"AS THE NIGHT PASSETH AWAY."
Still the days passed and I meditated on whether each as it came was
to be my last. Wondered as every morning I watched the opening of the
heavily clamped door, if, instead of my loaf and jar of water, that
deaf and dumb jailer had come to summon me forth to my fate; and
wondered again at what might cause the delay, since morning after
morning his behaviour was ever the same, the bread always placed on
the rough stone shelf that ran around the room, with the water by its
side. That, and nothing more.
That Juana had gone by now with the Alcáide, I thought must surely be
the case. I had taken since that night when last we met--and parted
forever--to scoring with a nail a mark daily on the whitewashed but
filthy wall, so that thereby I might keep some count of the days as
they went by, and now there were six of such marks there. Surely she
was gone--surely, too, I thought, Gramont's escape had taken place by
now--yet they came not for me. What did it mean?
In my agony at the thought that by now, perhaps, Juana was dead by her
own hand--I pictured her to myself using the small poniard I knew she
carried, or the equally small pistol of which she was possessed--I
groaned--nay! almost shrieked sometimes at my horrible picturings of
her beautiful form and face stiff with death; in that agony I came to
pray at last to God that the day or night which was passing over me
might be my last. That He, in His supreme mercy, would see fit to
inspire them with the resolve to make an end of me. Prayed that, by
the time those never ceasing clocks without had struck once more the
hour they were striking as I made my supplication, my soul might have
left my body--that that body might be no more than a heap of ashes.
For I could bear my existence no longer. My thoughts--of my beauteous
mistress lying in death's hideous grasp, of my poor old father, and
the misery which would be his--not at my falling like a soldier, but
at the mystery which would forever enshroud my death--were more than I
could support.
But still another day passed--the seventh--and still again at daybreak
there was no summons to me to go forth and meet my fate. Yet, since by
the increased pealings of the bells, and by the ringing of some
sweeter sounding ones than those usually heard, I knew it was the
Sabbath I wondered that my doom had not come. For the Sabbath was, I
remembered, the day of execution in this land, because 'tis always a
fête day, when the people are at leisure to be excited and amused.
That day passed, however, the night drew on, the dark had come; and
still I was alive; had before me another night of horror and of mortal
agony unspeakable to endure.
From my ghastly, silent warder I had tried more than once to obtain
some hint, or information, as to when I might expect my sentence to be
carried out--if I could have learnt that, I should have known also
that Gramont was gone--was free--that, my God! Juana was dead, or near
to her death. But as well might I have asked the walls of this cell in
which I was, for a word or sign. I wrote on those walls with the nail
a question--_the_ question: "When am I to die?" and he stared as
stolidly at it as though he were no more able to see than to speak or
hear. Thinking, perhaps, that he could not read, I made sighs upon my
fingers to him, at all of which he shook his head, though what he
meant to convey I know not. Yet, had my mind not been so distraught, I
should have remembered that, perhaps, if he could not understand the
one neither could he the other. Reflecting later on, however, I felt
sure that he was able to do both--it was the only way in which one so
afflicted as he was could have been made to understand his orders;
and, still later, I knew that such was the case. And now, on that
Sunday, as the horrid gloom of the winter night enveloped all the
country around, while up from the pastures and fields there rose a
vapour or fog, I took a terrible resolve, driven thereto by the misery
of my reflections.
I determined that, if my death by the hands of the executioner came
not to-morrow, I would take my own life. I could endure no longer,
could think no more upon Juana as a dead woman, as one slain by her
own hand.
"Oh! Juana, Juana," I wailed more than once, "my lost Juana." Then
added, with fierceness, "Yet--no matter. We meet to-morrow at the
latest."
Though they had taken my weapons from me ere they brought me here,
there was enough of opportunity to my hand for accomplishing my
purpose. There was the nail I had found--my sash, or belt--my
cravat--either would serve for my purpose if I was brave enough to
accomplish it.
"Brave enough--brave enough!" I found myself repeating. "Brave enough!
Or," I whispered, "cowardly enough? Which is it? Which?"
