The Castle Inn

Chapter 14

A GOOD MAN'S DILEMMA

Ten minutes later Mr. Thomasson slid back the bolt, and opening the

door, glanced furtively up and down the passage. Seeing no one, he came

out, closed the door behind him, and humming an air from the 'Buona

Figlinola,' which was then the fashion, returned slowly, and with

apparent deliberation, to the east wing. There he hastened to hide

himself in a small closet of a chamber, which he had that morning

secured on the second floor, and having bolted the door behind him, he

plumped down on the scanty bed, and stared at the wall, he was the prey

of a vast amazement.

'Jupiter!' he muttered at last, 'what a--a Pactolus I have missed! Three

months ago, two months ago, she would have gone on her knees to marry

me! And with all that money--Lord! I would have died Bishop of Oxford.

It is monstrous! Positively, I am fit to kill myself when I think

of it!'

He paused awhile to roll the morsel on the palate of his imagination,

and found that the pathos of it almost moved him to tears. But before

long he fell from the clouds to more practical matters. The secret was

his, but what was he going to do with it? Where make his market of it?

One by one he considered all the persons concerned. To begin with, there

was her ladyship. But the knowledge did not greatly affect the

viscountess, and he did not trust her. He dismissed the thought of

applying to her. It was the same with Dunborough; money or no money was

all one to him, he would take the girl if he could get her. He was

dismissed as equally hopeless. Soane came next; but Sir George either

knew the secret, or must know it soon; and though his was a case the

tutor pondered long, he discerned no profit he could claim from him.

Moreover, he had not much stomach for driving a bargain with the

baronet; so in the end Sir George too was set aside.

There remained only the Buona Figliuola--the girl herself. 'I might pay

my court to her,' the tutor thought, 'but she would have a spite against

me for last night's work, and I doubt I could not do much. To be sure, I

might put her on her guard against Dunborough, and trust to her

gratitude; but it is ten to one she would not believe me. Or I could let

him play his trick--if he is fool enough to put his neck in a noose--and

step in and save her at the last moment. Ah!' Mr. Thomasson continued,

looking up to the ceiling in a flabby ecstasy of appreciation, 'If I had

the courage! That were a game to play indeed, Frederick Thomasson!'

It was, but it was hazardous; and the schemer rose and walked the floor,

striving to discover a safer mode of founding his claim. He found none,

however; and presently, with a wry face, he took out a letter which he

had received on the eve of his departure from Oxford--a letter from a

dun, threatening process and arrest. The sum was one which a year's

stipend of a fat living would discharge; and until the receipt of the

letter the tutor, long familiar with embarrassment, had taken the matter

lightly. But the letter was to the point, and meant business--a spunging

house and the Fleet; and with the cold shade of the Rules in immediate

prospect, Mr. Thomasson saw himself at his wits' end. He thought and

thought, and presently despair bred in him a bastard courage.

Buoyed up by this he tried to picture the scene; the lonely road, the

carriage, the shrieking girl, the ruffians looking fearfully up and down

as they strove to silence her; and himself running to the rescue; as Mr.

Burchell ran with the big stick, in Mr. Goldsmith's novel, which he had

read a few months before. Then the struggle. He saw himself

knocked--well, pushed down; after all, with care, he might play a fine

part without much risk. The men might fly either at sight of him, or

when he drew nearer and added his shouts to the girl's cries; or--or

some one else might come up, by chance or summoned by the uproar! In a

minute it would be over; in a minute--and what a rich reward he

might reap.

Nevertheless he did not feel sure he would be able to do it. His heart

thumped, and his smile grew sickly, and he passed his tongue again and

again over his dry lips, as he thought of the venture. But do it or not

when the time came, he would at least give himself the chance. He would

attend the girl wherever she went, dog her, watch her, hang on her

skirts; so, if the thing happened, he would be at hand, and if he had

the courage, would save her.

'It should--it should stand me in a thousand!' he muttered, wiping his

damp brow, 'and that would put me on my legs.'

