To remain at Cleeby the slave of despair and bitterness would certainly be fatal to my lover; therefore, quitting my dubious papa, I hied immediately to Emblem and bade her pack my baggage. On the morrow I was speeding to the south, evolving as I went all sorts of mad schemes in my brain for the achievement of so desperate an end.
CHAPTER XX.
I SPEAK WITH THE CELEBRATED MR. SNARK.
On arriving at our town residence in Bloomsbury it was easy to ascertain that the family of Long Acre had fallen on an evil time. The troops of friends that formerly were so willing to receive and to be received now kept aloof, and avoided me in every way possible, as though I were a very leper. At first I felt disposed to accept this calmly, and in an amused but not uncharitable spirit. I persuaded myself that I could surely dispense with the favour of these shallow persons. But one week of it corrected this impression. For I soon discovered that flattery, admiration, and wholesale triumphs in the social sphere were indispensable to a life in town. Nature, in endowing me with a smile that, as young Anthony once remarked, was “sufficient to sweeten sour cream,” and a beauty of person that provoked more odes than a successful campaign, also cursed me with a craving for its appreciation. Therefore in a day or two, when the novelty was outworn, disfavour and neglect became terribly irksome to support. And however proud a face I might put upon the matter when I went abroad, my pain was not thereby made the softer.
It seems that the story had flown across the town with the quickness peculiar to a scandal, that our family had been so active in the cause of the Pretender Charles, that it had gone the length of harbouring rebels at our place in Yorkshire, and had even plucked them from the custody of the Hanoverian’s troops. Further, it was known that the King had refused the entrée to my father and myself, and soon a sinister rumour crept abroad to the effect that the Earl’s name was to be cited in the House of Lords, he being guilty of a capital offence. Truly I found things in London to be dark indeed. It was evident from the first that it would be impossible to seek in high places for aid for the man lying under sentence of death in Newgate. It was this ulterior assistance that I had relied on wholly; and now for it to be quite beyond my reach, was a great aggravation to my miseries. Shorn of this privilege of the powerful, I knew not which way I must turn, and in a week or less was at my wits’ end for an expedient. At that time my lover had only ten days to live, and here was I with nothing done. Where were my promises? The agony that was mine during those fast-slipping days I do not care to dwell on. Every hour that passed was a reproach to my futility. The suspense, the misery, the vain repinings as I searched for a means and could not find one, whilst the days all too rapidly escaped, fretted me almost to the fever-state. By night I could not sleep; yet by day I could accomplish nothing. Shunned and scorned by all who had the power to help me; fretted by the horrid disabilities of petticoats, and the most sheer ignorance of how to achieve so grave and dangerous a consummation, there seemed nothing left for me to do, other than to await, with what fortitude I might, the rebel’s awful end. But this I could not do.
To farther aggravate my woes, some dear friend of mine contrived that the news should be borne to my ears that the town was in full possession of the fact that I was deeply in love with a certain tattered adventurer and rogue lying under sentence of death in Newgate, and that I was surely sickening with the thoughts of his impending doom. Although I deeply doubt whether this story was actually accepted, it was not the less industriously circulated because there happened to be a doubt about it. I laughed bitterly when I reflected how unwittingly near they had approached the truth.
When I rose, weary and unrefreshed one morning, and reflected that there were only nine days left, I grew utterly desperate. But in the course of that night’s intolerable vigil, I had conceived the semblance of an idea. Therefore, while Mrs. Polly ministered to me, I proceeded to put it into a somewhat more palpable shape.
“Emblem,” says I, “I have been wondering lately whether there is a rogue in all this city, who, if liberally paid for his devotion, would render me some honest services.”
“Would not a man of rectitude be able to perform these services?” says she.
“That’s the rub, for he would be unwilling,” I replied, and when I went a point farther and explained the nature of them, Mrs. Emblem agreed with this opinion.
“Well, your la’ship,” says she, with a brave fidelity for which I was truly grateful; “if such a one is to be found, you can take it that I’ll find him.”