The Castle Inn: Chapter 14

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.

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