And, as still the long hours of the night went on, and I lay on my
pallet staring up into the darkness, listening to the hours told over
and over again by the bells, until my soul sickened at their sound,
watching a glint of the moon's rays on the metal roof of the
cathedral, I answered my own question, reasoned with myself that
self-destruction was the coward's, not the brave man's, act, and
resolved at last to cast that awful resolution behind me, to endure
and meet my fate like a man, as a gallant soldier should.
And so, eased--I scarce knew why--by my determination, I fell at last
into a tranquil sleep, and dreamt that I was back in England, walking
in my father's old flower garden in the Weald, with my love, Juana, by
my side.
Some unaccustomed noise awoke me from that fair dream--something to
which I was not used in the long silence of the nights--some sound
which, as I raised myself on my elbow and peered around the cell, I
could not understand; for in that cell there was no other presence, as
for a moment I had imagined when I sprang up, half asleep and half
awake; the moon, which had now overtopped the cathedral towers, showed
that plain enough. Deep scurrying clouds were passing beneath her face
swiftly--obscuring sometimes her brilliancy for some moments, 'tis
true; yet, as she emerged now and again from them, her flood poured in
and lit up the whole chamber. There was no one in it but myself!
What, therefore, was the sound I had heard? Stealthy footsteps
outside?--those of my doomsmen, perhaps!--or was it some silent
executioner about to steal in on me in the night, thereby to prevent
the publicity of a death in the market place--a death which might by
chance be reported to my own countrymen afar off, and like enough, if
the war rolled down this way, be bitterly avenged? Was that it?
Again beneath the moon there passed heavy clouds, extinguishing her
light so that for a moment my prison was once more steeped in
darkness--I found myself thinking that there would be snow ere
morning; that, if that morning brought my death, 'twould be a
bleak and wintry scene which the flames of the _braséro_ would
illuminate!--then through a break in those clouds a ray stole forth, a
ray that glinted in through the iron bars of the window grate, across
the stone-flagged floor, and onward to the heavily clamped door, then
was arrested there--one spot shining out amidst those beams with the
brightness and the dazzle of a diamond.
What was that thing, that spot on which the ray glinted so?
Creeping toward the door, as silently and lightly as I could go, I
reached it, put out my finger and touched that gleaming spark, and
found that it proceeded from the extremity of a key which was in the
lock and which now protruded by a trifle into the room. It was the
insertion of that key which had awakened me.
Yet--what did it mean, and why, when once in the lock, was it not
turned; why not followed by the entry of one or more persons into the
cell?
Were they coming back later to fall on me? Had the key been first
inserted by some who had withdrawn directly afterward, so that, if the
noise awakened me, I should sleep again shortly, when they could
return to finish their work? This must be the true explanation--I was
to be executed in the depth of the night when all were asleep in the
old town, when no cry of anguish, no scream from one being done to
death, would be heard.
"Yet," I thought to myself, "these precautions are useless. As well
here as in the flames to-morrow. What matters where or how?"
At that moment my ears caught a sound--something was passing down the
stone passage outside--something that was not the heavy tread of the
jailer. Instead, a muffled sound--yet perceptible to me. A shuffling,
scraping sound as though one who was shoeless was dragging each foot
carefully along after the other.
Then I saw the end of the key which projected through the lock turn--I
saw it sparkle in the moon's rays--once it grated harshly, creaked!
And, slowly, a moment afterward the door opened inward, leaving the
passage outside dark and cavernous. He who had so opened it with one
hand carried no light in the other.
Stepping back from it, watching what should happen next--yet, I swear
before heaven, with no fear at my heart--why should there be, since I
desired to die and join my love? yet still with that heart beating
loudly from excitement--I saw the blackness of the doorway blurred
with a deeper intensity by a form standing outside it. I saw the
moonbeams reach that form, lighting it up for a moment and glistening
on the eyes of it. I saw before me the great figure and heavy, stolid
face of my dumb, impenetrable jailer. The mute! Also observed that
under his arm he carried something long--a sword.
His eyes upon me, he advanced into the cell--I seeing that his feet
were bare except for thick, coarse stockings which he wore--yet making
no motion as though to attack me, his action not such as would have
rendered a more desperate man than myself resolved to defend himself.
