Lawrence Clavering Part 42

How that sin of mine reached out, making me a ban and a curse, bearing its evil fruit in unimaginable ways! And in the agony of my heart I cried--

"Would to G.o.d I had never come to Applegarth!"

The cry rang fierce and sharp through the little church. Silence succeeded it, and then--

"That is not very kind," said Dorothy, with a tremulous reproach, "It pains me."

"Ah! don't mistake," I went on. "For myself, I could not hope to make you understand what my visit there has meant to me. I came to Applegarth on an evening. The day I had pa.s.sed waiting upon the hillside, and while I was waiting there, I made a resolve to repair, under G.o.d's will, a great wrong. Well, when I first saw you, I had but one thought--a thought of very sincere gladness that I had come to that resolve or ever I had had speech with you. And during the weeks that followed, this resolve drew strength and vigour from your companionship. That vigour and that strength it keeps, so that my one fear now is, lest chance may bar me from the performance. That is your doing. For until I came to Applegarth, all my life behind me was littered with broken pledges."

She laid her hand for an instant upon my sleeve.

"But what return have I made to you," I continued, "except a pitiful hypocrisy? I came to Applegarth an outlaw--yes, my one fault my loyalty! So you believed; so I let you believe. I wore your brother's clothes, and he died at Malplaquet. There was hypocrisy in the wearing of them!" And I turned suddenly towards her. "There was a picture I once saw--the picture of a dead man speaking. Even then it seemed to me an image of myself."

"A dead man speaking!" interrupted Dorothy, with a start.

"Yes!" said I, and I told her of the picture which Lord Bolingbroke had shown to me at the monastery of the Chartreux in Paris, and of the thought which I had drawn from it.

"A dead man speaking," she repeated, in a voice which seemed hushed with awe; "how strange!"

The storm had ceased to beat the window; the dusk was deepening to darkness; the silence was about us like a garment I sat wondering at Dorothy's tone, wondering whether I should say what yet remained to say. But I had made use before of secrecy and deception. It would be best I should simply speak the truth.

"A dead man speaking," again said Dorothy.

"I had warning enough, you see," said I, "and I recognized the warning. The picture seized upon my thoughts. I knew it for an allegory, but made no profit of my knowledge. And so the allegory turns fact."

"What do you mean?" she asked, catching her breath.

"Oh, don't speak until I have done!" I cried "I find it hard enough to tell you as it is while you sit silent. But the sound of your voice cheats me of my strength, sets the duty beyond my reach. For it is a duty." I paused for a moment to recover the mastery of my senses. "I spoke to you once of a prison-door which would close between you and me. But that was not the whole of the truth. That prison-door will close, but it will open again; I shall come out from it, but upon a hurdle."

"Oh no!" cried Dorothy in such a voice of pain as I pray G.o.d I may never hear the like of again. I felt it rive my heart. She swayed forward; her forehead would have struck the rail of the pew in front.

I put my arm around her shoulders and drew her towards me. I felt her face pressed against my bosom, her fingers twining tightly upon my coat.

"Yes, yes, it is true," I went on. "The allegory turns fact. Even in Paris, those months agone, I came to look upon myself as the figure in the picture, as the dead man speaking, meaning thereby the hypocrite detected. But now the words take on a literal meaning. It is a dead man who is speaking to you--no more than that--in very truth a dead man. You must believe it; and believe this too, that since my cup of life this long while back has over-brimmed with shame, and since it was I who filled it why, I could go very lightly to my death, but for the fear lest it should cause my little friend to suffer pain."

She disengaged herself gently from my clasp.

"I cannot take that fear away from you," she said in a broken whisper.

"And indeed I would not lose it," I replied. "In my heart of hearts I know that I would not lose it."

"What is it, then, you mean to do?" she asked.

"To travel with my friend as far as Ravengla.s.s, to set her safe on board the _Swallow_, and then--somewhere there is a man in prison whose place is mine."

"You do not know where?" she exclaimed suddenly.

"No," said I, "but----"

She interrupted me with a cry.

"Look!" she said hurriedly, and pointed to a little window close beneath the roof. Through that window the moonlight was creeping like a finger down the wall, across the floor. "The storm has cleared; we can go."

She rose abruptly from her seat, and moved out into the chancel Something--was it the hurry of her movement, the tension of her voice?--made me spring towards her. I remembered that, when I spoke to her on the hillside near Penrith, it had seemed to me then that she had some inkling of the truth.

"You know!" I exclaimed--"you know where the prisoner is?"

"No," she cried, and her voice rose almost to a scream belying the word she spoke.

How she came by her knowledge I did not consider. She knew! I had no room for any other thought.

"Oh, you do know!" I implored, and dropping on my knee I seized the hem of her dress to detain her. I felt the dress drag from me; I held it the more firmly. "You do not know--oh, tell me! A man innocent of all wrongdoing, lies in prison--the charge, treason. Think you they will weigh his innocence after this rebellion? The fetters he wears are mine, his punishment is mine, and I must claim it. There's no other way but this plain and simple one. I must needs claim it. Oh think, ever since I have known you, the necessity that I should do this thing has grown on me, day by day, as each day I saw you. I have felt that I owed it to you that I should succeed. Do not you prevent me!"

She stood stock still; I could hear the quick coming and going of her breath, but in the uncertain twilight I could not read her face; and she did not speak.

"Listen!" I continued "If you do not tell me, it will make no difference. I shall still give myself up. But to the other it may make all the difference in the world. For it may be that I shall fail to save him."

Still she kept silence. So, seeing no other way, I stood up before her and told her the story from end to end, beginning with that day when I first rode over Coldbarrow Fell to Blackladies in company with Jervas Rookley, down to the morning when I fled from the garden where the soldiers searched for me.

I saw her head droop as she listened, and bow into her hands; yet I had to go on and finish it.

"But," said she, "you were not all to blame. The woman----"

"Nay," said I, "it can serve no purpose to portion out the blame; for, portion it as you will, you cannot shred away my share."

"Mr. Herbert," she objected again, "would have been taken in your garden, whether you had returned or no that afternoon."

"But my fault was the instrument used to ruin him. He was taken while he followed me. He was taken, too, because of me. For had I not ridden so often into Keswick, he would never have been suspected."

"It was his jealousy that trapped him, and Jervas Rookley provoked the jealousy."

"But I furnished him with the means."

The arguments were all old and hackneyed to me. I had debated them before, so that I had the answers ready. There was, besides, one final argument, and without waiting for her to speak again, I used it.

"And what of the wife waiting in Keswick?"

She turned away with a little swift movement, and again stood silent Then she said--

"Yes! I too will face it bravely. Mr. Herbert lies in Carlisle Castle, waiting his trial. You know, after the message came to Applegarth, my father and I fled to Carlisle; we took refuge with friends--Whigs, but of my mother's family, and for her sake they gave us shelter. They knew the Governor of the Castle. He told them of a prisoner newly brought thither upon a warrant--a Mr. Herbert, who solaced himself night and day with the painting of the strangest picture ever known.

You showed to me a letter at Applegarth, wherein a painter was mentioned and named, and I knew you had some trouble to distress you.

I grew curious to see the prisoner; no one suspected I was in Carlisle, and so my friends consented to take me. I saw him. It is true I had no speech with him, but I saw the picture. It was a portrait of yourself, I thought, but I could not be sure. I was sure before you told me. I was sure when you spoke to me of that picture you had seen in Paris. For this portrait, too, that Mr. Herbert painted, was a portrait of yourself, as a dead man speaking."

I noticed that as she spoke her voice gained confidence and strength, and at the close it rang without a trace of fear or reluctance.

"Thank you," said I, simply. "Thank you with all my heart."

"Yes!" she replied, "it was right that I should tell you. You will go to Carlisle?"