Treated thus with a kindness as much above my deserts as it was admirable in one of his transcendent rank, and assured, moreover, by my lord's own mouth that henceforth, in gratitude for the service I had done him in Ferguson's room, he would provide for me, I should have stood, I ought to have stood, in the seventh heaven of felicity. But as suffering moves unerring on the track of weakness, and no man enjoys at any moment perfect bliss, I had first to learn the fate of the girl whose evasion I had contrived. And when a cautious search and questions as crafty had satisfied me that she had really effected her escape from the house--probably in a man's dress, for one of the lacqueys complained of the loss of a suit of clothes--I had still a care; and a care which gnawed more sharply with every hour of ease and safety.
Needless to say, the one matter on which I had been reticent, the one actor whose presence on the scene I had not disclosed to my lord, lay at the bottom of my anxiety. Kind in action and generous in intention as the Duke had shown himself, his magnanimity had not availed to oust from my mind the terror with which Smith's threats had imbued it; nor while confessing all else had I been able to bring myself to denounce the conspirator or detail the terms on which he had set me free. Though I had all the inducement to speak, which the certainty that his arrest would release me, could present, even this, and the security of the haven in which I lay, failed to encourage me to the point of hazard. So strong was the hold on my fears which this man had compassed; and so complete the slavery to which he had reduced my will.
But though at the time of confession, I found it a relief to be silent about him, this same silence presently left me alone to cope with him, and with fears sufficiently poignant, which his memory awakened: the result being that with prospects more favourable and a future better assured than I had ever imagined would be mine, or than any man of my condition had a right to expect, I still found this drop of poison in my cup. It was not enough that all things--and my patron--favouring me, I sank easily into the position of his privy clerk, that I retained that excellent room in which I had first been placed, that I found myself accepted by the household as a fact--so that never a man saved from drowning by a strand had a right to praise his fortune as I had; nor that, the wind from every quarter, seeming at the same time to abate, the prisoners went for trial, and nothing said of me, while Ferguson, of whose complicity no legal proof could be found, lay in prison under the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, and kept silence; nor even that a note came from Mary, ostensibly from Dunkirk, and without compromising me informed me of her safety. It was not enough, I say, that each and all of these things happened beyond my hopes; for in the midst of my prosperity, whether I stood writing at my lord's elbow in the stillness of the stately library, or moved at ease through the corridor, greeted with respect by my fellow-servants, and with civility by all, I was alike haunted by the thought and terror of Smith, and the knowledge that at any moment, the conspirator might appear to hurl me from this paradise. The secrecy which I had maintained about him doubled his power; even as the ease and luxury in which I lived presented in darker and fouler colours the sordid scenes and perils through which I had waded to this eminence.
[CHAPTER XXXIII]
I think that I had spent a week, or it might be more, in this situation of mingled ease and torment, when on coming down one morning after a hag-ridden night I heard a stir in the hall; and, going that way to learn what it meant, met the servants returning in a crowd from the front, and talking low about something. Martin, who was foremost, cried, "Ha, you are too late!" And then drawing me aside, into a little den he had beside the passage, "They have taken him to the office," he said. "But, lord's sakes, Mr. Price," he continued, lifting his eyebrows and pursing up his lips to express his astonishment, "who would have thought it? Her ladyship will be in a taking! I hope that there may be no more in it than appears!"
"In what?" said I.
"In this arrest," he answered, eyeing me with meaning, and then softly closing the door on us. "I hope it may end there. That is all I say! Between ourselves."
"You forget," I cried with irritation, "that I know nothing about it! What arrest? And who is arrested?"
"Mr. Bridges's man of business."
"What Mr. Bridges?" I cried.