The Shadow of a Crime Part 78

Robbie glanced into Ralph's face; tears stood in his eyes.

Sim sat and moaned.

"My poor little Rotie," he mumbled. "My poor little lost Rotie!"

The days of her childhood had flowed back to him. She was a child once more in his memory.

"Robbie," said Ralph, "since we have been here one strange pa.s.sage has befallen me, and I believe it is real and not the effect of a disturbed fancy."

"What is it, Ralph?" said Robbie.

"The first night after we were shut up in this place, I thought in the darkness, being fully awake, that one opened the door. I turned my head, thinking it must be the gaoler. But when I looked it was Rotha.

She had a sweet smile on her dear face. It was a smile of hope and cheer. Last night, again, I was awakened by Sim crying in his sleep--the strange, shrill, tearless night-cry that freezes the blood of the listener. Then I lay an hour awake. Again I thought that one opened the door. I looked to see Rotha. It was she. I believe she was sent to us in the spirit as a messenger of peace and hope--hope of that better world which we are soon to reach."

The gaoler knocked. Robbie's time had expired. "How short these last moments seem!" said Ralph; "yet an eternity of last moments would be brief. Farewell, my lad! G.o.d bless you!"

The dalesmen shook hands. Their eyes were averted.

Robbie took his leave with many tears.

Then rose again the voices of the unseen choir within the chapel. The organ pealed out in loud flute tones that mounted like a lark, higher, higher, higher, winging its way in the clear morning air. It was the chant of a returning angel scaling heaven. Then came the long sweeps of a more solem harmony. Peace, peace! And rest! And rest!

CHAPTER L. NEXT MORNING.

Next morning at daybreak the hammering of the carpenters had ceased in the Market Place, and their lamps, that burned dim in their sockets, like lights across a misty sea, were one by one put out. Draped in black, the ghastly thing that they had built during the night stood between the turrets of the guard-house.

Already the townspeople were awake. People were hurrying to and fro.

Many were entering the houses that looked on to the market. They were eager to secure their points of vantage from which to view that morning's spectacle.

The light came slowly. It was a frosty morning. At seven o'clock a thin vapor hung in the air and waved to and fro like a veil. It blurred the face of the houses, softened their sharp outlines, and seemed at some moments to carry them away into the distance. The sun rose soft and white as an autumn moon behind a scarf of cloud.

At half past seven the Market Place was thronged. On every inch of the ground, on every balcony, in every window, over every portico, along the roofs of the houses north, south, east, and west, clinging to the chimney-stacks, hanging high up on the pyramidical turrets of the guard-house itself, astride the arms of the old cross, peering from between the battlements of the cathedral tower and the musket lancets of the castle, were crowded, huddled, piled, the spectators of that morning's tragedy.

What a motley throng! Some in yellow and red, some in black; men, women, and children lifted shoulder-high. Some with pale faces and bloodshot eyes, some with rubicund complexion and laughing lips, some bantering as if at a fair, some on the ground hailing their fellows on the roofs. What a spectacle were they in themselves!

There at the northeast of the Market Place, between Scotch Street amid English Street, were half a hundred men and boys in blouses, seated on the overhanging roof of the wooden shambles. They were shouting sorry jests at half a dozen hoydenish women who looked out of the windows of a building raised on pillars over a well, known as Carnaby's Folly.

On the roof of the guard-house stood five or six soldiers in red coats. One fellow, with a pipe between his lips, leaned over the parapet to kiss his hand to a little romping serving-wench who giggled at him from behind a curtain in a house opposite. There was an open carriage in the very heart of that throng below. Seated within it was a stately gentleman with a gray peaked beard, and dressed in black velvet cloak and doublet, having lace collar and ruffles; and side by side with him was a delicate young maiden m.u.f.fled to the throat in fur. The morning was bitterly cold, but even this frail flower of humanity had been drawn forth by the business that was now at hand.

Where is she now, and what?

A spectacle indeed, and for the eye of the mind a spectacle no less various than for the bodily organ.

Bosoms seared and foul and sick with uncleanliness. Hearts bound in the fetters of crime. Hot pa.s.sions broken loose. Discord rampant. Some that smote the breast nightly in the anguish of remorse. Some that knew not where to hide from the eye of conscience the secret sin that corroded the soul.

Lonely, utterly lonely, in this dense throng were some that shuddered and laughed by turns.

There were blameless men and women, too, drawn by curiosity and by another and stronger magnet that they knew of. How would the condemned meet their end? Would it be with craven timidity or with the intrepidity of heroes, or again with the insensibility of brutes?

Death was at hand--the inexorable, the all-powerful. How could mortal man encounter it face to face? This was the great problem then; it is the great problem now.

Two men were to be executed at eight that morning. Again and again the people turned to look at the clock. It hung by the side of the dial in the cupola of the old Town Hall. How slowly moved its tardy figures!

G.o.d forgive them, there were those in that crowd who would have helped forward, if they could, its pa.s.sionless pulse. And a few minutes more or fewer in this world or the next, of what account were they in the great audit of men who were doomed to die?

In a room of the guard-house the condemned sat together. They had been brought from the castle in the night.

"We shall fight our last battle to-day," said Ralph. "The enemy will take our camp, but, G.o.d willing, we shall have the victory. Never lower the flag. Cheer up! Keep a brave heart! A few swift minutes more, and all will be well!"

Sim was crouching at a fire, wringing his lean hands or clutching his long gray hair.

"Ralph, it shall never be! G.o.d will never see it done!"

"Put away the thought," replied Ralph. "G.o.d has brought us here."

Sim jumped to his feet and cried, "Then I will never witness it-- never!"

Ralph put his hand gently but firmly on Sim's arm and drew him back to his seat.

The sound of singing came from without, mingled with laughter and jeers.

"Hark!" cried Sim, "hearken to them again; nay, hark!"

Sim put his head aside and listened. Then, leaping up, he shouted yet more wildly than before, "No, no! never, never!"

Ralph took him once more by the arm, and the poor worn creature sank into his seat with a low wail.

There was commotion in the corridors and chief chamber of the guard-house.

"Where is the sheriff?" was the question asked on every hand.

w.i.l.l.y Ray was there, and had been for hours closeted with the sheriff's a.s.sistant.

"Here is the confession duly signed," he said for the fiftieth time, as he walked nervously to and fro.

"No use, none. Without the King's pardon or reprieve, the thing must be done."

"But the witnesses will be with us within the hour. Put it back but one little hour and they must be here."

"Impossible. We hold the King's warrant, and must obey it to the letter."

"G.o.d in heaven! Do you not see yourself, do you not think that if this thing is done, two innocent men will die?"