He put her gratitude at that; and it was a great sum, a rich bribe. He

thought of the money lovingly, and of the feat with trembling, and took

his hat and unlocked his door and went downstairs. He spied about him

cautiously until he learned that Mr. Dunborough had departed; then he

went boldly to the stables, and inquired and found that the gentleman

had started for Bristol in a post-chaise. 'In a middling black temper,'

the ostler added, 'saving your reverence's presence.'

That ascertained, the tutor needed no more. He knew that Dunborough, on

his way to foreign service, had lain ten days in Bristol, whistling for

a wind; that he had landed there also on his return, and made--on his

own authority--some queer friends there. Bristol, too, was the port for

the plantations; a slave-mart under the rose, with the roughest of all

the English seatown populations. There were houses at Bristol where

crimping was the least of the crimes committed; in the docks, where the

great ships, laden with sugar and tobacco, sailed in and out in their

seasons, lay sloops and skippers, ready to carry all comers, criminal

and victim alike, beyond the reach of the law. The very name gave Mr.

Thomasson pause; he could have done with Gretna--which Lord Hardwicke's

Marriage Act had lately raised to importance--or Berwick, or Harwich, or

Dover. But Bristol had a grisly sound. From Marlborough it lay no more

than forty miles away by the Chippenham and Marshfield road; a

post-chaise and four stout horses might cover the distance in

four hours.

He felt, as he sneaked into the house, that the die was cast. The other

intended to do it then. And that meant--'Oh, Lord,' he muttered, wiping

his brow, 'I shall never dare! If he is there himself, I shall never

dare!' As he crawled upstairs he went hot one moment and shivered the

next; and did not know whether he was glad or sorry that the chance

would be his to take.

Fortunately, on reaching the first floor he remembered that Lady

Dunborough had requested him to convey her compliments to Dr. Addington,

with an inquiry how Lord Chatham did. The tutor felt that a commonplace

interview of this kind would settle his nerves; and having learned the

position of Dr. Addington's apartments, he found his way down the snug

passage of which we know and knocked at the door. A voice, disagreeably

raised, was speaking on the other side of the door, but paused at the

sound of his knock. Some one said 'Come in,' and he entered.

He found Dr. Addington standing on the hearth, stiff as a poker, and

swelling with dignity. Facing him stood Mr. Fishwick. The attorney,

flustered and excited, cast a look at Mr. Thomasson as if his entrance

were an added grievance; but that done, went on with his complaint.

'I tell you, sir,' he said, 'I do not understand this. His lordship was

able to travel yesterday, and last evening he was well enough to see Sir

George Soane.'

'He did not see him,' the physician answered stiffly. There is no class

which extends less indulgence to another than the higher grade of

professional men to the lower grade. While to Sir George Mr. Fishwick

was an odd little man, comic, and not altogether inestimable, to Dr.

Addington he was an anathema.

'I said only, sir, that he was well enough to see him,' the lawyer

retorted querulously. 'Be that as it may, his lordship was not seriously

ill yesterday. To-day I have business of the utmost importance with him,

and am willing to wait upon him at any hour. Nevertheless you tell me

that I cannot see him to-day, nor to-morrow--'

'Nor in all probability the next day,' the doctor answered grimly.

Mr. Fishwick's voice rose almost to a shriek. 'Nor the next day?' he

cried.

'No, nor the next day, so far as I can judge.'

'But I must see him! I tell you, sir, I must see him,' the lawyer

ejaculated. 'I have the most important business with him!'

'The most important?'

'The most important!'

'My dear sir,' Dr. Addington said, raising his hand and clearly near the

end of his patience, 'my answer is that you shall see him--when he is

well enough to be seen, and chooses to see you, and not before! For

myself, whether you see him now or never see him, is no business of

mine. But it _is_ my business to be sure that his lordship does not risk

a life which is of inestimable value to his country.'

'But--but yesterday he was well enough to travel!' murmured the lawyer,

somewhat awed. 'I--I do not like this!'

