Shrewsbury: A Romance

"No," I said, with a loudness and boldness that surprised me.

"No lodger, my man?"

"None!"

"Right!" he answered. "Good-night, and God save King William!"

"Amen!" quoth I; and then, and not before, my knees began to shake.

However, it no longer mattered, for before I could believe that the danger was over they were gone and had closed the door; and I caught a sniggering laugh behind the curtain. Still they had gone no farther than the stairs; I heard them knock on the opposite door and troop in there, and I caught the tones of a woman's voice, young and fresh, answering them. But in a minute they came out again, apparently satisfied, and crowded down stairs; whereon the man behind the curtain laughed again, and swaggering out, Bobadil-like, shook his fist with furious gestures after them.

"Damn your King William, and you too!" he cried in ferocious triumph. "One of these days God will squeeze him like the rotten orange he is; and if God will not, I will! I, Robert Ferguson! Trot, for the set of pudding-headed blind-eyed moles that you are! Call yourselves constables! Bah! But as for you, my friend," he continued, turning to me and throwing his pistol with a crash on the table, "you have more spunk than I thought you had, and spoke up like a gentleman of mettle. There is my hand on it!"

My throat was so dry that I could not speak, but I gave him my hand.

He gripped it and threw it from him with a boastful gesture, and stalking to the farther side of the room and back again, "There!" cried he. "Now you can say that you have touched hands with Ferguson, the famous Ferguson, the Ferguson on whose head a thousand guineas have been set! Ferguson the Kingmaker, who defied three Kings and made three Kings and will yet make a fourth! Fire and furies, do a set of boozing tipstaves think to take the man who outwitted Jeffreys and slipped through Kirke's lambs?"

Hearing who he was, I stared at him in astonishment; but in astonishment largely leavened with fear and hatred; for I knew the reputation he enjoyed, and both what he had done, and of what he was suspected. That in all his adventures and intrigues he had borne a charmed life; and where Sidney and Russell, Argyle and Monmouth, Rumbold and Ayloffe had suffered on the scaffold, he had escaped scot free was one thing and certain; but that men accounted for this in strange ways was another scarcely less assured. While his friends maintained that he owed his immunity to a singular skill in disguise, his enemies, and men who were only so far his enemies as they were the enemies of all that was most base in human nature, asserted that this had little to do with it, but went so far as to say that in all his plots, with Russell and with Monmouth, with Argyle and with Ayloffe, he had played booty, and played the traitor: and tempting men, and inviting men to the gibbet, had taken good care to go one step farther-and by betraying them to secure his own neck from peril!

CHAPTER XIII

Such was the man I saw before me; on whose face, as if heaven purposed to warn his fellows against him, malignant passion and an insane vanity were so plainly stamped that party spirit must have gone to lengths, indeed, before it rendered men blind to his quality. His shambling gait seemed a fitting conveyance for a gaunt, stooping figure so awkward and uncouth that when he gave way to gesticulation it seemed to be moved by wires; yet, once he looked askance at you, face and figure were forgotten in the gleam of the eyes that, treacherous and cruel, leered at you from the penthouse of his huge, ill-fitting wig.

Nevertheless, I confess that, while I hated and loathed the man, he cowed me. His latest escape had intoxicated him, and astride on my table, or stalking the floor, he gave way to his vanity. Pouring out a flood of ribald threats and imaginings, he now hinted at the fate which had never failed to befall those who thwarted him; now he boasted of his cunning and his hundred intrigues, and now he touched, not obscurely, on some great design soon to be executed. His audacity, no less than his frankness, bewildered me; for if he did not tell me all, he told enough, were it true, to hang a man. Yet I soon found that he had method in his madness; for while I listened with a shamefaced air, hating him and meditating informing against him the moment I was freed from his presence, he turned on me with a hideous grin, and thrusting the muzzle of his pistol against my temple, swore with endless curses to slay me if I betrayed him.

