The King's Men Part 25

Richard Lincoln had come there from the death-bed of his daughter to do this last service to the man that she loved. Then Dacre pa.s.sed on, out of the great door into the full light of the noon. There in front of him was a great concourse of people, the mult.i.tude Geoffrey had seen from his window. Dacre looked out from the prison gate with his fixed, clear eyes, but the road was growing very short before him now, and still his glance went on beyond--beyond the company of soldiers standing thirty yards in front, the b.u.t.ts of their rifles resting on the ground.

"John Dacre, you are found guilty of high treason to the people. Have you anything to say?" It was Bagshaw, the President, who spoke, in his capacity as general of the army.

Dacre made no reply. He was thinking of the treason of his King, and not of his own. And there in front of him were the people--the people, in might of numbers, in the majesty of strength, ten thousand to his one.

But as he looked upon them their ten thousand faces were turned on his, their hearts within their eyes; and Dacre might have noted that in all of them there was not one but spoke pity--pity, in their silence, for himself. Then he turned aside from the door, with his back to the prison wall. "I am ready."

"John Dacre--you have nothing to say?" said the President again. "You may yet save yourself. Where is the King?" Dacre turned his glance upon him, slowly.

"I am ready," said he again. He seemed to overlook the President as he spoke, and he never looked at him again.

"Give the order to make ready!" said Bagshaw, angrily, to the officer in command, and the slight click of the rifles followed his words.

The narrow courtyard was as still as if deserted, though it seemed you could almost hear the breathing of the mult.i.tude that thronged the streets. But to die thus, penned in a narrow courtyard, pa.s.sively, vainly, shot like a dog. A low murmur began to come from the people, indeterminate, inarticulate; it came to Dacre's ears like the hum of distant battle, and perhaps he saw the battle, and the royal standard, and that last unworthy King for whom this thing was done. Then came Bagshaw's voice again: "Where is the King?"

"Silence, sir!" thundered Richard Lincoln, and Bagshaw slunk back a pace or two, like a chidden dog.

"The King is dead," said Dacre, so clearly that all the people in the street heard him, but no one made a sound. Then he threw back his coat, as if to bare his breast to the levelled muskets; and as he did so the withered rose dropped out and fell into his hand. It was Mary Lincoln's rose that he had thrust there on the day before. And as he looked at it the false bonds of his faith fell from him like the fetters of a dream, and he looked upon the mult.i.tude and saw that theirs was the right, and he knew that his life was thrown away; then first he remembered she had loved him, and he saw what might have been. He saw the poor image of a king--the King who had deserted his own cause and left him in his loyalty alone; he saw the throng of humanity standing silent there before him, and the sweetness and the virtue of the life which he had put behind. Then for the first time his firm lips trembled, as he lifted the poor rose to his lips, and kissed it once, in memory of her whom he was leaving, as he thought. But Mary Lincoln was dead; and as he turned his face upward, he seemed to see some vision in the sky, and they say that a great glory shone into his face.

"Fire!" came the word, and the sheet of flame leaped out toward him, and he fell; and the rose-leaves, scattered by a bullet, lay about him on the stones.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE LAST ROYALIST.

Geoffrey's jailers were lenient to him after that first day. He was removed to a room with carpet and furniture; his table was well served; he was allowed to walk about in the courtyards; books and pen and ink were given him--everything but newspapers. The fact was that Bagshaw felt he had gone too far. The vindictiveness, the cruelty of the populace, was already a thing of the past--of that past when they had not yet learned their power. The people were good-natured, impressionable, forgiving; and that low murmur from the street on the day of Dacre's execution, the third time the President had sought to make his prisoner betray the King, had well-nigh driven Bagshaw from his office. It was Richard Lincoln who had saved the government that day, by his stern rebuke to the President; the latter liked him none the better for that.

Geoffrey felt this change of sentiment in the manner of his keepers; and when he remembered that first terrible day, it was but to hope that his fears had been exaggerated. Undoubtedly John's sentence would be commuted to imprisonment like his own.

But the more convinced Geoffrey became of this, the more his mind turned to the other persons of those eventful days. The King had not come--that was the grim fact--the King had not come to claim his own; had left his honest gentlemen to fight or fall without him; and no one, even now, could tell how different the event might have been that day had George the Fifth but proved his own cause worth defending. Geoffrey, Dacre, none of them had had news of the King since the day of Aldershot.

Up to the very stroke of noon, as Geoffrey remembered, Dacre had expected him. But they had waited in vain. And now the White Horse of Hanover, and with that the Norman Leopard, was a thing of the past. From his window Geoffrey could see the red, white, and green tricolor in the Tower yard. He inclined to think the King was dead.

Geoffrey had never been by conviction a Legitimist; hardly even had he been one by affection. Dacre's magnetism, Dacre's n.o.bility of purpose had overcome his earlier judgment; for the one effort he had lent his life to his friend, to stake on a cast of the die. Now that they had fairly thrown and lost, he returned to his former judgment. But with the cause that they had lost had gone his own future.

He did not care so much for this, since that last scene with Margaret Windsor. What future was there for him now? Stone walls do not a prison make; he might as well be here as penned up, useless, in his four acres about the lodge at Ripon House. His friends--what friends had he? Dacre, Sydney, Featherstone--they were walled up with him. And Geoffrey, walking in the Tower yard, would look up to the scattered windows, and wonder which of them was his friend's; and if he noticed a dull red stain on the stones at the base of the wall, he thought it was some old mark, dating from Cromwell or the Roses. Still, Geoffrey was a young man, too young to have wholly learned to be a fatalist; but the more he thought of escape, the more hopeless it seemed. With a confederate, a friend outside, it might perhaps be possible. But what friend had he left in the wide world? Geoffrey racked his memory to think of one.

There were some two hundred men he knew at his club in the West End--but which one of these, who had not been at Aldershot, would leave his snug rubber at whist for the Tower? There was Jawkins--if Jawkins could be brought to think it worth his while. Mr. Windsor--the shrewd American was with his daughter in America; and the daughter deemed him false, and had forgotten him. False! There was Eleanor Carey; she had loved him; would she not seek to save him? The woman whose maidenhood he had loved?

He had not heard of her since the night before Aldershot; but this was rather a hopeful sign than otherwise. The more Geoffrey thought, the more he felt a.s.sured that here was the one person in the world that might be trusted to remember him.

So, when Geoffrey had been in prison some three weeks, and one day the turnkey came and said that some one wished to see him, Geoffrey thought of Mrs. Carey at once. His heart beat high with hope as he followed his guide through a labyrinth of stairs and pa.s.sages. He even forgot to look closely at each door, as he was used to do, to find some sign of Dacre or his friends. Eleanor! was on his lips to cry as the jailer opened the door of a distant room and bade him enter.

In the centre, by a table, was standing an old man, dressed in black, with a white head bent well forward upon his shoulders. It was Reynolds, no longer dressed like a servant, but disguised in a suit of broadcloth, such as was worn until recently by the oldest gentlemen. The old man bent still lower, took Geoffrey's hand and kissed it.

"Thank G.o.d!" said he, in a whisper, "dear young master, you are alive, at all events." Reynolds still used old-fashioned forms of speech.

It was a strange thing to Geoffrey to be still called young. He felt as if he had seen a century at least--the twentieth. He looked at Reynolds with a slight but decided feeling of disappointment. He had hoped for Mrs. Carey.

"Yes, Reynolds, I am alive, and glad to see you," he added, as he saw the tears in the old man's eyes. "Sit down." Geoffrey pushed a chair toward him; but the old man would as soon have thought of sitting down in the presence of the King. "And how is Ripon House?"

"Ripon House, your lordship, is much the same. I think I may succeed in letting it to one of your lordship's old tenants." Geoffrey looked up, surprised; then he remembered that by Ripon House Reynolds meant the lodge. "With your lordship's permission I can get thirty guineas a year for it," Reynolds added.

"By all means, Reynolds," said Geoffrey. "But, Reynolds, I must have no 'your lordship' any more. That is done forever. I was foolish ever to have consented to it."

"Yes, your lordship," replied Reynolds, simply. "I knew your lordship would consent, so I have brought the first quarter's rent in advance."

And the old man laid eight five-dollar gold pieces on the table.

Geoffrey grasped his hand.

"Thank you, Reynolds," said he. The old man was more embarra.s.sed than if he had kissed him.

"Your lordship--your lordship is--" Reynolds stammered, and Geoffrey interrupted him.

"None of that, remember;" he lifted a finger pleasantly. "But I asked you about Ripon House."

"The old castle (it was not half so old as the lodge) is shut up, earl,"

said he. "The American is in his own country."

"Reynolds, do you know what became of the King?"

"No, your lord--Earl Brompton."

"Or who it was that betrayed us? Some one must have carried all the particulars of the plan to Bagshaw."

The old man did not answer for a moment.

"Reynolds, have you seen Dacre?"

The question was sudden. "Does--does not your lordship know--" he faltered. Geoffrey sprang from his chair.

"They shot him."

Geoffrey sank back to his seat. The old servant walked to the window, pulling out his handkerchief. Outside was heard the measured step of the turnkey pacing to and fro.

"Reynolds, will you carry a letter for me?" said Geoffrey at last.

"Think before you answer. You are no longer in my service, you know. I can no longer pay you."

"I am always in the earl's service," Reynolds interrupted.

"Thank you, Reynolds. The letter is to Mrs. Oswald Carey. You remember her?"

Reynolds started. "Forgive me, earl--but does your--your honor know--"

The old man spoke in much trouble; Geoffrey looked up in amazement.

"Oh, forgive me, Earl Brompton--but--I once told a lie to you. That night--you remember that night when Sir John met your lordship in his room, and I said afterward there had been no one there?"

"Yes," said Geoffrey. "What then?"

"There was some one there. A lady was there. Mrs. Carey."