Stanley Weyman - Shrewsbury - A Romance

For myself, I could have cried at the misadventure, but my mistress carried it off with a shrill laugh, and tossing her head in affected contempt-whereat, I am bound to confess, the company laughed again-turned from the table. I sneaked after her as miserable as you please, and in that order we had got half way to the door, when the gentleman who had addressed her before, stepped up in front of her. "Beauty so reckless," he said, speaking with a grin, and in a tone of greater freedom than he had used previously, "needs someone to care for it! Unless I am mistaken, Mistress, you came on foot?" And with a sneering smile, he dropped his eyes to the hem of her cloak.

Alas, I looked too, and the murder was out. To be sure Dorinda had clothed herself very handsomely above, but coming to her feet had trusted to her cloak to hide the deficiency she had no means to supply. Still, and in spite of this, all might have been well if she had not in her chagrin at losing, forgotten the blot, and, unused to long skirts, raised them so high as to expose a foot, shapely indeed, but stockingless, and shod in an old broken shoe!

Her ears and neck turned crimson at the exposure, and she dropped her cloak as if it burned her hand. I fancied that if the stranger had looked to ingratiate himself by his ill-mannered jest, he had gone the wrong way about it, and I was not surprised when she answered in a voice quivering with mortification, "Yes, on foot. But you may spare your pains. I am in this gentleman's care, I thank you."

"Oh," he said, in a peculiar tone, "this gentleman?" And he looked me up and down.

I knew that it behooved me to ruffle it with him, and let him know by out-staring him that at a word I was ready to pull his nose. But I was a boy in strange company, and utterly cast down by the loss of my guinea; he a Court bully in sword and lace, bred to carry it in such and worse places. Though he seemed to be no more than thirty, he had a long and hard face under his periwig, and eyes both tired and melancholy; and he spoke with a drawl and a curling lip, and by the mere way he looked at me showed that he thought me no better than dirt. To make a long story short, I had not looked at him a moment before my eyes fell.

"Oh, this gentleman?" he said again, in a tone of cutting contempt. "Well, I hope that he has more guineas than one-or your ladyship will soon trudge it, skin to mud. As it is, I fear that I detain you. Kindly carry my compliments to Farmer Grudgen. And the pigs!"

And smiling-not laughing, for a laugh seemed alien from his face-at a jest which was too near the truth not to mortify us exceedingly, my lord-for a lord I thought he was-turned away with an ironical bow; leaving us to get out of the room with what dignity we might, and such temper as remained to us. For myself I was in such a rage, both at the loss of my guinea and at being so flouted, that I could scarcely govern myself; yet in my awe of Dorinda I said nothing, expecting and fearing an outbreak on her part, the consequences of which it was not easy to foretell. I was proportionately pleased therefore, when she made no more ado at the time, but pushing her way through the crowd in the street, turned homeward and took the road without a word.

This was so unlike her that I was at a loss to understand it, and was fain to conclude-from the fact that she two or three times paused to listen and look back-that she feared pursuit. The thought, bringing to my mind the risk of being detected and dismissed, which I ran-a risk that came home to me now that the pleasure was over, and I had only in prospect my squalid bed-room and the morrow's tasks-filled me with uneasiness. But I might have spared myself, for when she spoke I found that her thoughts were on other things.

"Dick," she said, suddenly-and halted abruptly in the road, "you must lend me a guinea."

"A guinea?" I cried, aghast, and speaking, it may be, with a little displeasure. "Why, have you not just-"

"What?" she said.

"Lost my only one."

She laughed with a recklessness that confounded me. "Well, you have got to find another one," she said. "And one to that!"

"Another guinea?" I gasped.

"Yes, another guinea, and another guinea!" she answered, mimicking my tone of consternation. "One for my shoes and stockings-oh, I wish he were dead!" And she stamped her foot passionately. "And one-"

"Yes?" I said, with a poor attempt at irony. "And one-?"

"For me to stake next Friday, when the Duke passes this way on his road home."

"He does not!"

"He does, he does!" she retorted. "And you will do too-what I say, sir! or-"

"Or what?" I cried, calling up a spirit for once.

"Or-" and she raised her voice a little, and sang:

"You never loved me!" I cried, in a rage at that and her greed.

"Have it your own way!" she answered, carelessly, and sang it again; and after that there was no more talk, but we walked with all the width of the road between us; I with a sore heart and she titupping along, cool and happy, pleased, I think, that she had visited on me some of the chagrin which the stranger had caused her, and for the rest with God knows what thoughts in her heart. At least I little suspected them; yet, with the little knowledge I had, I was angry and pained; and for the time was so far freed from illusion that I would not make the overture, but hardened myself with the thought of my guinea and her selfishness; and coming to the gap in the first fence helped her over with a cold hand and no embrace such as was usual between us at such junctures.

In a word, we were like naughty children returning after playing truant; and might have parted in that guise, and this the very best thing that could have happened to me-who had no guinea, and knew not where to get one; though I would not go so far as to say that, in the frame of mind in which I then was, it would have saved me. But in the article of parting, and when the garden fence already rose between us, yet each remained plain to the other by the light of the moon which had risen, Dorinda on a sudden raised her hands, and holding her cloak from her, stood and looked at me an instant in the most ravishing fashion-with her head thrown back and her lips parted, and her eyes shining, and the white of her neck and her bare arms, and the swell of her bosom showing. I could have sworn that even the scent of her hair reached me, though that was impossible. But what I saw was enough. I might have known that she did it only to tantalize me: I might have known that she would show me what I risked; but on the instant, oblivious of all else, I owned her beauty, and resentment and my loss alike forgotten, sprang to the fence, my blood on fire, and words bubbling on my lips: Another second, and I should have been at her feet, have kissed her shoes muddy and broken as they were; but she turned, and with a backward glance, that only the more inflamed me, fled up the garden, and to the house, whither, even at my maddest, I dared not follow her.

However, enough had passed to send me to my bed to long and lie awake; enough, the morrow come, to take all colour from the grey tasks and dull drudgery of school-time; insomuch that the hours seemed days, and the days weeks, and Mr. D-'s ignorant prosing and infliction too wearisome to be borne. What my love now lacked of reverence, it made up in passion, and passion's offspring, impatience: on which it is to be supposed my mistress counted, since for three whole days she kept within, and though every evening I flew to the rendezvous, and there cooled my heels for an hour, she never showed herself.

Once, however, I heard her on the other side of the fence, singing: