Well?" he said with a grin. "And what then?"

"You'll be hanged! Hanged!" I cried furiously. "And God grant I may be there to see."

"You will that," he answered with composure. "Make your mind easy, my man, for, trust me, if I am in the first cart, you'll be in the second. That is my security, friend Dick. If I go, you go. Who carried to Mr. Warmaky's chambers the letters from France, I would like to know? And who- But the cause!" he continued, breaking off, "the cause! To business, and no more havers. Here's work for you. You shall go, do you hear me, Richard, to Covent Garden to the Piazza there, in half an hour's time. It will be full dark then. You will see there a fine gentleman walking up and down, taking his tobacco, with a white handkerchief hanging from his pocket. You will give him that note, and say 'Roberts and Guiney are good men'-d'ye take it? 'Roberts and Guiney are good men,' say that, and no more, and come back to me."

I answered at first, being in a rage, and not liking this errand better than others I had done for him, that I would not-I would not, though he killed me. But he had a way with him that I could not long resist; and he presently cowed me, and sent me off.

I had so far fallen into his sneaking habits that though it was dark night when I started, I went the farthest way round by Holborn, and the new fashionable quarter, Soho; and passing through King's Square itself, and before the late Duke of Monmouth's house-the sight of which did not lessen my distaste for my errand-I entered Covent Garden by James Street, which comes into the square between the two Piazzas. At the corner, I had to turn into the roadway to avoid a party of roisterers who had just issued from the Nag's Head coffee-house and were roaring for a coach; and being in the kennel, and observing under the Piazza and before the taverns more lights and link-boys than I liked, I continued along the gutter, dirty as it was (and always is in the neighbourhood of the market), until I was half-way across the square, where I could turn and reconnoitre at my leisure. Here for a moment, running my eye along the Piazza, which had its usual fringe of flower girls and mumpers, swearing porters and hackney coaches, I thought my man with the white handkerchief had not come; but shifting my gaze to the Little Piazza, which was darker and less frequented, I presently espied him walking to and fro under cover, with a cane in his hand and the air of a gentleman who had supped and was looking out for a pretty girl. He was a tall, stout man, wearing a large black peruke and a lace cravat and ruffles; and he carried a steel-hilted sword, and had somehow the bearing of one who had seen service abroad.

Satisfied that he was the person I wanted, I went to him; but stepping up to him a little hastily, I gave him a start, I suppose, for he backed from me and laid his hand on his hilt, rapping out an oath. However, a clearer view reassured him, and he cocked his hat, and swore at me again but in a different tone. "Sir," said he very rudely, "another time give a gentleman a wider berth, unless you want his cane about your shoulders!"

For answer I merely pulled out the note I had and held it towards him, being accustomed to such errands and anxious only to do this one, and begone; the more as under the Great Piazza a number of persons were loitering, and among them link-boys and chairmen and the like who notice everything.

However he made no movement to take the letter, but only said, "For me?"

"Yes," I answered.

"From whom?" said he, roughly.

"You will learn that inside," I said. "I was bidden only to say that Roberts and Guiney are good men."

"Ha!" he exclaimed, "why did you not say that before?" and at that took the letter. On which, having done my part and not liking the neighbourhood, I was for going, and had actually made a half turn, when a man slighter than the first and taller, came out of the shadow behind him, and standing by his side, touched his hat to me. I stopped.

"Good evening, my lord," he said, addressing me with ceremony, and a sort of dignity. "I little thought to see you here on this business. It is the best news I have had myself or have had to give to others this many a day. It shall be well represented, and the risk you run. And whatever be thought on this side, believe me, at St. Germain's-"

"Hush!" cried the first man, interrupting him at that, and rather sharply. I think he had been too much surprised to speak before. "You are too hasty, sir," he continued. "There must be a mistake here. The gentleman to whom you are speaking-"

"There is no mistake. This gentleman and I are well acquainted," the other responded coolly, and in the tone of a man who knows what he is doing. And then to me, and with a different air, "My lord, you may not wish to say your name aloud; that I can understand, and this is no very safe place for either of us. But if we could meet somewhere, say at-"

"Hush, sir," the man with the handkerchief cried, and this time almost angrily. "There is a mistake here, and in a moment you will say too much, if you have not said it already. This gentleman-if he is a gentleman-brings a letter from R. F., and is no more of a lord, I'll be sworn, than I am!"

