The Light of Scarthey Part 58

He shot a glance of fury at the large flabby countenance of the righteous arbiter of his doom, whilst his hands closed themselves with an involuntary gesture of menace. Then the tide of anger ebbed; a contemptuous smile parted his lips. And, bowing with an air of light mockery to the court, he turned, erect and easy, to follow his turnkey out of the hall.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

IN LANCASTER CASTLE

All that his friendship for the condemned man, all that his love and pity for his almost distracted wife, could suggest, Sir Adrian Landale had done in London to try and avert Captain Jack's doom. But it was in vain. There also old stories of his peculiar tenets and of his well-known disaffection to the established order of things, had been raked up against him. Unfavourable comparisons had been drawn between him and Rupert; surprise and disapproval had been expressed at the unnatural brother, who was displaying such energy to obtain mercy for his brother's murderer. Finally an influential personage, whom Sir Adrian had contrived to interest in the case, in memory of an old friendship with his father, informed the baronet that his persistence was viewed with extreme disfavour in the most exalted quarter, and that His Royal Highness himself had p.r.o.nounced that Captain Jack was a d.a.m.ned rascal and richly deserved his fate.

From the beginning, indeed, the suppliant had been without hope.

Though he was resolved to leave no stone unturned, no possibility untried in the effort to save his friend, well-nigh the saddest part of the whole business to him was the realisation that the prisoner had not only broken those custom laws (of which Sir Adrian himself disapproved as arbitrary) but also, as he had been warned, those other laws upon which depend all social order and security; broken them so grievously that, whatever excuses the philosopher might find in heat of blood and stress of circ.u.mstances, given laws at all, the sentence could not be p.r.o.nounced otherwise than just.

And so, with an aching heart and a wider horror than ever of the cruel world of men, and of the injustices to which legal justice leads, Sir Adrian left London to hurry back to Lancaster with all the speed that post-horses could muster. The time was now drawing short. As the traveller rattled along the stony streets of the old Palatine town, and saw the dawn breaking, exquisite, primrose tinted, faintly beautiful as some dream vision over the distant hills, his soul was gripped with an iron clutch. In three more days the gallant heart, breaking in the confinement of the prison yonder, would have throbbed its last! And he longed, with a desire futile but none the less intense, that, according to that doctrine of Vicarious Atonement preached to humanity by the greatest of all examples, he could lay down his own weary and disappointed life for his friend.

Having breakfasted at the hotel, less for the necessity of food than for the sake of pa.s.sing the time till the morning should have worn to sufficient maturity, he sought on foot the quiet lodgings where he had installed his wife under Rene's guard before starting on his futile quest. Early as the hour still was--seven had but just rung merrily from some chiming church clock--the faithful fellow was already astir and prompt to answer his master's summons.

One look at the latter's countenance was sufficient to confirm the servant's own worst forebodings.

"Ah, your honour, and is it indeed so. _Ces gredins!_ and will they hang so good a gentleman?"

"Hush, Renny, not so loud," cried the other with an anxious look at the folding-doors, that divided the little sitting-room from the inner apartment.

"Oh, his honour need have no fear. My Lady is gone, gone to Pulwick.

His honour need not disquiet himself; he can well imagine that I would not allow her to go alone--when I had been given a trust so precious.

No, no, the old lady, Miss O'Donoghue, your honour's aunt and her ladyship's, she has heard of all these terrible doings, and came to Lancaster to be with My Lady. _Ma foi_, I know not if she be just the person one would have chosen, for she has scolded a great deal, and is as agitated--as agitated as a young rabbit. But, after all, she loves the poor young lady with all her heart, and I think she has roused her a little. His honour knows," said the man, flushing to the roots of his hair, whilst he shifted nervously from one foot to another, "that My Lady has been much upset about the poor captain. After his honour went, she would sit, staring out of the window there, just where the street turns up to the castle, and neither ate nor slept, nor talked to speak of. Of course, as I told the old Demoiselle, I knew it was because My Lady had taken it to heart about the signal that she made--thinking to save him--and which only brought the gabelous on him, that his honour's infernal brother (G.o.d forgive me, and have mercy on his soul) had set to watch. And My Lady liked to see me coming and going, for she sent me every day to the prison; she did not once go herself."

Sir Adrian drew a long breath. With the most delicate intuition of his master's thoughts, Rene avoided even a glance at him while he continued in as natural a tone as he could a.s.sume:

"But the day after the old miss came, she, My Lady, told me to find out if he would see her. He said no; but that the only kindness any one could do him now would be to bring him Mademoiselle Madeleine, and let him speak to her once more. And My Lady, when she heard this, she started off that day with the old one to fetch Mademoiselle herself at Pulwick. And she left me behind, your honour, for I had a little plan there."

