When I recovered my senses I was on my back in one of eighteen beds,
in a long white-walled room, having barred windows, and a vaulted
ceiling. A woman, garbed strangely in black, and with a queer white
cap drawn tight round her face, leaned over me, and with her finger
laid to her lips, enjoined silence. Here and there along the wall were
pictures of saints; and at the end two candles burned before a kind of
altar. I had an idea that I had been partly conscious, and had lain
tossing giddily with a burning head, and a dreadful thirst through
days and nights of fever. Now, though I could scarcely raise my head,
and my brain reeled if I stirred, I was clear-minded, and knew that
the bone of my leg was broken, and that for that reason I had a bed to
myself where most lay double. For the rest I was so weak I could only
cry in pure gratitude when the nun came to me in my turn, and fed me,
and plain, stout, and gentle-eyed, laid her fingers on her lip, or
smiling, said in her odd English "Quee-at, quee-at, monsieur!"
In face of the blessings which the Protestant Succession, as settled
in our present House of Hanover, has secured to these islands, it
would little become me to find a virtue in papistry; and my late lord,
who early saw and abjured the errors of that faith, would have been
the last to support or encourage such a thesis. Notwithstanding which,
I venture to say that the devotion of these women to their calling is
a thing not to be decried, merely because we have no counterpart of
it, nor the charity of that hospital, simply because the burning of
candles and worshipping of saints alternate with the tendance of the
wretched. On the contrary, it seems to me that were such a profession,
the idolatrous vows excepted, grafted on our Church, it might redound
alike to the credit of religion--which of late the writings of Lord
Bolingbroke have somewhat belittled--and to the good of mankind.
So much with submission; nor will the most rigid of our divines blame
me, when they learn that I lay ten weeks in the Maison de Dieu at
Dunquerque, dependent for everything on the kind offices of those good
women; and nursed during that long period with a solicitude and
patience not to be exceeded by that of wife or mother. When I had so
far recovered as to be able to leave my bed, and move a few yards on
crutches, I was assisted to a shady courtyard, nestled snugly between
the hospital and the old town wall. Here, under a gnarled mulberry
tree which had sheltered the troops of Parma, I spent my time in a
dream of peace, through which nuns, apple-faced and kind-eyed, flitted
laden with tisanes, or bearing bottles that called for the immediate
attention of M. le Medecin's long nose and silver-rimmed spectacles.
Occasionally their Director would seat himself beside me, and silently
run through his office: or instruct me in the French tongue, and the
evils of Jansenism--mainly by means of the snuff-box which rarely left
his fine white hands. More often the meagre apothecary, young, yellow,
dry, ambitious, with a hungry light in his eyes, would take an English
lesson, until the coming of his superior routed him, and sent him to
his gallipots and compounding with a flea in his ear.
Such were the scenes and companions that attended my return to health;
nor, my spirits being attuned to these, should I have come to seek or
desire others, though enhanced by my native air--a species of inertia,
more easily excused by those who have viewed French life near at hand,
than by such as have never travelled--but for an encounter as
important in its consequences as it was unexpected, which broke the
even current of my days.
It was no uncommon thing for the nuns to bring one of my own
countrymen to me, in the fond hope that I might find a friend. But as
these persons, from the nature of the case, were invariably Jacobites,
and either knowing something of my story, thought me well served, or
coming to examine me, shied at the names of Mr. Brome and Lord
Shrewsbury, such efforts had but one end. When I heard, therefore, for
the fourth or fifth time that a compatriot of mine, amiable, and of a
vivacity _tout-a-fait marveilleuse_ was coming to see me, I was as far
from supposing that I should find an acquaintance, as I was from
anticipating the interview with pleasure. Imagine my surprise,
therefore, when S[oe]ur Marie called me into the garden at the
appointed time; and, her simple face shining with delight, led me to
the old mulberry tree, where, who should be sitting but Mary Ferguson!
She had as little expected to meet me as I to meet her, but coming on
me thus suddenly, and seeing me lame, and in a sense a cripple,
reduced, moreover, by the long illness through which I had passed, she
let her feelings have way. Such tenderness as she had entertained for
me before welled up now with irresistible force, and giving the lie to
a certain hoydenish hardness, inherent in a disposition which was
never one of the most common, in a moment she was in my arms. If she
did not weep herself, she pardoned, and possibly viewed with pleasure,
those tears on my part, which weakness and surprise drew from me,
while a hundred broken words and exclamations bore witness to the
gratitude she felt on the score of her escape.
Thus brought together, in a strange country, and agitated by a hundred
memories, nothing was at first made clear, except that we belonged to
one another, and S[oe]r Marie had long fled to carry the tale with
mingled glee and horror into the house, before we grew sufficiently
calm to answer the numberless questions which it occurred to each to
ask.