"From R. F.?"

"Yes; and therefore if he is the person you think him- But come, sir," he continued, eyeing me angrily, "what is your name? End this."

I did not wish to tell him, yet liked less to refuse. So I lied, and on the spur of the moment said, "Charles Taylor," that being the name of a man who lived below me.

The taller man struck one hand into the other. "There! Charles!" he cried, and looked at me smiling. "I have an eye for faces, and if you are not-"

"Nay, sir, I pray, be quiet," the man with the white handkerchief remonstrated. "Or if you are so certain-" and then he looked hard at me and frowned as if he began to feel a doubt. "Step this way and tell me what you think. This gentleman will doubtless excuse us, and wait a moment, whether he be whom you think him or not."

I was as uneasy and as unwilling to stay as could be; but the man's tone was resolute, and I saw that he was not a man to cross; so with an ill grace I consented, and the two drawing aside together into the deeper shadow under the Piazza, began to confer. This left me to kick my heels impatiently, and watch out of the corner of my eye the loiterers under the other Piazza, to learn if any observed us. Fortunately they were taken up with a quarrel which had just broken out between two hackney coachmen, and though a man came near me, bringing a woman, he had no eyes for me, and, calling a sedan-chair, went away again almost immediately.

I was so engrossed with watching on that side and taking everyone who looked towards me for an informer, that it was with a kind of shock that I found my two friends had grown in the course of their conference to three; nor had I more than discovered this before the new comer left the other two and sauntered up to me. "Oh, ah," he said carelessly, "and who do you say that you-" and there he stopped, staring in my face. And then, "By heavens, it is!" he cried.

By this time I was something astonished, and more amazed; and answered with spirit-though he was a hard-bitten man, with the look of a soldier or gamester, to whom ordinarily I should have given the wall-that I was merely a messenger, and knew nothing of the matter on which I was there, nor for whom they took me.

His face, which for a second or more had blazed with excitement, fell suddenly; and when I had done speaking, he laughed.

"Don't you?" he said.

"No," said I. "Not a groat!"

"So it seems," he said again, as if that settled the matter. "Well, then what is your name?"

"Charles Taylor," I answered.

"And you come from that old rogue Ferg-R. F., I mean?"

"Yes."

"Well then you can go back to him," he said, dismissing me with a nod. "Or wait. Did you know that gentleman, my friend?"

"Which?" said I.

"The tall one."

"Not from Adam," I said.

"Good! Then there is no need you should know him," he answered coolly. "So, go. And do you tell that old fox to lie close. He was never in anything yet but he spoiled it. Tell him to lie close, and keep his bragging tongue quiet if he can. And now be off. I will explain to the gentlemen."

I needed no second bidding, but before the words were well out of his mouth, had crossed the square, to the market side, where there were no lights; thence skirting the garden of Bedford House, I made my way into the Strand, and home by a pretty direct route. The farther I left the men behind me, however, the higher rose my curiosity; so that by the time I reached Bride Lane, and had climbed the stairs to my garret, I was agape to know more, and for once in my life, was glad to find the old plotter in my room. Nor was it without satisfaction, that to his eager question, "You gave the note to the gentleman?" I answered shortly that I had given it to three.

"To three?" he exclaimed, starting up in a sudden fury. "You d-d cur, if you have betrayed me! What do you mean?"

"Only that I did what you told me," I answered sullenly; at which he sat down again. "I gave it to the gentleman; but he had two with him-"

"The more to hang him," he sneered, quickly recovering himself. "And what did he say?"