Rene faltered and a crestfallen look crept upon his face.

Sir Adrian remembered how before his departure for London his servant had cheerily a.s.sured him that Mr. the Captain would be safe out of the country long before he returned, "faith of him, Rene, who had already been in two prisons, and knew their ways, and how to contrive an escape, as his honour well knew." A sad smile parted his lips.

"And so you failed, Renny," he said.

"Ah, your honour, those satanic English turnkeys! With a Frenchman, the job had been done; but it is a bad thing to be in prison in England. His honour can vouch I have some brains. I had made plans--a hundred plans, but there was ever something that did not work. The captain, he too, was eager, as your honour can imagine. My faith, we thought and we thought, and we schemed and contrived, and in the end, there was only one thing to complete our plot--to bribe the jailer.

Would your honour believe--it was only that one little difficulty. My Lady had given me a hundred guineas, I had enough money, your honour sees. But the man--I had smoked with him, drunk with him, ay, and made him drunk too, and I thought all was going well, but when I hinted to him what we wanted--Ah! he was a brute--I tell you I had hard work to escape the prison myself, and only for my leaving him with some of the money, I should now be pinched there too. I hardly dare show my face in the place any more. And my poor Lady builds on the hope, and Mr.

the Captain--I had to tell him, he took it like an angel. Ah, the poor gentleman! He looked at me so brave and kind! 'I am as grateful, my poor friend, as if you had done it,' said he, 'and perhaps it is all for the best.' All for the best--ah, your honour!"

Rene fairly broke down here, and wept on his sleeve. But Sir Adrian's eyes, circled and worn with watching and thought, shone dry with a far deeper grief, as, a few moments later, he pa.s.sed along the street towards the walls of the castle.

There was in those days little difficulty in obtaining admission to a condemned prisoner; and, in the rear of the red-headed, good-tempered looking jailer--the same, he surmised, whose sternness in duty had baffled the Breton's simple wiles--he stepped out of the sweet morning sunshine into the long stone pa.s.sages. The first tainted breath of the prison brought a chill to his blood and oppression to his lungs, and the gloom of the place enveloped him like a pall.

With a rattle of keys a door dismally creaking on its hinges was swung back at last, and the visitor was ushered into the narrow cell, dark for all its whitewashed walls, where Captain Jack was spending his last hours upon earth. The hinges groaned again, the door slammed, and the key once more grated in the lock. Sir Adrian was alone with his friend.

For a moment there was silence; the contraction of the elder man's heart had brought a giddiness to his brain, a dimness of his eyes, through which he was ill able to distinguish anything.

But then there was a clank of fetters--ah, what a sound to connect with lucky Jack Smith, the gayest, freest, and most buoyant of men!

And a voice cried:

"Adrian!"

It had a joyful ring, well-nigh the old hearty tones. It struck Adrian to the soul.

He could have borne, he thought, to find his friend a broken man, changed out of all recognition, crushed by his misfortunes; but to find him the same, a little pale, indeed, and thinner, with a steady earnestness in the sea-blue eyes instead of the old dancing-light, but still gallant and undaunted, still radiating vigorous life and breezy energy by his very presence, this was a cruelty of fate which seemed unendurable.

"I declare," the prisoner had continued, "I declare I thought you were only the incorruptible jailer taking his morning survey. They are desperately careful of me, Adrian, and watch me with maternal solicitude lest I should strangle myself with my chains, these pretty bracelets which I have had to wear ever since poor Renny was found out, or swallow my pillow--dash me! it's small enough--and spoil the pretty show for Sat.u.r.day! Why, why, Adrian, old friend?"

There was a sudden change of tone to the warmest concern, for Sir Adrian had staggered and would have fallen had not Jack, as nimbly as his fetters would allow him, sprung to support him and conduct him to the bed.

A shaft of light struck through the tiny barred window on to the elder man's face, and showed it against the surrounding darkness deathly white and wet with anguish.

"I have done all I could, Hubert," he murmured, in an extinguished voice, "but to no avail."

"Ay, man, I guessed as much. But never fret for me, Adrian: I have looked death too often in the face to play the poltroon, now. I don't say it's the end I should have chosen for myself; but it is inevitable, and there is nothing, as you know, my friend, that a man cannot face if he knows it must be faced."

The grasp of his strong warm hands, all manacled as they were, upon the other's nerveless clammy fingers, sent, more than the words, something of the speaker's own courage to his friend's wrung heart.

And yet that very courage was an added torment.

That from a community, so full of evil, feeble, harmful wretches, this n.o.ble soul, no matter how it had sinned, should be banished at the bidding of justice--what mockery of right was this? The world was out of joint indeed. He groaned aloud.

