A FLIGHT FOR FREEDOM
Gentleman Geff had heard every word spoken by the doctor and the rector.
He dared not wait the inspection of the skilled London specialist, the
great court physician, who would be sure to detect the deception so
successfully imposed upon the simple country practitioner.
The eminent Sir Ichabod Ingoldsby might arrive the next morning. Then
he—Montgomery—must escape this very day or night, let the weather be
what it might. Any risk rather than the certainty of detection and of
all the horrors that must follow.
And the weather was simply awful—“Ragnarok”—“the darkness of the gods.”
The snow had fallen all the preceding night and all that day. Although
there were four windows in the sick-room, and all the shutters were
open, yet such was the obscurity that the lamps had been lighted.
Gentleman Geff was not alone until evening, when Longman, having served
an excellent supper to his charge and left the latter comfortably laid
back on his pillow, in what the nurse supposed to be a safe and sound
sleep, withdrew from the room to take his meal and refresh himself by a
walk up and down the covered front piazza, and no one took the watcher’s
place.
This was Gentleman Geff’s golden opportunity, not to be lost.
He got out of bed on tiptoes and went and bolted the door.
Then he went to the closet to search for clothes to put on, if perchance
he might find any.
He found his own suit that had been taken off him on the night he was
brought to the rectory and put to bed, and in the pocket of his coat his
_portemonnaie_, well filled as it had been.
They were all there, even to his boots, his socks, his ulster and his
hat. He began to dress himself in great haste, but suddenly grew very
tired, for though not nearly so weak as he pretended to be, he was not
strong.
He went to the buffet, where he knew Longman kept his wine and medicine,
and found a bottle of good old port. He unstopped it, put the mouth to
his lips and took a long draught, then a deep breath and another long
draught, repeated the process, and—thought he would take the bottle
along with him in his flight.
He finished dressing himself without further fatigue, put the bottle of
wine in the pocket of his ulster, and went to the window overlooking the
back garden of the rectory.
Escape from the room was safe and easy, as this was the parlor chamber
on the ground floor of the house.
The window opened, but with a sudden thought he turned back and put out
the lights and locked as well as bolted the door. These precautions he
thought were necessary to delay the discovery of his flight.
Then he went back to the window and stepped through it, closing it
behind him.
Where now?
To the Chuxton railway station and on to London, to lose himself in that
great wilderness of human beings until he could take ship to some
foreign country with which there was no extradition treaty.
But what a night it was! Dark as pitch but for the spectral light of the
snow. The snow was still falling heavily as ever, but the wind had risen
in mighty strength and was driving not only the falling but the fallen
snow into drifts.
If he had but a lantern! But that was an impossible convenience to him.
He drew the bottle from his pocket, took another long draught from it,
replaced it, and set out through “night and storm and darkness” and
bitterest cold on his flight for life.
More by instinct or accident than by light and knowledge he found his
way around the back wall of the rectory garden to that country road
which ran in front of the church, the rectory and Haymore Park, and
crossed the highroad at about a mile distant.
The snow fell thicker and faster, the wind rose higher and stronger, and
the night grew colder and darker.
He plunged onward through the deepening snow, sometimes almost smothered
in the drifts, and requiring all the strength he could muster to
struggle out of them.
He lost his way, as it was inevitable he should. Even had it been day,
instead of the darkest night that ever fell upon the earth, the highroad
could not have been distinguished from the meadows except by certain
tall landmarks. Now it was impossible to distinguish it.
Gentleman Geff knew that he had lost his way, had hopelessly lost it,
yet he floundered on through the black chaos on the chance of coming to
some place where he could find shelter from the bitter cold, the beating
wind, the bottomless drifts and the tempest of driving snow that seemed
to be turned to a shower of ice spikes and stung like the sting of
wasps.
On and on he floundered and struggled, not daring to stop, for to stop
would be to die.
Again and again he applied himself to his bottle until it was empty.
Then he let it fall, for indeed his numbed hands could scarcely hold it.
He grew weaker and weaker; his limbs seemed too heavy to lift,
especially through deep snow; his brain grew dizzy, his mind confused.
He tried to keep his senses and his feet; he felt that if he sank to the
ground it must be into his grave.
At length the crisis came; his brain reeled, his limbs gave way, he lost
consciousness and fell to the earth.
Meanwhile, at the rectory, Longman took his supper with his mother in
their warm, bright sitting-room adjoining the kitchen, everything around
them looking so much more comfortable in contrast to the storm raging
without.
“I pity any poor wayfarer abroad to-night,” said Elspeth as she took the
steaming coffee pot from the hob of the glowing grate and set it on the
table, little guessing that the poor wretch they had been taking care of
for two months was just setting out to brave it at its worst.
“Oh, this is bad enough, but it is nothing at all to the awful storms
among the Sierra Nevadas,” said Longman as he sat down to the table and
took the cup of coffee his mother had poured out for him.