"Very little. Nothing that I remember. But the two with him-"

"Ay?"

"One of them said, 'Tell the old fox'-or the rogue, for he called you both-'to lie close!' And he added," I continued, spite giving me courage, "that you had hitherto spoiled everything you had been in, Mr. Ferguson."

At that I do not think that I ever saw a man in such a rage. Fortunately he did not turn it on me; but for two or three minutes he cursed and swore, bit things and foamed at the mouth, trampled on his wig and raged up and down, like nothing so much as a madman; while the imprecations he uttered against his enemies were so horrible I feared to stay with him. At length it seemed to occur to him that the man who could send such a message to him, Ferguson, the great Ferguson, the Ferguson with a thousand guineas on his head, must be a very great man indeed: which while it consoled him in some measure, excited his curiosity in another and inordinate degree. He hastened to put to me a number of questions, as, what were the two like? And did the one pay the other respect? And how were they dressed? And had either a ribbon or a star? And though in answer I could tell him no more than that the youngest was extremely tall and slight, under thirty, and of an easy carriage and bearing, and in appearance the leader, it was enough for him; he presently cried out that he had it, and slapped his thigh. "Gad! It is Jamie Churchill!" he cried. "It's Berwick, stop my vitals! He had a villainous French accent, had he not?"

"Something of the kind," I answered. Adding with as much of a sneer as I dared, "If it was not a Scotch one, sir."

He took the gibe and scowled at me-he spoke always like a Sawney, and could never pass for English; but in his pleasure at the discovery he had made he let the word pass. "See, man!" he said, "there are fine times coming! It is like Monmouth's day over again. I'll warrant Hunt's, down in the Marshes, is like a penny ferry with their coming over. The fat is fairly in the fire now, and if we do not singe little Hooknose's wig for him, I'll hang for it! He is a better man than his father, is Jamie; ay, the very same figure of a man that his cold-blooded, grease-your-boots, and sell-you-for-a-groat uncle, John Churchill, was at his age! So Jamie is over! Well, well: and if we knew precisely where he was and where he lies nights-there are two ways about it! Ye-es! Ye-es!" And the old rogue, falling first into a drawl and then into silence, looked at me slyly, and, unless I was mistaken, began to ruminate on a new treason; rubbing now one calf and now the other, and now dressing his ragged wig with his fingers, as he continued to smile at his wicked thoughts; so that, as he sat there, one leg over the other knee, he was the veriest baldheaded Judas to be conceived. In the meantime I watched him and hated him, and, I thought, read him.

Whatever the scheme in his mind, however, and whether he was, as I expected, as ready to sell the Duke of Berwick as to plot with him, he said no more to me on the subject; but presently went to his own room. Thus left, I thought it high time to consider where I stood, being all of a tremble and twitter with what I had heard and seen; and I tossed through the night, fearfully sounding the depths in which I found myself, and striving to gain strength to battle with the stream that day by day was forcing me farther and farther from the land. I was no boy or fool, unaware of the danger of being mixed up with great men and great names; rather the ten years during which I had followed public affairs had presented me with only too many examples of the iron pot and clay pitcher. When, therefore, I slept at last, late in the evening, it was to dream of the sledge and Tyburn road and the Ordinary-who bore in my dream a marvellous likeness to Mr. Brome-and a wall of faces that lined the way and never ceased from St. Giles's Pound to the Edgeware Road.

Such a dream, taken with my night's thoughts, left me eager to put in execution a plan I had more than once considered; which was to give up all, to fly from London, and hiding myself in some quiet place under another name, to live as I best might until Ferguson's capture, or a change in the state of affairs freed me from danger. At a distance from him I might even gain courage to inform against him; but this I left for future decision, the main thing now being to pack my clothes, secure about me the money I had saved, which amounted to thirty guineas, and escape from the town on foot or in a stage-wagon without any of his myrmidons being the wiser.