At length Mary, pressed to tell me how she had fared since her escape,
made one of the odd faces I could so well remember. And "Not as I
would, but as I could," she said, dryly. "By crossing with letters."
"Crossing?" I exclaimed.
"To be sure," she answered. "I go to and from London with letters."
"But should you be taken?" I cried, with a vivid remembrance of the
terror into which the prospect of punishment had thrown her.
She shrugged her shoulders; yet suppressed, or I was mistaken, a
shudder. Then "What will you?" she said, spreading out her little
hands French fashion, and making again that odd grimace. "It is the
old story. I must live, Dick. And what can a woman do? Will Lady
Middleton take me for her children's _governante?_ Or Lady Melfort
find me a place in her household? I am Ferguson's niece, a backstairs
wench of whom no one knows anything. If I were handsome now, _bien!_
As I am not--to live I must risk my living."
"You are handsome enough for me!" I cried.
She raised her eyebrows, with a look in her eyes that, I remember,
puzzled me. "Well, may be," she said a trifle tartly. "And the other
is neither here nor there. For the rest, Dick, I live at Captain
Gill's, and his wife claws me Monday and kisses me Tuesday."
"And you have taken letters to London?" I said, wondering at her
courage.
"Three times," she answered, nodding soberly. "And to Tunbridge
once. A woman passes. A man would be taken. So Mr. Birkenhead says.
But----" and with the word she broke off abruptly, and stared at me;
and continued to stare at me, her face which was rounder and more
womanly than in the old days, falling strangely.
[Illustration: SHE LISTENED IN SILENCE, STANDING OVER ME WITH
SOMETHING OF THE SEVERITY OF A JUDGE]
It wore such a look indeed, that I glanced over my shoulder thinking
that she saw something. Finding nothing, "Mary!" I cried. "What is it?
What is the matter?"
"Are you the man who came with Sir John Fenwick to the shore?" she
cried, stepping back a pace--she had already risen, "And betrayed him?
Dick! Dick, don't say it!" she continued hurriedly, holding out her
hands as if she would ward off my words. "Don't say that you are
_that_ man! I had forgotten until this moment whom I came to see; who,
they said, was here."
Her words stung me, even as her face frightened me. But while I winced
a kind of courage, born of indignation and of a sense of injustice
long endured, came to me; and I answered her with spirit. "No," I
said, "I am not that man."
"No?" she cried.
"No!" I said defiantly. "If you mean the man that betrayed Sir John
Fenwick. But I will tell you what man I am--if you will listen to me."
"What are yon going to tell me?" she answered, the troubled look
returning. And then, "Dick, don't lie to me!" she cried quickly.
"I have no need," I said. And with that, beginning at the beginning, I
told her all the story which is written here, so far as it was not
already known to her. She listened in silence, standing over me with
something of the severity of a judge, until I came to the start from
London with Matthew Smith.
There she interrupted me. "One moment," she said in a hard voice; and
she fixed me with keen, unfriendly eyes. "You know that Sir John
Fenwick was taken two days later, and is in the Tower?"
"I know nothing," I said, holding out my hands and trembling with the
excitement of my story, and the thought of my sufferings.
"Not even that?"
"No, nothing; not even that," I said.
"Nor that within a month, in all probability, he will be tried and
executed!"
"No."
"Nor that your master is in peril? You have not heard that Sir John
has turned on him and denounced him before the Council of the King?"
"No," I said. "How should I?"
"What?" she cried incredulously. "You do not know that with which all
England is ringing--though it touches you of all men?"
"How should I?" I said feebly. "Who would tell me here? And for weeks
I have been ill."
She nodded. "Go on," she said.
I obeyed. I took up the thread again, told her how we reached Ashford,
how I saw Sir John, how I fled, and how I was pursued; finally how I
was received on board the boat, and never, until the following day,
when Birkenhead flung it in my teeth, guessed that I had forestalled
Sir John, and robbed him of his one chance of escape. "For if I had
known," I continued warmly, "why should I fly from him? What had I to
fear from him? Or what to gain, if Smith with a pistol were not at my
heels, by leaving England? Gain?" I continued bitterly, seeing that I
had convinced her. "What _did_ I gain? This! This!" And I touched my
crippled leg.
"Thank God!" she said, with emotion. "Thank God, Dick. But----"
"But what!" I retorted sharply; for in the telling of the story I had
come to see more clearly than before how cruelly I had been treated.
"But what?"
"Well, just this," she said gently. "Have you not brought it on
yourself in a measure? If you had been more--that is, I mean, if you
had not been so----"
"So what?" I cried querulously, seeing her hesitate.
