Shrewsbury Part 3

CHAPTER V

She spoke confidently and with a grand air, knowing that I had brought a guinea with me; so that I had neither the heart to shame her, nor the courage to displease her. Though it was the ninth part of my income therefore, and it seemed to me sheer madness or worse to stake such a sum on a single card, and win or lose it in a moment, I lugged it out and gave it to her. Even then, knowing her to have no more skill in the game than I had, I was at a stand, wondering what she would do with it; but with the tact which never fails a woman she laid it where the gentleman had placed his. With better luck; for in a twinkling, and before I thought it well begun, the deal was over, the players sat back, and swore, and the banker, giving and taking here and there, thrust a guinea over to our guinea. I was in a sweat to take both up before anyone cheated us; but she nudged me, and said with her finest air, "Let it lie, d.i.c.k! Do you hear? Let it lie."

This was almost more than I could bear, to see fortune in my grasp, and not shut my hand upon it, but she was mistress and I let it lie; and in a moment, hey presto, as the Egyptians say, the two guineas were four, and those who played next us, seeing her success, began to pa.s.s remarks on her, making nothing of debating who she was, and discussing about her shape and complexion in terms that made my cheeks burn. Whether this open admiration turned her head, or their freedom confused her, she let the money lie again; and when I would have s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, not regarding her, the dealer prevented me, saying that it was too late, while she with an air, as if I had been her servant, turned and rated me sharply for a fool. This caused a little disturbance at which all the company laughed. However, the event proved me no fool, but wiser than most, for in two minutes that pretty sum, which was as much as I had ever possessed at one time in my life, was swept off; and for two guineas the richer, which we had been a moment before, we remained one, and that my only one, the poorer!

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 ladys.h.i.+p 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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.

"d.i.c.k," 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 pa.s.sionately. "And one----"

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

"For me to stake next Friday, when the Duke pa.s.ses 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:

"But alas, when I wake, and no Phyllis I find, How I sigh to myself all alone!"

"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 t.i.tupping 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 G.o.d 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 ravis.h.i.+ng fas.h.i.+on--with her head thrown back and her lips parted, and her eyes s.h.i.+ning, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion, and pa.s.sion'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:

"But alas, when I wake, and no Phyllis I find, How I sigh to myself all alone!"

And, sick at heart, I understood the threat and her att.i.tude.

Nevertheless, and though the knowledge should have cured me, by convincing me that she was utterly unworthy and had never loved me, I only consumed the more for her, and grovelled the lower in spirit before her and her beauty; and the devil presently putting in my way the means where he had already provided the motive, it was no wonder that I made but a poor resistance, and in a short time fell.

It came about in this way. In the course of the week, and before the Friday on which the Duke was to return that way, Mr. D---- announced an urgent call to London; and as he was too wise to broach such a proposal without a _quid pro quo_, Mrs. D---- must needs go with him.

The stage-wagon, which travelled three days in the week, would serve next morning, and all was hasty preparation; clothes were packed and mails got out; a gossip, one Mrs. Harris, was engaged to take Mrs.

D----'s place, and the boys were entrusted to me, with strict instructions to see all lights out at night, and no waste. That these injunctions might be the more deeply impressed on me, I was summoned to Mrs. D----'s parlour to receive them; but unluckily with the instructions given to me were mingled housekeeping directions to Mrs.

Harris, who was also present; the result being that when I retired from the room I carried with me the knowledge that in a certain desk, perfectly accessible, my employer left three guineas, to be used in case of emergency, but otherwise not to be touched.

It was an unhappy chance, explaining, as well as accounting for, so much of what follows, that were I to enter into long details of the catastrophe, it would be useless; since the judicious reader will have already informed himself of a result that was never in doubt, from the time that my employer's departure at once provided the means of gratification, and by removing the restraints under which we had before laboured, held out the prospect of pleasure. Nor can I plead that I sinned in ignorance; for as I sat among the boys and mechanically heard their tasks, I called myself, "Thief, thief," a hundred times, and a hundred to that; and once even groaned aloud; yet never flinched or doubted that I should take the money. Which I did--to cut a long story short--before Mr. D---- had been three hours out of the house; and that evening humbly presented the whole of it to my mistress, who rewarded my complaisance with present kisses and future pledges, to be redeemed when she should have once more tasted the pleasures of the great world.

To tell the truth, her craving for these, and to be seen again in those haunts where we had reaped nothing but loss and mortification, was a continual puzzle to me, who asked for nothing better than to enjoy her society and kindness, as far as possible from the world. But as she _would_ go and _would_ play, and made my subservience in this matter the condition of her favour, it was essential she should win; since I could then restore the money I had taken; whereas if she lost, I saw no prospect before me but the hideous one of detection and punishment. Accordingly, when the evening came, and we had effected the same clandestine exodus as before--but this time with less peril, Mrs. Harris being a sleepy, easy-going woman--I could think of nothing but this necessity; and far from experiencing the terrors which had beset me before, when Dorinda would enter the inn, gave no thought to the scene or the crowd through which we pushed, or any other of the preliminaries, but had my soul so set upon the fortune that awaited us, that I was for pa.s.sing through the door in the hardiest fas.h.i.+on, and would scarcely stand even when a hand gripped my shoulder.

However, a rough voice exclaiming in my ear, "Softly, youngster! Who are you that poke in so boldly? I don't know you," brought me to my senses.

"I was in last week," I answered, gasping with eagerness.

"Then you were one too many," the doorkeeper retorted, thrusting me back without mercy. "This is not a tradesman's ordinary. It is for your betters."

"But I was in," I cried, desperately. "I was in last week."

"Well, you will not go in again," he answered coolly. "For the lady, it is different. Pa.s.s in, mistress," he continued, withdrawing his arm that she might pa.s.s, and looking at her with an impudent leer. "I can never refuse a pretty face. And I will bet a guinea that there is one behind that mask."

On which, to my astonishment, and while I stood agape between rage and shame, my mistress, with a hurried word--that might stand for a farewell, or might have been merely a request to me to wait, for I could not catch it--accepted the invitation; and deserting me without the least sign of remorse, pa.s.sed in and disappeared. For a moment I could scarcely, thus abandoned, believe my senses or that she had left me; then, the iron of her ingrat.i.tude entering into my soul, and a gentleman tapping me imperatively on the shoulder and saying that I blocked the way, I was fain to turn aside, and plunge into the darkness, to hide the sobs I could no longer restrain.

For a time, leaning my forehead against a house in a side alley, I called her all the names in the world; reflecting bitterly at whose expense she was here, and at what a price I had bought her pleasure.

Nor, it may be thought, was I likely to find excuses for her soon. But a lover, as he can weave his unhappiness out of the airiest trifles, so from very gossamer can he spin comfort; nor was it long before I considered the necessity under which we lay to play and win, and bethought me that, instead of finding fault with her for entering alone, I should applaud the prudence that at a pinch had borne this steadily in mind. After which, believing what I hoped, I soon ceased to reproach her; and jealousy giving way to suspense--since all for me now depended on the issues of gain or loss--I hastened to return to the door, and hung about it in the hope of seeing her appear.

This she did not do for some time, but the interval and my thoughts were diverted by a _rencontre_ as disagreeable as it was unexpected.

In my solitary condition I had made so few acquaintances in Hertford, that I fancied I stood in no fear of being recognised. I was vastly taken aback therefore, when a gentleman plainly dressed, happening to pause an instant on the threshold as he issued from the inn, let his glance rest on me; and after a second look stepped directly to me, and with a sour aspect, asked me what I did in that place.