Shrewsbury: A Romance

by Stanley John Weyman

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  I think that I had spent a week, or it might be more, in thissituation of mingled ease and torment, when on coming down one morningafter a hag-ridden night I heard a stir in the hall; and, going thatway to learn what it meant, met the servants returning in a crowd fromthe front, and talking low about something. Martin, who was foremost,cried, "Ha, you are too late!" And then drawing me aside, into alittle den he had beside the passage, "They have taken him to theoffice," he said. "But, lord's sakes, Mr. Price," he continued,lifting his eyebrows and pursing up his lips to express hisastonishment, "who would have thought it? Her ladyship will be in ataking! 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 softlyclosing 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. "Mylord'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 havegone on at cross purposes for an hour. But the name--the world heldonly one Smith for me, and he it seemed was arrested.

  He was arrested! It was with the greatest difficulty that I couldcontrol my joy. Fortunately the little cub, where we stood, wasill-lighted, and Martin, a man too much taken up with his ownconsequence to be over-observant of his companions. Still, for amoment, I was perfectly overcome, the effervescence of my spirits suchthat I could do nothing but lean against the wall of the room, myheart bounding with joy and my head singing a paean of jubilation.Smith was taken! Smith was in the hands of justice! Smith was arrestedand I was free.

  The first rapture past, however, I began to doubt; partly because thenews seemed to be too good to be true, and partly because, thoughMartin 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 tothe 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 marriedthe Countess's fine madam--madame they call her in the household,though she is no French thing but Hertfordshire born, as I knew by herspeech when my lord first took up with her. But not everyone knowsthat."

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

  Mr. Martin nodded confidentially. "That is how she came to be with mylady," he said. "And Mr. Smith, too! My lord met her somewhere when hewas young and gay and took up with her, and to please her got theplace for Mr. Smith, who had been her flame before. However, my lordsoon tired of her, for though she was a beauty she had common ways andwas bold as brass; so when he parted from her she went back to her oldlove, who had first made her the mode, and married him. I have heardthat my lord was in a pretty taking when he found her planted at theCountess'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 isno 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--whomarried 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 inKing Charles's time," I cried, "and held his horse while he killed herhusband? And who had Mr. Killigrew stabbed in the street; and----"

  In a panic he clapped his hand on my mouth. "God, man!" he cried, "doyou know where you are, or is your head turned? Do you think that thishouse is a fit place to give tongue to such things? Lord, you will bebut a short time here, and to the pillory when you go, if you throwyour tongue that way! I have not blabbed as much in twenty years, andwould 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 beenguilty in attacking the family that, though it was his ownindiscretion that had led me to the point, I made haste to mutter anapology, and doing this with the better grace for the remembrance thatSmith was now powerless and his wicked plans abortive, I contrivedpresently to appease him. But the ferment which the discovery I hadmade wrought in my spirits moved me to escape as quickly as possibleto my room, there to consider at leisure the miserable position inwhich, but for Smith's timely capture, I must have found myself.

  A suspicion of the truth I had entertained before; but this certaintythat 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 asmuch horror, when I considered the necessity of complying under whichI might have lain, as thankfulness when I reflected on the escape Ihad had. Nor did these two considerations, overwhelming as they maywell appear, account for all the agitation I was experiencing. Mr.Martin, in speaking of Madame Monterey's origin, had mentionedHertfordshire; and the name, bringing together two sets of factshitherto so distant in my mind that I had never undertaken to connectthem, 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 TemplarSmith whom I darkly remembered as Jennie's accomplice in my earlytrouble; why I had not recognised in the woman's coarsely handsomefeatures the charms that thirteen years before had fired my boy'sblood and brought me to the foot of the gallows, is not more difficultto explain than why this one mention of Hertfordshire sufficed toraise the curtain; ay, and not only to raise it, but to set the wholedrama so plainly before me that I could be no wiser had I followedevery scene in madame's life, and, a witness of her shameful _debut_under Smith's protection, her seduction of my lord and her period ofsplendour, had attended her in her final declension when, a discardedmistress, she saw no better alternative than a marriage with herformer protector.

