Shrewsbury: A Romance

I hesitated.

"Come here!" he cried. "Or by – I will shoot you! For the last time, come here!"

I went nearer.

"Oh, but I would like to see you in the boot!" he said. "It would be the finest sight! It would not need a turn of the screw to make you cry out! And mind you," he continued, suddenly seizing my ear in his great hand, and twisting it until I screamed, "in a boot of some kind or other I shall have you-if you play me false! Do yon understand, eh? Do you understand, you sheep in wolf's clothing?"

"Yes!" I cried. "Yes, yes!" He had forced me to my knees, and brought his cruel sneering face close to mine.

"Very well. Then get up-if you have learned your lesson. You have had one proof that I know more than others. Do not seek another. But, umph-where have I seen you before. Master Trembler?"

I said humbly, my spirit quite broken, that I did not know.

"No?" he answered, staring at me with his face puckered up. "Yet somewhere I have. And some day I shall call it to mind. In the meantime-remember that you are my slave, my dog, my turnspit, to fetch or carry, cry or be merry at my will. You will sleep or wake, go or come as I bid you. And so long as you do that-Richard Price, you shall live. But on the day you play me false, or whisper my name to living soul-on that day, or within the week, you will hang! Do you hear, hang, you Erastian dog! Hang, and be carrion: with Ayloffe, and many another good man, that would stint me, and take no warning!"

CHAPTER XIV

Alas, the secret subjection into which I fell from that day onwards, to a man who knew neither pity nor scruple-and wielded his power with the greater enjoyment and the less remorse for the piquant contrast it afforded to his position, as a proscribed and hunted traitor, in hiding for his life-exceeded all the anticipations of it which I had entertained. Having his favourite lodging in the rooms opposite mine, he was ready, when the cruel humour seized him, to sally forth and mock and torment me; while the privacy of his movements and the number of his disguises (whence it arose that I never knew until I saw him whether he was there or not) kept me in a state of suspense and misery well nigh intolerable. Yet such was the spell of fear under which he had contrived to lay me-he being a violent and dangerous man and I no soldier-and so crafty were the means, no less than the art, by which he gradually wound a chain about me, that in spite of my hatred I found resistance vain; and for a long time, and until a deus ex machinâ, as the ancients say, appeared on the scene, saw no resource but to bear the yoke and do his bidding.

He had one principal mode of strengthening his hold upon me; which stood the higher in his favour, as besides effecting that object and rendering me serviceable, it amused him with the spectacle of my alarms. This consisted in the employing me in his treasonable designs: as by sending me with letters and messages to Sam's Coffeehouse, or to the Dog in Drury Lane, or to more private places where the Jacobites congregated; by making me a go-between to arrange meetings with those of his kidney who dared not stir abroad in daylight, and came and went between London and the coast of France under cover of night; or lastly, by using me to drop treasonable papers in the streets, or fetch the same from the secret press, in a court off St. James's, where they were printed.

He took especial delight in imposing this last task upon me, and in depicting, when I returned fresh from performing it, the penalties to which I had rendered myself liable. It may occur to some that when I passed through the streets with such papers in my hands I had an easy way out of my troubles; and could at any moment by conveying the letters to the Secretary's office procure the tyrant's arrest, and my own freedom. But besides the fact that his frequent change of lodging, his excellent information, and the legion of spies who served him, rendered it doubtful whether with the best will in the world the messengers would find him where I had left him, he frequently boasted-and the boast, if unfounded, added to my distrust of all with whom I came into contact-that the very tipsters and officers were in his pay, and that Cutts himself dared not arrest him! Besides, I more than suspected that often the letters he gave me were blank, and the errands harmless: and that the one and the other were feigned only for the purpose of trying me, or out of pure cruelty-to the end that when I returned he might describe with gusto the process of hanging, drawing, and quartering, and gloat over the horror with which I listened to his relation; a practice which he carried to such an extent as more than once to reduce me to tears of rage and anguish.

Such was my life at home, where if my tyrant was not always at my elbow I was every hour obnoxious to his appearance; for early in our connection he forbade me to lock my door. Abroad I was scarcely more easy, seeing that, besides an impression I had that wherever I went I was dogged, there was scarcely an item of news which it fell to my lot to record that did not throw me into a panic. One day it would be Mr. Bear arrested on a charge of high treason, and in possession of I knew not what compromising letters: another, the suicide in the Temple of a gentleman to whom I myself had a week earlier taken a letter, and who had in my presence let fall expressions which led me to think him in the same evil case with me. Another day it would be an announcement that the Government had discovered a new Conspiracy; or that letters going for France had been seized in Romney Marshes; or that the Lancashire witnesses were speaking more candidly; or that Dr. Oates had been taken up and held to bail for a misdemeanour. All these and many other rumours punished me in turn; and filling my mind with the keenest apprehensions, must in a short time have rendered my life intolerable.

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?"