The doctor looked at the door.

'I--I believe I am being kept from his lordship!' Mr. Fishwick

persisted, stuttering nervously. 'And there are people whose interest it

is to keep me from his lordship. I warn you, sir, that if anything

happens in the meantime--'

The doctor rang the bell.

'I shall hold you responsible!' Mr. Fishwick cried passionately. 'I

consider this a most mysterious illness. I repeat, I--'

But apparently that was the last straw. 'Mysterious?' the doctor cried,

his face purple with indignation. 'Leave the room, sir! You are not

sane, sir! By God, you ought to be shut up, sir! You ought not to be

allowed to go about. Do you think that you are the only person who wants

to see His Majesty's Minister? Here is a courier come to-day from His

Grace the Duke of Grafton, and to-morrow there will be a score, and a

king's messenger from His Majesty among them--and all this trouble is

given by a miserable, little, paltry, petti--Begone, sir, before I say

too much!' he continued trembling with anger. And then to the servant,

'John, the door! the door! And see that this person does not trouble me

again. Be good enough to communicate in writing, sir, if you have

anything to say.'

With which poor Mr. Fishwick was hustled out, protesting but not

convinced. It is seldom the better side of human nature that lawyers

see; nor is an attorney's office, or a barrister's chamber, the soil in

which a luxuriant crop of confidence is grown. In common with many

persons of warm feelings, but narrow education, Mr. Fishwick was ready

to believe on the smallest evidence--or on no evidence at all--that the

rich and powerful were leagued against his client; that justice, if he

were not very sharp, would be denied him; that the heavy purse had a

knack of outweighing the righteous cause, even in England and in the

eighteenth century. And the fact that all his hopes were staked on this

case, that all his resources were embarked in it, that it had fallen, as

it were, from heaven into his hands--wherefore the greater the pity if

things went amiss--rendered him peculiarly captious and impracticable.

After this every day, nay, every hour, that passed without bringing him

to Lord Chatham's presence augmented his suspense and doubled his

anxiety. To be put off, not one day, but two days, three days--what

might not happen in three days!--was a thing intolerable, insufferable;

a thing to bring the heavens down in pity on his head! What wonder if he

rebelled hourly; and being routed, as we have seen him routed, muttered

dark hints in Julia's ear, and, snubbed in that quarter also, had no

resource but to shut himself up in his sleeping-place, and there brood

miserably over his suspicions and surmises?

Even when the lapse of twenty-four hours brought the swarm of couriers,

messengers, and expresses which Dr. Addington had foretold; when the

High Street of Marlborough--a name henceforth written on the page of

history--became but a slowly moving line of coaches and chariots bearing

the select of the county to wait on the great Minister; when the little

town itself began to throb with unusual life, and to take on airs of

fashion, by reason of the crowd that lay in it; when the Duke of

Grafton himself was reported to be but a stage distant, and there

detained by the Earl's express refusal to see him; when the very _KING_,

it was rumoured, was coming on the same business; when, in a word, it

became evident that the eyes of half England were turned to the Castle

Inn at Marlborough, where England's great statesman lay helpless, and

gave no sign, though the wheels of state creaked and all but stood

still--even then Mr. Fishwick refused to be satisfied, declined to be

comforted. In place of viewing this stir and bustle, this coming and

going as a perfect confirmation of Dr. Addington's statement, and a

proof of his integrity, he looked askance at it. He saw in it a

demonstration of the powers ranked against him and the principalities he

had to combat; he felt, in face of it, how weak, how poor, how

insignificant he was; and at one time despaired, and at another was in a

frenzy, at one time wearied Julia with prophecies of treachery, at

another poured his forebodings into the more sympathetic bosom of the

elder woman. The reader may laugh; but if he has ever staked his all on

a cast, if he has taken up a hand of twelve trumps, only to hear the

ominous word 'misdeal!' he will find something in Mr. Fishwick's

attitude neither unnatural nor blameworthy.