That saying, though a small thing, and a foolish one, brought my state
home to me; and, moreover, filled me with so grisly a foreboding of
the gibbet, that henceforth I gave my treacherous mistress no more
thought than she deserved--which was little; but I became wholly taken
up with my own fate, and especially with the recollection of a man,
whom I had once seen, pitched and hanging in chains, at Much Hadham
Crossroads. The horrible spectacle he had become, ten days dead, grew
on my mind, until I grovelled and sweated in a green terror, and that
not so much at the prospect of death--though this sent me hot and cold
in the same instant--as of the harsh rope about my neck, and the
sacking bands, and the dreadful apparatus, and the grinning loathsome
thing I must become.
Near swooning at these thoughts, I sank huddled into the chair; and
was presently plucked up by the constable's assistant, who, seeing my
state, came forward, and though he was naturally a coarse fellow,
strove to hearten me, saying that there was always hope until the cart
moved, and that many a man cast for death was drinking the King's
health in the Plantations. With an oath or two and in a loud voice.
On that a last flicker of pride came to my aid, and trying to meet his
eye I muttered that it was not that; that I was not afraid, and that
at worst I should be burned in the hand.
"To be sure!" he said nodding, and looking at me curiously. "To be
sure. It is well to be a scholar!"
I was athirst, however, to get some further and better assurance from
him; and fixing my eyes on his face, I asked hoarsely, "You think that
it is certain? You think there is no doubt?"
"Certain sure, my Toby!" he answered. But I saw that, as he moved
away, he winked to his comrade, and I heard the latter ask him softly,
as he took his seat again, "Is't so? Will the lad cheat the hangman?"
"Not he!" was the reply, uttered in a whisper--but terror sharpened my
ears. "There was so long a list at the last Assizes, and half of them
_legit_, that it was given out they would override it this time, and
make examples. And ten to one he will swing, Ben."
"But is it the law?"
I did not hear the answer for the drumming in my ears and the dreadful
confusion in my brain; which were such that I was not aware of the
constable's entrance or of anything that happened after that, until I
found myself in the road climbing clumsily on the back of a pony, in
the middle of a throng of staring curious faces. My feet being secured
under the beast's belly--at which some gave a hand, while others stood
off, whispering and looking strangely at me--the constable mounted
himself, and shouting to his wife that he should take me on to
Hertford gaol, and should not be back until late, led me out of the
crowd, Mr. D---- and Mr. Jenkins bringing up the rear. The last I saw
of the school the boys were hanging out of the windows to see me go;
and Mrs. D---- was standing in the doorway, and unappeased by my
misery, was shrilly denouncing me--hands and tongue, all going--to a
group of her gossips.
Our road took us past the Rose Inn, and through a great part of the
town, but no impression of either remains with me, my only
recollection being of the sunshine that lay over the country, and of
the happiness that all creation, all living things, save my doomed
self, enjoyed. The bitterness of the thought that yesterday I had been
as these, free to move and live and breathe, caused great tears to
roll down my cheeks; but my companions, whose thoughts had already
gone forward to the Steward's Room at Sir Winston's, and the
entertainment they expected there, took little notice of me; and less
after the porter at the lodge told them that there were grand doings
at the house, and a great company, including a lord, come unexpectedly
from London.
"I don't think ye'll be welcome," the porter added, looking curiously
at me.
"Justice's business," the constable replied sturdily. "The King must
be served."
"Ay, that is what you all say when you've something to gain by it,"
the porter retorted; and went in.
[Illustration: THE CONSTABLE LED ME OUT OF THE CROWD]
All which I heard idly; not supposing that it meant to me the
difference between life and death, fortune and misery; or that in the
company come unexpectedly from London lurked my salvation. If I dwelt
on the news at all it was only as it might affect me by adding to the
shame I felt. But in this I deceived myself; for when the ordeal of
waiting in the servants' hall--where the maids pitied me and would
have fed me if I could have eaten--was over, and we were ushered into
the parlour in which Sir Winston, who had newly risen from dinner,
would see us, we found only one gentleman with him.