"Nay, I'll have none of it," cried Jack. "Our last talk, Adrian, must not be spoiled by futile regrets. Yes, our last talk it is to be, for"--the prisoner's face became transfigured with a tenderness so exquisite that Adrian stared at its beauty, amazed--"I have begged her, Madeleine, to come and see me once more. I think she can be here to-day, at latest to-morrow. And after that I would not see any of those I love again, that I may fit myself to meet my G.o.d."

He spoke with the utmost simplicity. Adrian bowed his head silently.

Then averting his eyes, he said: "My wife has gone to Pulwick to fetch her."

Captain Jack crimsoned. "That is kind," he answered, in a low voice; and, after a pause, pursued: "I hope you do not think it wrong of me to wish to see her. But you may trust me. I shall distress her as little as is possible in the circ.u.mstances. It is not, as you can fancy"--his face flushed again as he spoke--"to indulge in a pathetic parting scene, or beg from her sweet lips one last kiss--that would be too grossly selfish, and however this poor body of mine, so soon to be carrion, may yearn to hold her once more closely, these lips, so soon to touch death, shall touch hers no more. I have risen so far above this earthliness, that in so many hours I am to shake off for ever, that I can trust myself to meet her soul to soul. She must believe me now, and I would tell her, Adrian, that my deceit was not premeditated, and that the man she once honoured with her love is not the base wretch she deems. I think it may comfort her. If she does mourn for me at all--she has so proud a spirit, my princess, as I used to call her--it may comfort her to know that I was not all unworthy of the love she once gave me, of the tears she may yet give to its memory and mine."

Sir Adrian pressed his hand, but again could not speak, and Captain Jack went on:

"You will give her a happy home, will you not, till she has one of her own? You and your old dragon of an aunt, whose bark is so much worse than her bite, will watch and guard her. Ah, poor old lady! she is one of those that will not weep for Jack Smith, eh, Adrian? Well, well, I have had a happy life, barring one or two hard raps of fate, and when only I have seen Madeleine once more, I'll feel all taut for the port, though the pa.s.sage there be a rough one."

Sir Adrian turned his gaze with astonishment upon him. The sailor read his thoughts:

"Don't think," he said, while a sudden shadow crossed his face, "don't think that I don't realise my position, that I have not had to fight my battle. In the beginning I had hopes; never in the success of your mission, but, absurd as it was, in Renny's scheme. The good fellow's own hopefulness was infectious, I believe. And when that fell through--well then, man, I just had to make up my mind to what was to be. It was a battle, as I told you. I have been in danger of death many a time upon the brave old _St. Nicholas_, and my _Cormorant_--death from the salt sea, from musket ball and cannon shot, fearful deaths of mangling and hacking. But death on the gallows, the shameful death of the criminal; to be hung; to be executed--Pah! Ay! it was a battle--two nights and one day I fought it. And I tell you, 'tis a hard thing to bring the living flesh and the leaping blood to submit to such as that. At first I thought indeed, it could not be borne, and I must reckon upon your or Renny's friendship for a secret speed. I should have had the pluck to starve myself if need be, only I am so d.a.m.ned strong and healthy, I feared it could not have been managed in the time. At any rate, I could have dashed my brains out against the wall--but I see it otherwise now. The prison chaplain, a good man, Adrian, has made me realise that it would be cowardly, that I should accept my sentence as atonement, as deserved--I _have_ deserved to die."

It had been Sir Adrian's own thought; but he broke out now in inarticulate protest. It seemed too gross, too monstrous.

"Yes, Adrian, I have. You warned me, good friend, in your peaceful room--ah, how long ago it seems now! that night, when all that could make life beautiful lay to my hand for the taking. Oh, man, why did I not heed you! You warned me: he who breaks one law will end by breaking many. You were right. See the harm I wreaked--those poor fellows, who were but doing their duty bravely, whose lives I sacrificed without remorse! Your brother, too, whose soul, with the most deliberate vindictiveness, I sent before its Maker, without an instant's preparation! A guilty soul it was; for he hounded me down, one would almost think for the sport of it.... G.o.d! when I think that, but for him, for his wanton interference--but there, the devils are loose again! I must not think on him. Do I not deserve my fate, if the Bible law be right? 'He who sheds blood, his blood shall be shed.'

Never was sentence more just. I have sinned, I have repented; I am now ready to atone. I believe the sacrifice will be accepted."

He laid his hand, for a minute, upon the Bible on the table, with a significant gesture.

But Sir Adrian, the philosopher, though he could find no words to impeach the logic of his friend's reasoning, and was all astir with admiration for a resignation as perfect as either Christian or Stoic could desire, found his soul rising in tumultuous rebellion against the hideous decree. The longing that had beset him in the dawn, now seized upon him with a new pa.s.sion, and the cry escaped his lips almost unwittingly: