House of Torment Part 35

"It means, Madame," Johnnie answered, "that we have gone through many troubles and trials, through all sorts of changes in affairs, but we approach towards Latium, which the poet meaneth for Imperial Rome, where the fates will let us live in peace."

"In peace!" Elizabeth whispered.

"Aye, sweetheart mine," the young man answered; "we have won to peace at last. Thou and I together!"

For a moment or two they were all silent, and then the door of the _comedor_ was suddenly opened, not quietly, as for the entrance of a serving-man, but flung open widely and with noise.

They all turned and looked towards the archway of the door.

In a moment more six or seven people pressed into the room--people dressed in black, people whose feet made no noise upon the floor.

Ere ever any of them at the table realised what was happening, they found themselves gripped by strong, firm hands, though there was never a word spoken.

Before he could reach the dagger in his belt--for he was not wearing his sword--Johnnie's arms were bound to his side, and he was held fast.

It was all done with strange deftness and silence, Elizabeth and the Frenchwoman being held also, each by two men, though their arms were not bound.

Johnnie burst out in indignant English, then, remembering where he was, changed to Spanish. "In G.o.d's name," he cried, "what means this outrage upon peaceable and quiet folk?"

His voice was loud and angry, but there was fear in it as he cried out.

The answer came from a tall figure which came noiselessly through the door, a figure in a ca.s.sock, with a large gold cross hung upon its breast, and followed by two others in the dress of priests.

"Ah, Mr. Commendone, we meet again," came in excellent English, as the man removed his broad-brimmed felt hat.

"You have come a long way from England, Mr. Commendone, you and your--friends. But the arm of the King, the hand of the Church, which are as the arm of G.o.d Himself, can stretch swiftly and very far."

Johnnie's face grew dead white as he heard the well-remembered voice of Father Diego Deza. In a flash he remembered that King Philip's confessor and confidential adviser had told him that he was to leave England for Spain on the morning of the very day when he had rescued Elizabeth from shame.

His voice rattled in his throat and came hoa.r.s.ely through parched lips.

He made one effort, though he felt that it was hopeless.

"Don Diego," he said, "I am very glad to see you in Spain"--the other gave a nasty little laugh. "Don Diego," Johnnie continued, "I have offended nothing against the laws of England. What means this capture and durance of myself and my companions?"

"You are not in England now, Mr. Commendone," the priest replied; "but you are in the dominion of His Most Catholic Majesty; you are not accused of any crime against the civil law of England or of this country, but I, in my authority as Grand Inquisitor of the Holy Office in Seville--to do which duty I have now come to Spain--arrest you and your companions on charges which will be afterwards disclosed to you.

"Take them away," he said in Spanish to his officers.

There was a horrid wail, echoing and re-echoing through the long room and beating upon the ear-drums of all who were there....

Madame La Motte had heard all that the priest had said in English. She shrieked and shrieked again.

"Ah-h-h! _C'est vrai alors! L'inquisition! qui lance la mort!_"

With extraordinary and sudden strength she twisted herself away from the two sombre figures which held her. She bent forward over the table, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a long knife, gripped the handle firmly with two fat white hands, and plunged it into her breast to the hilt.

For quite three seconds she stood upright. Her face of horror changed into a wonder, as if she was surprised at what she had done. Then she smiled foolishly, like a child who realises that it has made a silly mistake, coughed loudly like a man, and fell in heavy death upon the floor.

CHAPTER XI

IN THE BOX

"Devant l'Inquisition, quand on vient a jube, Si l'on ne soit roti, l'on soit au moins flambe."

It was not light that pressed upon the retina of the eye. There was no vibration to the sensitive lenses. It was a sudden vision not of the eye, but in the memory-cells of the brain which now and then filled the dreadful blackness with a fierce radiance, filled it for an infinitesimal fraction of a second.

And then all was dark again.

It was not dark with the darkness that ordinary men know. At no time, in all probability, has any man or woman escaped a long sleepless night in a darkened room. The candle is out; the silence begins to nibble at the nerves; there is no sound but the uneasy tossing upon the bed. It seems, one would rather say, that there is no sound save only that made by the sufferer. At such hours comes a dread weariness of life, a restlessness which is but the physical embroidery upon despair. The body itself is at the lowest pitch of its vitality. Through the haunted chambers of the mind fantastic thoughts chase each other, and evil things--evil _personalities_ it almost seems--uncoil themselves and erect their heads.