The two stood at the farther end of a long narrow room, in the bay of
a large window, that, open to the ground, permitted a view of cool
sward and yew hedges. That they had had companions, lately withdrawn,
was clear; and this, not only from the length of the table, which,
bestrewn with plates and glasses and half-empty flagons, stretched up
the room from us to them, but from two chairs, thrown down in the
hurry of rising, and six or seven others thrust back, haphazard,
against the panels. In the side of the room were four tall straight
windows that allowed the sunshine to fall in regular bars on the
table; and these, displaying here a little pool of spilled claret, and
there a broken tobacco pipe, the ash still smouldering, gave a touch
of grimness to the luxurious disorder.
The same incongruity was to be observed in the appearance of the elder
and stouter of the two men; who had hung his periwig on the back of a
chair, and showed a bald head and flushed face that agreed very ill
with his laced cravat and embroidered coat. Standing with his feet
apart and his arm outstretched, he was not immediately aware of our
entrance; but continued to address his companion in words that were
coherent, yet betrayed how he had been employed.
"Crop-eared knaves, my lord, half of them, and I one!" he cried, as we
came to a halt a little within the door, to await his pleasure--I with
shaking knees and sinking heart. "And ready to become the same again
if the times call for it. For why? Because it was only so we could
keep or get, my lord. And martyrs have been few in my time, though
fools plenty."
"I should be sorry to deny the last, Sir Winston," his companion
answered, smiling; for whom at the moment, blind bat as I was, I had
no eyes, seeing in him only a noble youth, handsomely dressed and
periwigged, and two, or it might be three years older than myself;
whereas I hung on the Justice's nod. "But here is your case," the
young man continued, turning to me, and speaking in a pleasant voice.
"And a hard case one of them is," the Justice answered jollily, as he
turned to us, and singled out the constable. "That is you, Dyson!" he
continued, "one of those of whom I have been telling you, my lord. A
psalm-singer in the troubles, sergeant in Lord Grey's regiment, a
roundhead, and ran away, with better men than himself, at Cropredy
Bridge. To-day he damns a Whig, and goes to bed drunk every
twenty-ninth of May."
"Having a good example, your honour!" the constable answered grinning.
"Ay, to be sure. And why don't you follow it also?" Sir Winston
continued, turning to the schoolmaster. "But crop-eared you were and
crop-eared you are; one of Shaftesbury's brisk boys, my lord! And
ought to be fined for a ranter every Monday morning, if all had their
deserts!"
"Then I am afraid that your theory does not apply to him, Sir
Winston," the young man said with a smile. "Here is one martyr
already; and if one martyr, why not many?"
"Martyr?" the Justice answered, with half-a-dozen oaths. "He? No one
less! He goes to church as you and I do, and does not smart to the
tune of a penny! It is true he pulls a solemn face and abhors
mince-pies and plum-porridge. But why? Because he keeps a school, and
the righteous, or what are left of them, who are just such hypocrites
as himself, resort unto his company with boys and guineas! Resort unto
his company, eh, D---?" the Justice repeated gleefully, addressing the
schoolmaster. "That is the phrase, isn't it? Oh, I have chopped
Scripture with old Noll in my time. And so it pays, do you see, my
lord? When it does not, he'll damn the Whigs and turn Tantivy or
Abhorrer, or something that does. And so it is with all; they are
loyal. Never were Englishmen more loyal; but to what are they loyal?
Themselves, my lord!"
"Yet there are Whigs who do not keep schools," the young lord said,
after a hearty laugh.
"Ay, my lord, and why?" Sir Winston answered, in high good humour,
"because we are all trimmers to the wind, but some trim too late, and
some too soon. And those are your Whigs. Never you turn Whig, my lord,
whatever you do, or you will die in a Dutch garret like Tony
Shiftsbury! And if anyone could have made Whiggery pay nowadays,
clever Anthony would have. Here's his health, but I doubt he is in
hell, these eight months."