To adopt this course was to lose Mr. Brome's friendship and the livelihood which his employment provided; but such was the fear I had conceived of Ferguson's schemes and the perils they involved that I scarcely hesitated. Before noon, an hour which I thought least open to suspicion, I had engaged a porter and bidden him wait below, had made all my other arrangements, and in five minutes I should have been safe in the streets with my face set towards Kensington-when, at the last moment, there came a tap at my door and a voice asked if I was in.

It was not an hour at which Ferguson had ever troubled me, and trusting to this I had not been careful to hide the signs of removal which my room presented. For a moment I hung over my trunk, panic-stricken; then the door opened, and admitted the girl who had intervened once before-I mean at the door of the Secretary's office-and whom I had since noticed, but not often, going in at the opposite rooms.

She curtseyed demurely, standing in the doorway, and said that Mr. Smith-which was one of the names by which Ferguson went-had sent her to me with a message.

"Yes," I said, forcing myself to speak.

"Would you please to wait on him this evening at eight," she answered. "He wishes to speak with you."

"Yes," I said again, helplessly assenting; and there was an end of my fine evasion. I took it for a warning, and my clothes from my mail; and going down paid the porter a groat, and received in return a dozen porter's oaths. And so dismissed him and my plan together.

CHAPTER XV

It must be confessed that after that it was with a sore shrinking and foreboding of punishment I prepared to obey Mr. Ferguson's summons, and at the hour he had fixed knocked at his door. Hitherto he had always come to me; and even so and on my own ground I had suffered enough at his hands. What I had to expect, therefore, when entirely in his power I failed to guess, but on that account felt only the greater apprehension; so that it was with relief I recognised, firstly, as soon as I crossed the threshold, a peculiar neatness and cleanliness in the rooms, as if Ferguson at home were something different from Ferguson abroad; and secondly, that he was not alone, but entertained a visitor.

Neither of these things, to be sure, altered his bearing towards me, or took from the brutality with which it was his humour to address me; but as his opening words announced that the visitor's business lay with me, they relieved me from my worst apprehension-namely, that I was to be called to account for the steps I had taken to escape; at the same time that they amused me with the hope of better treatment, since no man could deal with me worse than he had.

"This is your man!" the plotter cried, lying back in his chair and pointing to me with the pipe he was smoking. "Never was such a brave conspirator! Name a rope and he will sweat! For my part, I wish you joy of him. Here, you, sirrah," he continued, addressing me, "this gentleman wishes to speak to you, and, mind you, you will do what he tells you, or-"

But at that the gentleman cut him short with a deprecating gesture. "Softly, Mr. Ferguson, softly!" he said, and rose and bowed to me. Then I saw that he was the last comer of the three I had met in Covent Garden; and the one who had dismissed me. "You go too fast," he went on, smiling, "and give our friend here a wrong impression of me. Mr. Taylor, I-"

But it was Ferguson's turn to take him up, which he did with a boisterous laugh. "Ho! Taylor! Taylor!" he cried in derision. "No more Taylor than I am haberdasher! The man's name-"

"Is whatever he pleases," the stranger struck in, with another bow. "I neither ask it nor seek to know it. Such things between gentlemen and in these times are neither here nor there. It is enough and perhaps too much that I came to ask you to do me a favour and a service, Mr. Taylor, both of which are in your power."

He spoke with a politeness which went far to win me, and the farther for the contrast it afforded to Ferguson's violence. With his appearance I was not so greatly taken; finding in it, though he was dressed well enough, clearer signs of recklessness than of discretion, and plainer evidences of hard living than of charity or study. But perhaps the prayer of such a man, when he stoops to pray, is the more powerful. At any rate I was already half gained, when I answered; asking him timidly what I could do for him.

"Pay a call with me," said he lightly. "Neither more than that, nor less."

I asked him on whom we were to call.

"On a lady," he answered, "who lives at the other end of the town."

"But can I be of any service?" I said, feebly struggling against the inevitable.