But it is not really darkness, not really despair, as people know when the night has gone and dawn begins. Nor is it really _silence_. The ear becomes attuned to its environment; a little wind moans round the house.

There is the soft patter of falling rain--the distant moaning of the sea.

Furniture creaks as the temperature changes; there are rustlings, whispers, unexplained noises--the night is indeed full of sound.

Nor is it really _darkness_, as the mind discovers towards the end of the sick and restless vigil. The eye also is attuned to that which limits and surrounds its potentialities. The blinds are drawn, but still some faint mysterious greyness creeps between them and the window. The room, then, is a real room still! Over there is the long mirror which will presently begin to stir and reflect the birth-pangs of light. That squat, black monster, which crouches in the corner of the dark, will grow larger, and become only the wardrobe after all. And soon the air of the chamber will take on a subtle and indefinable change. It will have a new savour, it will tell that far down in the under world the sun is moaning and muttering in the last throes of sleep. The blackness will go. Dim, inchoate nothingness will change to wan dove-coloured light, and with the first chirpings of half-awakened birds the cas.e.m.e.nt will show "a slowly glimmering square," and the tortured brain will sink to rest.

Day has come! There is no longer any need for fear. The nervous pain, more terrible than all, has gone. The heart is calmed, the brain is soothed, utter prostration and despair appears, mercifully, a thing of long ago.

Some such experience as this all modern men have endured. To John Commendone, in the prison of the Inquisition where he had been put, no such alleviation came.

For him there was no blessed morning; for him the darkness was that awful negation of light--of physical light--and of hope, which is without remedy.

He did not know how long it had been since he was caught up suddenly out of the rich room where he was dining with his love--dining among the scent of flowers, with the echo of music in his ears, his whole heart suffused with thankfulness and peace.

He did not know how long it had been; he only remembered the hurried progress in a closed carriage from the hotel to the fortress of the Triana in the suburbs, which was the prison and a.s.size of the Holy Office.

In all Europe in this era prisons were dark, damp holes. They were real graves, full of mould, animal filth, the pest-breeding smells. It was the boast of the Inquisition, and even Llorente speaks of it, that the prisons were "well-arched, light and dry rooms where the prisoners could make some movement."

This was generally true, and Commendone had heard of it from Don Perez.

It was not true in his case. He had been taken hurriedly into the prison as night fell, marched silently through interminable courtyards and pa.s.sage-ways--corridors which slanted downwards, ever downwards--until in a dark stone pa.s.sage, illuminated only by the torches which were carried by those who conducted him, he had come to a low door, heavily studded with iron.

This had been opened with a key. The wards of the lock had shot back with a well-oiled and gentle click. He had bent his head a little as they pushed him into the living tomb--a box of stone five feet square exactly. He was nearly six feet in height; he could not stand erect; he could not stretch himself at full length. The thing was a refinement of the dreadful "little-ease" of the Tower of London and many other secular prisons where wretches were tortured for a week before their execution.

He had heard of places like them, but he realised that it was not the design of those who had him fast to kill him yet. He knew that he must undergo an infinity of mental and bodily torture ere ever the scarred and trembling soul would be allowed to wing its way from the still, broken body.

He was in absolute, complete darkness, buried in a box of stone.

The rayless gloom was without any relief whatever; it was the enclosing sable of death itself; a pitchy oblivion that lay upon him like a solid weight, a thing obscene and hopeless. And the silence was a real silence, an utter stillness such as no modern man ever knows--save only the few demoniac prisoners in the _cachot noir_ of the French convict prisons of Noumea.

Once every two days--if there indeed were such things as days and hours in this still h.e.l.l--the door of the cell was noiselessly opened. There was a dim red glow in the stone corridor without, a pitcher of water, some black bread, and every now and then a few ripe figs, were pushed into the box.

Then a clang, the oily swish of the bolts, and another eternity of silence.

The man's brain did not go. It was too soon for that. He lay a fortnight--ten thousand years it seemed to him--in this box of horror.