"Well, so quick to think that it was Matthew Smith--and a pistol," she
answered, smiling rather heartlessly. "That is all."
"There was a mist," I said.
She laughed in her odd way. "Of course, Dick, there was a mist," she
agreed. "And you cannot make bricks without straw. And after all you
did make bricks in St. James's Square, and it is not for me to find
fault. But there is a thing to be done, and it must be done." And her
lips closed firmly, after a fashion I remembered, and still remember,
having seen it a hundred times since that day, and learned to humour
it. "One that must be done!" she continued. "Dick, you will not leave
the Duke to be ruined by Matthew Smith? You will not lie here and let
those rogues work their will on him? Sir John has denounced him."
"And may denounce me!" I said, aghast at the notion. "May denounce
me," I continued with agitation. "_Will_ denounce me. If it was not
the Duke who was at Ashford, it was I!"
"And who are you?" she retorted, with a look that withered me.
"Who will care whether you met Sir John at Ashford or not? King
William--call him Dutchman, boor, drunkard, as it's the fashion this
side, call him I say what you will--at least he flies at high game,
and does not hawk at mice!"
"Mice?"
"Ay, mice!" she answered with a snap of her teeth--and she looked all
over the little vixen she could be. "For what are we? What are we now?
Still more, what are we if we leave the Duke to his enemies, leave him
to be ruined and disgraced, leave him to pay the penalty, while you,
the cause of all this, lie here--lie safe and snug? For shame, Dick!
For shame!" she continued with such a thrill in her voice that the
pigeons feeding behind her fluttered up in alarm, and two or three
nuns looked out inquisitively.
I had my own thoughts and my own feelings about my lord, as he well
knew in after years. I challenge any to say that I lacked either
respect or affection for him. But a man's wits move more slowly than a
woman's, and the news came on me suddenly. It was no great wonder if I
could not in a moment stomach the prospect of returning to risk and
jeopardy, to the turmoil from which I had been so long freed, and the
hazards of a life and death struggle. In the political life of twenty
years ago men carried their necks to market. Knowing that I might save
the Duke and suffer in his place--the fate of many a poor dependant;
or might be confronted with Smith; or brought face to face with
Ferguson; or perish before I reached London in the net in which my
lord's own feet were caught, I foresaw not one but a hundred dangers;
and those such as no prudent man could be expected to regard with
equanimity, or any but a harebrained girl would encounter with a light
heart.
Still I desired to stand well with her; and that being so I confess
that it was with relief I remembered my lameness; and named it to her.
Passing over the harshness of her last words, "You are right," I said.
"Something should be done. But for me it is impossible at present. I
am lame, as you see."
"Lame?" she cried.
"More than lame," I answered--but there was that in her tone which
bade me avoid her eyes. "A cripple, Mary."
"No, not a cripple," she answered.
"Yes," I said.
"No, Dick," she answered in a voice low, but so grave and firm that I
winced. "Let us be frank for once. Not a cripple, but a coward."
"I never said I was a soldier," I answered.
"Nor I," she replied, wilfully misunderstanding me. "I said, a coward!
And a coward I will not marry!"
With that we looked at one another: and I saw that her face was white.
"Was it a coward saved your life--in the Square?" I muttered at last.
"No," she answered. "But it was a coward played the sneak for
Ferguson. And a coward played the rogue for Smith! It was a coward
lost Fenwick--because he dare not look behind! And a coward who will
now sacrifice his benefactor, to save his own skin. And _you_ only
know in how many other things you have played the craven. But the
rather for that, up, now, and play the man! You have a chance now! Do
this one brave thing and all will be forgiven. Oh, Dick, Dick!" she
continued--and with a sudden blaze in her face she stooped and threw
her arms round me, "if you love me, do it! Do it for us both! Do
it--or if you cannot, God knows it were better we were hung, than
married!"
I cannot hope to describe the fervour, which she threw into these last
words, or the effect which they wrought on me, weakened as I was by
long illness. In a voice broken by tears I conjured her to give me
time--to give me time; a few days in which to consider what I would
do.
"Not a day!" she answered, springing from me in fresh excitement, and
as if my touch burned her. "I will give you no time. You have had a
lifetime, and to what purpose? I will give you no time. Do you give me
your word."
"To go to England?"
"Yes."
I was ashake from head to foot; and groaned aloud. In truth if I had
known the gallows to be the certain and inevitable end of the road, on
which I was asked to enter, I could not have been more sorely beset;
between rage and fear, and shame of her and desire for her. But while
I hung in that misery, she continuing to stand over me, I looked, as
it happened, in her face; and I saw that it was no longer hot with
anger, but sad and drawn as by a sharp pain. And I gave her my word,
trembling and shaking.
"Now," said she, "are you a brave man; and perhaps the bravest."