Stanley Weyman - Shrewsbury - A Romance

"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.

I know now that there never was a man in whom the natural propensity to side with the weaker party was by custom and exercise more highly developed than in my late lord, in whose presence I then stood; who, indeed, carried that virtue to such an extent that if any fault could be found with his public carriage-which I am very far from admitting, but only that such a colour might be given to some parts of it by his enemies-the flaw was attributable to this excess of generosity. Yet he has since told me that on this occasion of our first meeting, it was neither my youth nor my misery-in the main at any rate-that induced him to take so extraordinary a step as that of seeing me alone; but a strange and puzzling reminiscence, which my features aroused in him, and whereto his first words, when we were left together, bore witness. "Where, my lad," said he, staring at me, "have I seen you before?"