And on her expressing her surprise and wonder, he began to entertain her
with marrow-freezing stories of overwhelmed trains of emigrant wagons
and buried villages of settlers among the snow mountains.
This delayed him at the supper table so much longer than usual that he
had but little time to take his “constitutional” on the covered front
piazza.
So after a turn or two up and down he went into the house and up to the
door of the sick-room.
He turned the knob and pushed the door, but found it was locked within.
“What whim is this, I wonder?” he said. “I hope the London doctor will
order the beast to an idiot asylum. I suppose they wouldn’t take him in
with the apes at the Zoo. Captain! Capt. Montgomery!” he exclaimed,
rapping loudly.
Not a sound from within.
Then he went around to the back piazza and looked through the windows.
All as dark as pitch in the room.
“What’s up now, I wonder?” he asked himself, and then went back to the
door and tried once more by rapping and calling to bring some response
from the room.
But now the noise reached the rector, who was seated at his desk in his
study writing his sermon.
He laid down his pen and came into the hall, where he found Longman
still hammering and calling.
“What is the matter now, Longman?” inquired the rector.
“This door is fastened from within, sir, and I can neither get into the
room nor make him hear me,” replied the man.
Of course, unreasonable as it was to try the experiment in which the
giant had failed, the rector said:
“Let me try!”
Longman gave way.
The rector rapped a little cannonade upon the door and shouted:
“Capt. Montgomery!”
He might as well have shouted:
“Jupiter Tonnerres!” to the snowstorm for any good effect.
“Shall I burst the door open, sir?” inquired Longman.
“No.”
“I wonder what the fellow is up to now!” said Longman.
“Heaven knows!” sighed the rector.
“Will I break the door open, sir?” again asked Longman.
“No, you may bring me a common table knife with the thinnest blade you
can find, and come with me to the back piazza.”
They left the door, and a few minutes later met under the very window by
which the fugitive had made his escape, after re-closing the shutters
that fastened with a spring catch behind him.
“Now with this knife I know how to loosen the catches,” said the rector;
and he laid the blade of the knife flat on the stone sill, slipped it
under the catch, and so opened the shutters. Then he slipped the knife
between the upper and lower sash of the window and turned the button and
so raised the sash.
“That is a very badly secured window in case of burglars,” remarked
Longman.
“Yes, but you see there are no burglars around Haymore. However, I do
intend to have a bolt put on these shutters,” said the rector, and he
stepped through the window into the room, closely followed by Longman.
All was dark as pitch but for the dull glow of the coal fire in the
grate.
They knew it was utterly useless to call, yet both at the same moment
cried out:
“Capt. Montgomery! Where are you?”
No answer came.
Longman took a match from the safe on the mantelpiece, kindled it at the
fire and lighted the astral.
The room was illuminated in an instant, and every nook and cranny
clearly visible. Yet no sign of the missing man. Longman hastened to the
bed, from which he drew the curtains. It was vacant.
“He has run away, sir. The fraud, who pretended to be so helpless that
he couldn’t hold a glass to his lips, has been playing it on us all this
time, as I suspected him of doing all along, and now he has run away!”
said Longman.
“Oh, I think not. Why should he deceive us? Why should he run off? No
one was going to harm him,” said the rector, still peering around the
room as if he expected to find Gentleman Geff in some nook or corner.
“He mightn’t have felt so sure of that, sir. A guilty conscience, you
know.”
“I cannot think but what he has gone off in a fit of violent mania.”
“Then, in that case, he would have gone in his night clothes, just as he
jumped out of bed; but here are the empty shelves and pegs, with every
article of his wearing apparel gone,” said Longman, coming out of the
closet which he had been examining. “And why should he take pains to
lock and bolt the door, and put out the light so as to retard the
discovery of his flight as long as possible?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Lunatics are well known to be very cunning. But,
Longman, he must be instantly followed and found, if possible. Oh,
heavens! Think of the man being out on such a night as this! He will
surely perish,” said the rector. And he hurriedly unfastened the door,
rushed out into the passage, took his storm cloak from the rack and his
hat from its peg, and while he nervously prepared himself to brave the
tempest he called out again to the hunter:
“Longman! For Heaven’s sake get on your coat and find a lantern and come
with me. There is no one but you and me to go in search of this wretched
man, whom we must not leave to perish in the snow.”
Almost as soon as the rector had ceased to speak, Longman was by his
side, prepared for the expedition.
“He must have escaped by that back window, which is the only one that
will close with springs. We must search the road leading for the back
gate of the garden. Come,” said the rector, going before with the
lighted lantern, which he had taken from the hand of Longman.
They issued through the rear door, passed through the garden and out of
the rear gate.
Holding the lantern near the ground the rector moved slowly and
carefully through the white chaos.
The searchers had not groped many yards from the rectory gate when Mr.
Campbell saw something black upon the white ground.
He stooped to examine it, and cried out:
“Here he is, Longman; but whether dear or alive, poor wretch, I do not
know. Come and help me to lift him.”
