Shrewsbury: A Romance

by Stanley John Weyman

No need to say that I wondered much at all I saw, and particularly at the handsome and stately proportions of the staircase, which I descended without seeing any person until I reached the landing on the first floor. Here, looking timidly over the balustrade, I discovered that the buzz and hum of voices which I had heard as soon as I opened my door, came from the hall below, which appeared to be paved with heads. First and nearest to where I stood were clustered on the lower steps of the staircase a number of persons whom I took to be servants, and who, standing as if in the boxes of a theatre, were taken up with staring at what went on on the floor below them, and particularly at a row of eight or nine men, who seated on chairs along one side of the hall, seemed to be in the charge of a messenger and some tipstaves, and to be prisoners awaiting examination. Between these last and the stairs occupying the floor of the hall, and both moving and standing still, were a crowd of persons of condition, the greater part, to all appearance, clients of the Duke, or officers and persons who, having the entrée, had stepped in out of curiosity to see the sight.

However, I had no eyes for these, for with a beating heart I recognised among the dejected prisoners seated along the wall, four whom I knew. King, Keyes, Cassel, and Ferguson himself, and I had anything but a mind to stay to be recognised in my turn. I was in the act of withdrawing, therefore, as quietly as I could, when I saw with a kind of shock that the prisoner at the end of the row, the one nearest to me and farthest from the door, was a girl. It scarcely needed a second glance to tell me that the girl was Mary. The light at that inner extremity of the hall was waning, and her face, always pale and now in shadow, wore an aspect of grey and weary depression that, natural as it was under the circumstances, went to my heart, and impressed me deeply in proportion as I had always found her hard and self-reliant. But moved as I was, I dared not linger, since to linger might be to be observed. With a light foot, therefore, I carried out my first intention, and drawing back undiscovered, sneaked up the staircase to my room.

My clue in the circumstances was clear. Plainly it was to lie close and keep quiet and shun observation until the crisis was passed; then by every means in my power--saving always the becoming an evidence in court, which was too dangerous--to deserve the Duke's favour; and as to the pledge I had given to Smith, to be guided by the future.

Such a line of conduct was immensely favoured by the illness to which I had so fortunately succumbed. Once back in my bed, I had only to lie there, and affect weakness; and in a day or two I might hope that things would be so far advanced that my share in them and knowledge of them would go for little, and I, on the ground of the personal service I had done his Grace, might keep his favour--yet run no risk.

In fact nothing could seem more simple than such a line of conduct; on which, the western daylight that still lingered in the room, giving my retreat a most cheerful aspect, I felt that I had every reason to hug myself. After the miseries and dangers of the past week I was indeed well off. Here, in the remote top floor of my lord's great house in the Square, I was as safe as I could be anywhere in the world, and I knew it.

But so contrary is human nature, and so little subject to the dictations of the soundest sense, that I had not lain in my bed five minutes, congratulating myself on my safety, before the girl, and the wretchedness I had read in her face, began to trouble me. It was not to be denied that she had gone some way towards saving my life--if she had not actually saved it; and I had a kind of feeling for her on that account. True, things were greatly altered since we had agreed to go to Romford together, et nuptias facere; I had got no patron then, nor such prospects as I now had, these troubles once overpast. But for all that, it troubled me to think of her as I had seen her, pale and downcast; and by-and-by I found myself again at the door of my room with my hand on the latch. Thence I went back, shivering and ashamed, and calling myself and doubtless rightly a fool; and tried, by watching the crowd in the Square--but timidly, since even at that height I fancied I might be recognised--to divert my thoughts. With so little success in the end, however, that presently I was stealing down the stairs again.

I knew that it was impossible I could pass down the main staircase and through the servants unobserved, but I took it that in such a house there must be a backstairs; and coming to the first floor I turned craftily down the main corridor leading into the heart of the house, and pretty quickly found that staircase--which was as good as dark-- and crept down it still meeting no one; a thing that surprised me until I stood in the long passage on the ground floor corresponding with the corridor above, and found that the door, which from its position should cut it off from the front hall, was fastened. Tantalised by the murmur of voices in the hall, and my proximity, I tried the lock twice; but the second effort only confirming the result of the first, I was letting down the latch as softly as I could, hoping that I should not be detected, when the door was sharply flung open in my face, all the noise and heat of the hall burst on me, and in the opening appeared a stout angry man, who glared at me as if he would eat me.

"What are you doing here?" he cried, "when twice I have told you----" There he stopped, seeing who it was, and "Hallo!" he continued in a different and more civil tone, "it is you, is it? Are you better?"

Afterwards I learned that he was Mr. Martin, my lord's house-steward, but at the time I knew him only for someone in authority; and I muttered an excuse. "Well, come through, now you are here," he continued sharply. "But the orders are strict that this door be kept locked while this business is going. You can see as well, or better, from the stairs. There, those are the men. And a rare set of Frenchified devils they look! Charnock is in with my lord now, and I hope he may not blow him up with gunpowder or some fiendish trick."

He had scarcely told me when, a stir in the body of the hall announcing a new arrival, a cry was raised of "Room for my Lord Marlborough and my Lord Godolphin!" and the press falling to either side out of respect, I had a glimpse of two gentlemen in the act of entering; one, a stout and very noble-looking man of florid complexion, the other stout also and personable, but a trifle smug and solemn. The steward had no sooner heard their names announced, than in a great fluster he bade me keep the door a minute; and pushing himself into the throng, he went with immense importance to receive them.