  How greatly this identification of the two conspirators increased, aswell as the loathing in which I held their schemes, as my relief uponthe reflection that those schemes were now futile, I will not say.Suffice it that the knowledge that, but for Smith's arrest, I musthave chosen between playing the basest part in the world and running arisk whereat I shuddered, filled me with thankfulness immeasurable, athankfulness which I did not fail to pour out on my knees, and whichwas in no degree lessened by a shuddering consciousness that in thatdilemma, had Providence not averted it, I might have--ay, shouldhave--played the baser part!

  No wonder that a hundred harrowing recollections crowded on my mind,or that under the pressure of these the tumult of my spirits became sopowerful that I presently seized my hat, and hastily escaping from thehouse, sought in rapid movement some relief from the unpleasantretrospect. Crossing the Green Park, I chose a field path that led bythe Pimlico marshes to Fulham; and gradually the songs of the larksand the spring sunshine--for the day was calm and serene--leading mymind into a more cheerful groove, I began to dwell rather on the factof my escape than on the crime from which I had escaped, andcontemplating the secure career that now lay in view before me, I wasnot long in seeing that thankfulness should be my strongest feeling.Turning my back on Smith and his like, I began to build my houseagain; saw a smiling wife and babes, and days spent between my homeand my lord's papers; and then a green old age and slippered feettottering through the quiet shades of a library. Before I turned I hadroofed the house with an honourable headstone, and felt the tears risein generous sympathy with the village assembled to do the old manhonour.

  In
a word, tasting the full relief of emancipation, I became so gayand lightsome that even the smoke and din of London, when I re-enteredit, failed to subdue the unusual humour. I could have sung, I couldhave laughed aloud. Let the dead past bury its dead! For Ferguson,Smith, the Monterey--a fig! Who had come off best after all? And oftheir fine plottings and contrivings what had been the upshot? Theyhad failed and I had triumphed; they were prisoners, I was free andsafe.

  Near the garden-wall of Buckingham House there was a bear dancing, anda press of people round it. I stayed to watch, and in my mood, foundthe fun so much to my taste that I threw the man a penny and went onlaughing. A little further, by the edge of the lake, was a man with abarrow and dice--then a novelty, though now so prevalent that at thelast sessions, I am told, the thing was presented for a nuisance. Istood here and saw a man lose, and in the exaltation of my spirits,pushed him aside and laid down a shilling, and won, and won again--andagain; whether the cog failed or the truckster who owned the barrowthought me a good bait. Either way I took up my winnings with an airand hectored away as good a bully as another; placed for the moment sofar above myself and common modesty, that I wondered whether I shouldever sink back into the timid citizen, or feel my eyes drop before abravo's.

  Alas, in a moment, _quantum mutatus ab illo!_ At the corner of theCockpit, towards Sion House, I met Matthew Smith.

  I had no doubt. I knew all in an instant, and turned sick. He wasfree, alone, walking with his head high and an easy gait. Worse, hesaw me; saw how I cowered and shrank into myself, and became anotherman at sight of him!

  Slackening his pace as he came up, he halted before me, with thatquiet devil's grin on his face. "Well," he said, "how are you, Mr.Price? I was looking for you."

  "For me?" I muttered. "I thought--I heard--that you were arrested."

  "A mistake!" he answered, continuing to smile. "A mistake! Some otherSmith."

  "And you were not arrested?" I whispered.

  "Oh, I was arrested!" he answered jauntily. "And taken to theSecretary. And of course released. There! you have it all."

  I uttered an exclamation; two words wrung from me by despair.

  Thereat, and pretending to misunderstand me. "You thank God? Very kindof you, Mr. Price," said he grinning. "Like master, like man, I see.The Duke was kindness itself. But I must be going." And then,arresting himself in the act of leaving me, "You have heard," hecontinued, "that the poor devil Charnock stands his trial to-morrow?Porter is an evidence, and by Monday the parson will swing. It shouldbe a warning to us," he continued, shaking his head with a smile thatchilled the marrow in my bones, "what company we keep. A rascal likePorter might see you or me in the street--and swear to us. Ha! Ha! Itsounds monstrous odd, but so it might be. But by-by, Mr. Price. I mustnot keep you."