Then slowly, while I, my back against the farthest wall, stared at him
more in wonder than in awe, he raised the arm under which the sword
was not borne, and motioned to me with his finger, crooked somewhat,
to follow him, pointing a moment afterward down the dark passage.
"So," I whispered to myself, drawing a deep breath as I did so, "the
hour has come. He bids me follow him. I understand--it is to be done
before daylight. Well, I am ready. God give me strength and pardon
me."
Then I made ready to follow him, while he, observing this, prepared to
lead the way.
All was profound and dark outside that cell when once we were in the
passage--so dark that, ere I had barely reached it, I felt his great
hand upon my arm, felt him clutching my sleeves between his fingers.
And thus together we went on, he silent as a corpse, except for his
breathing, which sometimes I heard--sometimes, too, felt upon my
cheek--I going to my death.
One thing I noticed, even in these moments of intensity. We went the
opposite way from that by which I had first been brought--the opposite
way from which his footsteps, when he had been shod, had invariably
sounded; also the opposite way from which my love had come to bid me a
last farewell, and had been carried insensible after our parting.
Whither was I being taken?
The end of the corridor was reached in the darkness; I knew that by
the fact that his grasp tightened perceptibly on my sleeve; also that,
by a pressure of his fingers on it, he was turning me somewhat to the
left; likewise, that grasp put a degree of curb upon me; a moment
later seemed to signify that I was to go on again. And it felt to me
that, in a way, I was being supported--held up.
Another instant, and I knew why. We were descending stairs--on the way
down, doubtless, to some exit that should lead to my place of doom!
Still I resisted not. One path to oblivion served as well as another.
By the manner in which the steps were cut I knew at once that we were
in some tower, and that the stairs were circular; also my hand, which
I kept against the side, told me the same thing. Moreover, there were
_[oe]illets_, or arrow slits, in the wall, through which I could see
the moon shining on another wall, which seemed to be some fifty paces
off--probably, I thought, the opposite wall of some courtyard built
into, or by the side of, the huge ramparts.
Of sound there was none, no noise of any kind, no tramp of sentry to
be heard, although I knew well enough that on the ramparts themselves
soldiers were kept constantly on guard. Nothing; all as still as
death, the death to which I was being led.
At last the stairs ended. My feet told me we were on the level now, a
level into which they sank somewhat as I took step after step, whereby
I judged that we were walking on sand, and wondered in what part of
that prison, of those huge ramparts, we might be. Surely, I thought,
some lowermost vault or dungeon, perhaps beneath the foundations of
the structure, beneath the rocks between which the river flowed.
"My God!" I murmured to myself, "is this my fate? To be immured
forever in some dark dungeon in the bowels of the earth, where neither
light, nor sound--never hope--can come again. Better death at once,
swift and merciful, than this. Far better."
Yet almost it seemed to my now frighted heart that this alone could be
the case.
The air reeked and was clammy, as though with long confinement in this
underground place, and by remaining ever unrefreshed from without by
heaven's pure breezes was mawkish and sickly as the breath of a
charnel house--perhaps 'twas one!--perhaps those who died here were
left to fester and moulder away till their corpses turned to skeletons
and their skeletons to dust; to die here, where no cry for help could
issue forth, no more than any sound except a muffled one could
penetrate, as I knew at this moment, for far above I heard a deep boom
that seemed like the muffled roar of a cannon--a sound that was in
truth the eternal bell of the cathedral telling the hour; also another
broke on my ear--a swift, rushing noise, yet deadened, too--the sound,
I thought, of the Minho passing near.
Then, all at once--as I knew that the sickly, reeking air would choke
me, felt sure that ere many paces more had been traversed I must reel
and fall upon that sanded floor--there blew upon my face a gust of
air--oh! God! it was as though I had changed a monumental vault all
full of rankling dead for some pure forest through which fresh breezes
swept--far down toward where my dimmed eyes gazed I saw a glimmer of
something that looked like the light of a coming dawn.
And I thanked heaven that, at least, these horrid vaults were not to
be my prison or my grave; that, let whatever might befall me, my
punishment was not to be dealt out here.
And ever still as I went on that stricken man walked by my side, held
my arm with his hand, and directed the way toward the sombre light
that gleamed afar.