"You can," he answered. "Of great service."

"Devil a bit!" said Ferguson testily, and stared derision at me out of a cloud of smoke. It occurred to me then that he was not quite sober, and further that he was no more in the secret of the service than I was. "Devil a bit!" said he again, and more offensively.

"You will let me judge of that," said the gentleman, and he turned to the table. "Will you mind changing the clothes you wear for these?" he said to me with a pleasant air. On which I saw that he had on the table by his hand a suit of fine silk velvet clothes, and surmounted by a grand dress peruque, with a laced steinkirk and ruffles to match. "Pardon the impertinence," he continued, shrugging his shoulders as if the matter were a very slight one, while I stared in amazement at this new turn. "It is only that I think you will aid me the better in these. And after all, what is a change of clothes?"

Naturally I looked at the things in wonder. I had never worn clothes of the kind. "Do you want me to put them on?" I said.

"Yes," he answered, smiling. "Will you do it on the faith that it will serve me, and trust to me to explain later?"

"If there is no danger in-in the business," I said reluctantly, "I suppose I must." As a fact, whatever he asked me, with Ferguson beside him, I should have to do, so great was my fear of that man.

"There is no danger," he replied. "I will answer for it. I shall accompany you and return with you."

On that, and though I did not comprehend in the least degree what was required of me, I consented, and took the clothes at the stranger's bidding into the next room, where I put off mine and put these on; and presently, seeing myself in a little square of glass that hung against the wall, scarcely knew myself in a grand suit of blue velvet slashed and laced with pearl-colour, a dress peruque and lace ruffles and cravat. Being unable to tie the cravat, I went back into the room with it in my hand; where I found not only the two I had left but the girl who had summoned me that morning. The two men greeted the change in me with oaths of surprise; the girl, who stood in the background, with an open-eyed stare; but for a moment and until the stranger had tied the cravat for me, nothing was said that I understood. Then Mr. Ferguson getting up and walking round me with a candle, gazing at me from top to toe, the other asked him in a voice of some amusement if he knew now who I was.

"A daw in jay's feathers!" said he, scornfully.

"And you do not know him?"

"Not I-except for the silly fool he is!"

"Then you do not know-well, someone you ought to know!" the stranger answered dryly. "You are getting old, Mr. Ferguson."

My master cursed his impudence.

"I am afraid that you do not keep abreast of the rising generation," the other continued, coolly eyeing the rage his words excited. "And for your Shaftesburys, and Monmouths, and Ludlows, and the old gang, they don't count for much now. You must look about you, Mr. Ferguson; you must look about you and open your eyes, and learn new tricks, or before you know it you will find yourself on the shelf."

It would be difficult to exaggerate the fury into which this threw my master; he raved, stamped, and swore, and finally, having recourse to his old trick, tore off his wig, flung it on the ground, and stamped on it. "There!" he cried, with horrible imprecations, the more horrible for the bald ugliness of the man, "and that is what I will do to you-by-and-by, Mr. Smith. On the shelf, am I? And need new tricks? Hark you, sir, I am not so much on the shelf that I cannot spoil your game, whatever it is. And G- d- me but I will!"

Mr. Smith, listening, cool and dark-faced, shrugged his shoulders; but for all his seeming indifference, kept a wary eye on the plotter. "Tut-tut, Mr. Ferguson, you are angry with me," he said. "And say things you do not mean. Besides, you don't know-"

"Know?" the other shrieked.

"Just so, know what my game is."

"I know this!" Ferguson retorted, dropping his voice on a sudden to a baleful whisper, "Who is here, and where he lies, Mr. Smith. And-"

"So do Tom, Dick, and Harry," the other answered, shrugging his shoulders contemptuously; and then to me, "Mr. Taylor," he continued with politeness, "I think we will be going. Light the door, my dear. That is it. I have a coach below, and-good-night, Mr. Ferguson, good-night to you. I'll tell Sir George I have seen you. And do you think over my advice."