"You will go to Brome to-morrow, as usual," he said. "The Whiggish old dotard, I could pluck out his inwards! And you will say not one word of Mr. Ferguson! For, mark me, sirrah Dick, alone or in company I shall be at your elbow, nor will all Cutts's guards avail to save you! Do you mark me? Then d- you, down on your knees! Down on your knees, you white-livered dog, and swear by the Gospels you will tell no living soul by tongue or pen that you have seen me."

He pressed the cold steel muzzle to my temple and I knelt and swore. When it was done, he roared and jeered at me. "You see, I have my oath!" he cried, "as well as Little Hooknose! And no non-jurors! Now say 'Down with King William!'"

I said it.

"Louder! Louder!" he cried.

I could only comply.

"Now, write it! Write it!" he continued, thrusting a piece of paper under my nose, and slapping his huge hand upon it. "I'll have it in black and white! Or write this-ha! ha! that will be better. Are you ready? Write, 'I hereby abjure my allegiance to Prince William.'"

"No," I said faintly, laying down the pen which I had taken up at his bidding. "I will not write it."

"You will write it!" he answered in a terrible tone. "And within a very few seconds. Write it at once, sirrah! 'I hereby abjure my allegiance to Prince William!'"

I wrote it with a shaking hand, after a glance at the pistol muzzle.

"And swear that I regard King James as my lawful sovereign. And I undertake to obey the rules of the St. Germain's Club, and to forward its interests. Good! Now sign it."

I did so.

"Date it," cried the tyrant; and when I had done so he snatched the paper from me and flourished it in the air, "There is my passport!" quoth he, with an exultant laugh. "When I am taken that will be taken, and when that is taken the worse for Mr. Richard Price if he is taken. He will taste of the hangman's lash. So! You are a clever fellow, Richard Price, but Robert Ferguson is your master, as he has been better men's!"

The man was so much in love with cruelty, that even when he had gained his point he could not bear to give up the pleasure of torturing me; and for half an hour he continued to flout and jeer at me, sometimes picturing my fate if the paper fell into the Secretary's hands, and sometimes threatening me with his pistol, and making sport of my alarm. At last, reluctantly, and after many warnings of what would happen to me if I informed, he took himself off; and I heard him go into the opposite rooms, and slam the door.

Be sure I was not long in securing mine after him! I was in a pitiable state of terror; shaking at thought of the man's return, and in an ague when I considered the power over me, which the paper I had signed gave him. I could hardly believe that, in so short a time, anything so dreadful had happened to me! Yet it were hard to say whether, with all my terror, I did not hate him more than I feared him; for though at one time my heart was water when I thought of betraying him, at another it glowed with rage and loathing, and to spite him, and to free myself from him, I would risk anything. And as I was not wanting in foresight, and could picture with little difficulty the slavery in which he would hold me from that day forward-and wherein his cruel spirit would delight-it was the latter mood that prevailed with me, and determined my action when morning came.

Reflecting that I could expect no mercy from him, but had little to fear from the Government, if I told my tale frankly, I determined at all risks to go to the Secretary. I would have done so, the moment I rose, the thought that at any moment he might burst in upon me keeping me in a cold sweat; but I was prudent enough to abide by my habits, and refrain from anticipating by a second the hour at which it was my custom to descend. I waited in the utmost trepidation, therefore, until half-past seven, when with a quaking heart, but a mind made up, I ventured down to the street.

It was barely light, but the coffee-houses were open, and between early customers to these, and barbers passing with their curling tongs, and milkmen and hawkers plying morning wares, and apprentices setting out their masters' goods, the ways were full and noisy; so that I had no reason to fear pursuit, and in the hubbub gained courage the farther I left my oppressor behind me. Nevertheless, I took the precaution of going first to Mr. Brome's, opposite St. Dunstan's; and passing in there, as was my daily custom, lingered a little in the entry. When by this ruse I had made assurance doubly sure, I slipped out, and went through the crowded Strand to Whitehall.