“He has not been lying here five minutes, or he would be covered with
snow. So he may not be dead.”
Yes, they had found the body of Gentleman Geff within fifty yards of the
rectory wall.
Through the dark night and blinding snow and distracting wind he had
lost his reckoning and wandered in a circle until he had fallen down
where they found him.
They lifted him up and bore him into the rectory to his own room,
undressed him, wrapped him in blankets, and put him to bed.
He was in the deep sleep that precedes death by freezing. He only
partially awoke while they were working over him; but he did not speak.
They gave him warm spiced brandy and water, which he swallowed
mechanically.
All night long they watched and worked over him.
In the morning, when James Campbell left the sick-room to make his
toilet before going to breakfast, he left Gentleman Geff in what seemed
a good sleep.
But, while he sat at table explaining to his wife and daughter why he
had been out of his room all night, Longman suddenly burst in upon them
and said:
“Come in, for Heaven’s sake! He is taken with a hemorrhage that I think
will carry him off!”
“Longman, run and fetch Dr. Hobbs. Mrs. Campbell and myself will attend
to Montgomery.”
The hunter fled out of the front door to fetch the physician, while Mr.
and Mrs. Campbell rushed to the help of the sufferer.
It was an appalling spectacle!
The blood driven by the freezing cold to the lungs had congested there,
and notwithstanding all the means that had been taken to restore his
consciousness and save his life, though these means had been thus far
successful, yet the congestion of the lungs had increased until it burst
an artery and the hemorrhage followed. It was not fatal all at once, for
Mr. and Mrs. Campbell called all their skill and experience into service
and succeeded in stopping the flow before the arrival of the doctor.
When the latter came to the bedside of the patient he found him laid
back on his bed, as pale as death, as weak as a new-born infant, and
scarcely breathing, his pulse scarcely beating.
Dr. Hobbs approved all the rector had done, and then inquired:
“Did you get an answer from Sir Ichabod Ingoldsby?”
“Yes, by telegram. He cannot leave London at this crisis.”
“Well, it does not matter now. This is a case that any country doctor or
any old woman might understand and treat.”
“What do you think of his chance of life?” whispered the rector.
“It is a poorer one than he has yet had,” replied the doctor, looking at
the pallid, wizen face, that seemed to have shrunken to half its size
since his terrible loss of blood.
Hetty cried for pity.
“If he has any relatives they should be informed, for I do not think he
will ever rise from that bed again,” said Dr. Hobbs.
“I know of none, except the Earl of Engelmeed and the Viscount
Stoors—his uncle and his cousin. I will write to the earl to-day,” said
Mr. Campbell.
“Engelmeed, of Engelwode, in Cumberland? That is where typhoid fever is
raging so fiercely,” remarked Dr. Hobbs.
Here followed some talk of that pestilence, and finally the doctor arose
and took his leave, promising to return in the afternoon.
Mr. Campbell wrote to the Earl of Engelmeed, advising him of his
nephew’s dangerous illness, and posted the letter that forenoon.
Two days later he got a reply, not from the earl, but from the latter’s
steward, announcing the death of the Viscount Stoors and the extreme
illness of Lord Engelmeed, whose death was hourly expected.
Over this letter the rector fell into deep thought.
Then he put on his coat and hat, and taking the letter with him, walked
over to Haymore Hall.
He was shown into the library, where he found Ran reading.
“Good-morning, Mr. Hay. Will you let me look at your ‘Burke’s Peerage’
for a moment?”
“Certainly. How do you do, Mr. Campbell? And how is your family—and your
patient?” inquired Ran as he arose and shook hands with the rector, and
then went to the bookcase and took down the “Peerage.”
“The family is well. The invalid very low. I received a letter from the
steward of Engelwode this morning, in answer to the one I wrote to the
earl, informing me of the death of the Viscount Stoors and the extreme
illness of Lord Engelmeed, whose demise was then hourly expected.”
“Indeed! Had they taken the fever?”
“Yes. It was madness for them to remain at Engelwode during its
prevalence. It is from hearing of these occurrences that I wish to
consult Burke. I think that since the death of Lord Stoors, our wretch,
Montgomery, is heir presumptive to the title and estate,” said the
rector as he took the heavy red volume from the hands of the young
squire, laid it on the library table, and sat down to examine it.
Ran resumed his seat.
“It is as I thought. There is no other son. And Kightly Montgomery, as
the eldest son of the next brother, the late Gen. Montgomery, is heir
presumptive to the earldom, and may even now be Earl of Engelmeed. Think
of it!” exclaimed the rector as he closed the book. “Wealth and rank,
for which the wretched man periled his soul and fatally wrecked his life
to obtain feloniously, now come to him lawfully and honorably, but on
his deathbed!”
“Yes, it is terrible. If he had but waited! Now it seems the iron of
fate—this useless accession to fortune!” sighed Ran.