Stanley Weyman - Shrewsbury - A Romance

Until I reached this, not knowing whose eyes were on me, I had the presence of mind to walk; though cold shivers ran down my back, and my hair crept, and every second I fancied-for I was too nervous to look back-that I felt Dyson's hand on my collar. Arriving safely at the gate, however, and the road stretching before me with no one in sight, I took to my heels, and ran a quarter of a mile along it; then leaping the fence that bounded it on the right, I started recklessly across country, my aim being to strike the Little Parndon highway, to which my lord had referred, at a point beyond the cross-roads, and so to avoid passing the latter.

I am aware that this mode of escape, this walking through a window and running off unmolested, sounds bald and commonplace; and that if I could import into my story some touch of romance or womanish disguise, such as-to compare great things with small-marked my Lord Nithsdale's escape from the Tower three years ago, I should cut a better figure. Whereas in the flight across the fields on a quiet afternoon, with the sun casting long shadows on the meadows, and for my most instant alarms, the sudden whirring up before me of partridge or plover, few will find anything heroic. But let them place themselves for a moment in my skin, and remember that as I sweated and panted and stumbled and rose again, as I splashed in reckless haste through sloughs and ditches, and tore my way through great blackthorns, I had death always at my heels! Let them remember that in the long shadows that crossed my path I saw the gallows, and again the gallows, and once more the gallows; and fled more quickly; and that it needed but the distant bark of a dog, or the shout of a boy scaring birds, to persuade me that the hue and cry was coming, and to fill me with the last extremity of fear.

I believe that the adventurer, and the knight of the road, when it falls to their lot to be so hunted-as must often happen, though more commonly such an one is taken securus et ebrius in the arms of his mistress-find some mitigation of their pains in the anticipation of conflict, and in the stern joy which the resolve to sell life dearly imparts to the man of action. But I was unarmed, and worn out with my exertions; no soldier, and with no heart to fight. My flight therefore across the quiet fields was pure terror, the torture of unmitigated fear. Fear spurred me and whipped me; and yet, had I known it, I might have spared my terror. For darkness found me, weak and exhausted, but still free, in the neighbourhood of Epping in Essex, where I passed the night in the Forest; and before noon next day, believing that they would watch for me on the Tottenham Road, I had found courage to slink in to London by way of Chingford, and in the heart of that great city, whose magnitude exceeded all my expectations, had safely and effectually lost myself.

At this point, it becomes me to pause. I set out, the reader will remember, to furnish such a narrative of the events attending my first meeting with my honoured patron, as taken with a brief account of myself might enable all to pursue with insight as well as advantage the details of my later connection with him. And this being done, and bearing in mind that Sir John Fenwick did not suffer for his conspiracy until 1696, and that consequently a period of thirteen years divided the former events, which I have related, from those which follow-and which have to do, as I intimated at the outset, with my lord's alleged cognisance of that conspiracy-some may, and with impatience, look to me to proceed at once to the gist of the matter. Which I propose to do; but first to crave the reader's indulgence, while in a very hasty and perfunctory manner I trace my humble fortunes in the interval; whereby time will in the end be saved.

That arriving in London, as I have related, a fugitive, penniless and homeless, in fear of the law, I contrived to keep out of the beadle's hands, and was neither whipped for a vagrant at Bridewell, nor starved outright in the streets, I attribute to most singular good fortune; which not only rescued me ( statim ) from a great and instant danger that all but engulfed me, but within a few hours found for me honest and constant employment, and that of an uncommon kind.

It so happened that, perplexed by the clamour of the great city, wherein all faces were new to me and ways alike, I came to a stand about noon in the neighbourhood of Newgate Market; where, confident that in the immense and never-ceasing tide of life that ebbs and flows in that quarter, I was safe from recognition, I ventured to sell an undergarment in a small shop in an alley, and buying a loaf with the price, satisfied my hunger. But the return of strength was accompanied by no return of hope; rather, my prime necessity supplied, I felt the forlornness of my position more acutely. In which condition, having no resource but to wander aimlessly from one street to another while the daylight lasted-and after that no prospect at all except to pass the night in the same manner-I came presently into Little Britain, and stopped, as luck would have it, before one of the bookshops that crowd that part. A number of persons were poring over the books, and I joined them; but I had not stood a moment, idly scanning the backs of the volumes, before one of my neighbours touched my elbow, and when I turned and met his eyes, nodded to me. "A scholar?" he said, smiling pleasantly through a pair of glasses. "Ah, how ill does the muse requite her worshippers. From the country, my friend?"

I answered that I was; and seeing him to be a man well on in years, clad in good broadcloth, and of a sober, substantial aspect, I saluted him abjectly.

"To be sure," he said, again nodding cheerfully. "And a stranger to the town I expect?"

"Yes," I said.

"And a reader? A reader? Ah, how ill does the muse- But you can read?" he ejaculated, breaking off somewhat suddenly.

I said I could, and to convince him read off the names of several of the volumes before me. I remembered afterwards that instead of looking at them to see if I read aright, he kept his eyes on my face.

"Good!" he said, stopping me when I had deciphered half-a-dozen. "You do your schoolmaster credit, my lad. Such a man should not want, and yet you look-frankly, my friend, are you in need of employment?"

He asked the question with so much benevolence, and looked at me with so good-natured a twinkle in his eyes, that my tears nearly overflowed, and I had much ado to answer him. "Yes," I said. "And without friends, sir."

"Indeed, indeed," quoth he. "Well, I must do what I can. And first, you may do me a service, which in any case shall not go unrequited. Come this way."

Without waiting for an answer he led me into the mouth of a court hard by, where we were less open to observation; there, pointing to a shop at a little distance from that at which he had found me, he explained that he wished to purchase a copy of Selden's Baronage that stood at the front of the stall, but that the tradesman knew him and would overcharge him. "So do you go and buy it for me, my friend," he continued, chuckling over his innocent subterfuge, with a simplicity that took with me immensely. "It should be half-a-guinea. There is a guinea" – and he lugged one out. "Buy the book and bring the change to me, and it shall be something in your pocket. Alas, that the muse should so ill- But there, go, go, my lad," he continued, "and remember Selden's Baronage , half-a-guinea. And not a penny more!"

Delighted with the luck which had found me such a patron, and anxious to acquit myself to the best advantage I hurried to do his bidding; first making sure that I knew where to find him. The shop he had pointed out, which was surmounted by the sign of a gun, and appeared to enjoy no small share of public favour, was full of persons reading and talking; but almost the first book on which my eyes alighted was Selden's Baronage , and the tradesman when I applied to him made no difficulty about the price, saying at once that it was half-a-guinea. I handed him my money, and without breaking off his talk with a customer, he was counting the change, when something in my aspect struck him, and he looked at the guinea. On which he muttered an oath and thrust it back into my hand.