Mr. Brome had a species of understanding with the Government; and on one occasion being ill, had made me his messenger to the Secretary's. I knew the place therefore, but none the less gave way to timidity when I saw the crowd of ushers, spies, tipstaves, and busybodies that hung about the door of the office, and took curious note of everyone who went in or out. My heart failed me at the sight, and I was already more than half inclined to go away, my business undone, when someone touched my sleeve, and I started and turned. A girl still in her teens, with a keen and pinched face, and a handkerchief neatly drawn over her head, handed a note to me.

"For me?" I asked.

"Yes," said she.

I took it on that and opened it, my hands shaking. But when I read the contents, which were these-"Mr. Robert Ferguson's respects to the Secretary, and he has to-day changed his lodging. He will to-morrow be pleased to supply the bearer's character" – I thought I should have fallen to the ground. Nor was my alarm the less for the reflection which immediately arose in my mind that the note had of necessity been written and despatched before I left Mr. Brome's door; and consequently before I had taken any step towards the execution of my design!

Still, what I held was but a piece of paper bearing a message from a man proscribed, who dared not show his face where I stood. A word to the doorkeepers and I might even now go in and lay my information. But the man's omniscience cowed my spirit, terrified me, and broke me down. Assured after this, that whatever I did or wherever I went he would know and be warned in time, and I gain by my information nothing but the name of a gull or a cheat, I turned from the door. Then seeing that the girl waited, "There is no answer," I said.

"Will you please to go to the gentleman?" quoth she.

My jaw dropped. "God forbid!" I said, beginning to tremble.

"I think you had better," said she.

And this time there was that in her voice roused doubts in me and made me waver-lest what I had done prove insufficient, and he betray me, though I refrained from informing. Sullenly, therefore, and after a moment's thought, I asked her where he was.

"I am not to tell you," she answered. "You can come with me if you please."

"Go on," I said.

She cast a sharp glance at the group about the office, then turned, and walking rapidly north by Charing Cross led me through St. Martin's Lane and Bedford Bury to Covent Garden. Skirting this, she threaded Hart Street and Red Lion Court, and crossing Drury Lane conducted me into Lincoln's Inn Fields, where she turned sharply to the left and through Ralph Court to the Turnstile. Seeing that she lingered here and from time to time looked back, I fancied that we were near our destination; but starting afresh, she led me along Holborn and through Staple Inn. Presently it struck me that we were near Bride Lane, and I cried "He is in my room?"

"Yes," she said gravely, and without explanation. "If he pleases you will find him there." And without more she signed to me to go on, and disappeared herself in the mouth of an alley by Green's Rents.

It did please him. When I entered with the air, doubtless, of a whipped hound, I found him sitting on my table swinging his legs and humming an air; and with so devilish a look of malice and triumph on his face as sent my heart into my boots. Notwithstanding, for a while it was his humour not to speak to me but to leer at me askance out of the corner of his eyes, and keep me on tenterhooks, expecting what he would say or do; and this he maintained until he had finished his tune, when with a grin he asked after his friend the Secretary.

"Was it Trumball you saw, or the new Duke?" said he; and when I did not answer he roared out an oath, and snatching up the pistol which lay on the table beside him, levelled it at me. "Answer, will you? Do you think that I am to speak twice to such uncovenanted dirt as you? Whom did you see?"

"No one," I stammered, trembling.

"And why not?" he cried. "And why not, you spawn of Satan?"

"I received your note," I said.

"Oh, you received my note!" he whimpered, dropping his voice and mocking my alarm. "Your lordship received my note, did you? And if you had not got my note, you would have informed, would you? You would have informed and sent me to the gallows, would you? Answer! Answer, or-"

"Yes!" I cried in an agony of terror; for he was bringing the pistol nearer and nearer to my face, while his finger toyed with the trigger, and at any moment might press it too sharply.

"So! And you tell me that to my face, do you?" he answered, eyeing me so truculently, that I held up my hands and backed to the door. "You dare tell me that, do you? Come here, sirrah!"