And Sir Winston, going to the table, filled and drank off a bumper of
claret. Then he filled again. "The King--God bless him--is not very
well, I hear," said he, winking at the young lord. "So I will give you
another toast. His Highness's health, and confusion to all who would
exclude him! And now what is this business, Dyson? Who is the lad?
What has he been doing?"
The constable began to explain; but before he had uttered many words,
the baronet, whose last draught had more than a little fuddled him,
cut him short. "Oh, come to me to-morrow!" he said. "Or stay! You are
in the Commission for the county, my lord?"
"I am, but I have not acted," the young man answered.
"Rot it, man, but you shall act now! Burglary, is it? Broke and
entered, eh? Then that is a hanging matter, and a young hound should
be blooded. I am off! My lord will do it, Dyson. My lord will do it."
With which the Justice lurched out of the window so quickly, not to
say unsteadily, that he was gone before his companion could
remonstrate. The young lord, thus abandoned, looked at first at a
nonplus, and seemed for a while more than half-inclined to follow.
But changing his mind, and curious, I am willing to believe, to hear
the case of a prisoner so much out of the common as I must have
appeared to him, he turned to us, and adopting a certain stateliness,
which came easily to him, young as he was, he told the constable he
would hear him.
Then it was that, hanging for my life on the nods and words of
intelligence that from time to time fell from him, and whereby he
lifted the constable out of the slough of verbiage in which he
floundered, I dared again to hope; and noting with eyes sharpened by
terror the cast of his serious handsome features, and the curves of
his mouth, sensitive as a woman's yet wondrously under control, saw a
prospect of life. For a time indeed I had nothing more substantial on
which to build than such signs, so damning seemed the tale that
branded me as taken in the act and on the scene of my crimes. But when
the young peer, after eyeing me gravely and pitifully, asked if they
had found the money on me, and the constable answered, "No," and my
lord retorted, "Then where was it?" and got no answer; and again when
he enquired as to the lock on the door and the height of the window,
and who had aided me to enter, and learned that a girl was suspected
and no one else--then I felt the blood beat hotly in my head, and a
mist come before my eyes.
"Who is his accomplice? Pooh; there must be one!" he said.
"The girl, may it pleasure your lordship," the constable answered.
"The girl? Then why should she leave him to be taken? How did he
enter?"
"By a ladder, it is supposed, my lord."
"It is supposed?"
"Yes, my lord."
"But ladder or no ladder, why did she leave him?"
The constable scratched his head.
"Perhaps they were surprised, please your lordship," he ventured at
last.
"But the boy was found in the room at seven, dolt. And the sun is up
before four. What was he doing all those hours? Surprised, pooh!"
"Well, I don't know as to that, your worship," the man answered
sturdily; "but only that the prisoner was found in the room, in which
he had not ought to be, and the money was gone from the room where it
had ought to be!"
"And the bureau was broken open," Mr. D---- cried eagerly. "And what
is more, he has never denied it, my lord! Never."
At that and at sight of the change that came over my judge's face the
hope that had risen in me died suddenly; and I saw again the grim
prospect of the prison and the gibbet; and to be led from one to the
other, dumb, one of a drove, unregarded. And, it coming upon me
strongly that in a moment it would be too late, I found my voice and
cried to him, "Oh, my lord, save me!" I cried. "Help me! For the sake
of God, help me!"
Whether my words moved him or he had not yet given up my case, he
looked at me attentively, and with a shade as of recollection on his
face. Then he asked quietly what I was.
"Usher in a school, my lord," someone answered.
"Poor devil!" he exclaimed. And then, to the others, "Here, you!
Withdraw a little to the passage, if you please. I would speak with
him alone."
The constable opened his mouth to demur; but the young gentleman would
not suffer it; saying with a fine air that there was no resisting,
"Pooh, man, I am Lord Shrewsbury. I will be responsible for him." And
with that he got them out of the room.