"Sleep no more!"--_Macbeth_
After winding through gloomy and labyrinthine passages, which conducted
to a different range of cellars from those entered by the unfortunate
Favart, Gawtrey emerged at the foot of a flight of stairs, which, dark,
narrow, and in many places broken, had been probably appropriated to
servants of the house in its days of palmier glory. By these steps the
pair regained their attic. Gawtrey placed the lantern on the table and
seated himself in silence. Morton, who had recovered his self-possession
and formed his resolution, gazed on him for some moments, equally
taciturn. At length he spoke:
"Gawtrey!"
"I bade you not call me by that name," said the coiner; for we need
scarcely say that in his new trade he had assumed a new appellation.
"It is the least guilty one by which I have known you," returned Morton,
firmly. "It is for the last time I call you by it! I demanded to see by
what means one to whom I had entrusted my fate supported himself. I have
seen," continued the young man, still firmly, but with a livid cheek and
lip, "and the tie between us is rent for ever. Interrupt me not! it is
not for me to blame you. I have eaten of your bread and drunk of your
cup. Confiding in you too blindly, and believing that you were at least
free from those dark and terrible crimes for which there is no expiation
--at least in this life--my conscience seared by distress, my very soul
made dormant by despair, I surrendered myself to one leading a career
equivocal, suspicious, dishonourable perhaps, but still not, as I
believed, of atrocity and bloodshed. I wake at the brink of the abyss--
my mother's hand beckons to me from the grave; I think I hear her voice
while I address you--I recede while it is yet time--we part, and for
ever!"
Gawtrey, whose stormy passion was still deep upon his soul, had listened
hitherto in sullen and dogged silence, with a gloomy frown on his knitted
brow; he now rose with an oath--
"Part! that I may let loose on the world a new traitor! Part! when you
have seen me fresh from an act that, once whispered, gives me to the
guillotine! Part--never! at least alive!"
"I have said it," said Morton, folding his arms calmly; I say it to your
face, though I might part from you in secret. Frown not on me, man of
blood! I am fearless as yourself! In another minute I am gone."
"Ah! is it so?" said Gawtrey; and glancing round the room, which
contained two doors, the one concealed by the draperies of a bed,
communicating with the stairs by which they had entered, the other with
the landing of the principal and common flight: he turned to the former,
within his reach, which he locked, and put the key into his pocket, and
then, throwing across the latter a heavy swing bar, which fell into its
socket with a harsh noise,--before the threshold he placed his vast bulk,
and burst into his loud, fierce laugh: "Ho! ho! Slave and fool, once
mine, you were mine body and soul for ever!"
"Tempter, I defy you! stand back!" And, firm and dauntless, Morton laid
his hand on the giant's vest.
Gawtrey seemed more astonished than enraged. He looked hard at his
daring associate, on whose lip the down was yet scarcely dark.
"Boy," said he, "off! do not rouse the devil in me again! I could crush
you with a hug."
"My soul supports my body, and I am armed," said Morton, laying hand on
his cutlass. "But you dare not harm me, nor I you; bloodstained as you
are, you gave me shelter and bread; but accuse me not that I will save my
soul while it is yet time!--Shall my mother have blessed me in vain upon
her death-bed?"
Gawtrey drew back, and Morton, by a sudden impulse, grasped his hand.
"Oh! hear me-hear me!" he cried, with great emotion. "Abandon this
horrible career; you have been decoyed and betrayed to it by one who can
deceive or terrify you no more! Abandon it, and I will never desert you.
For her sake--for your Fanny's sake--pause, like me, before the gulf
swallow us. Let us fly!--far to the New World--to any land where our
thews and sinews, our stout hands and hearts, can find an honest mart.
Men, desperate as we are, have yet risen by honest means. Take her, your
orphan, with us. We will work for her, both of us. Gawtrey! hear me.
It is not my voice that speaks to you--it is your good angel's!"
Gawtrey fell back against the wall, and his chest heaved.
"Morton," he said, with choked and tremulous accent, "go now; leave me to
my fate! I have sinned against you--shamefully sinned. It seemed to me
so sweet to have a friend; in your youth and character of mind there was
so much about which the tough strings of my heart wound themselves, that
I could not bear to lose you--to suffer you to know me for what I was.
I blinded--I deceived you as to my past deeds; that was base in me: but I
swore to my own heart to keep you unexposed to every danger, and free
from every vice that darkened my own path. I kept that oath till this
night, when, seeing that you began to recoil from me, and dreading that
you should desert me, I thought to bind you to me for ever by implicating
you in this fellowship of crime. I am punished, and justly. Go, I
repeat--leave me to the fate that strides nearer and nearer to me day by
day. You are a boy still--I am no longer young. Habit is a second
nature. Still--still I could repent--I could begin life again. But
repose!--to look back--to remember--to be haunted night and day with
deeds that shall meet me bodily and face to face on the last day--"
"Add not to the spectres! Come--fly this night--this hour!"
Gawtrey paused, irresolute and wavering, when at that moment he heard
steps on the stairs below. He started--as starts the boar caught in his
lair--and listened, pale and breathless.
"Hush!--they are on us!--they come!" as he whispered, the key from
without turned in the wards--the door shook. "Soft! the bar preserves us
both--this way." And the coiner crept to the door of the private stairs.
He unlocked and opened it cautiously. A man sprang through the aperture:
"Yield!--you are my prisoner!"
"Never!" cried Gawtrey, hurling back the intruder, and clapping to the
door, though other and stout men were pressing against it with all their
power.
"Ho! ho! Who shall open the tiger's cage?"
At both doors now were heard the sound of voices. "Open in the king's
name, or expect no mercy!"
"Hist!" said Gawtrey. "One way yet--the window--the rope."
Morton opened the casement--Gawtrey uncoiled the rope. The dawn was
breaking; it was light in the streets, but all seemed quiet without. The
doors reeled and shook beneath the pressure of the pursuers. Gawtrey
flung the rope across the street to the opposite parapet; after two or
three efforts, the grappling-hook caught firm hold--the perilous path was
made.
"On!--quick!--loiter not!" whispered Gawtrey; "you are active--it seems
more dangerous than it is--cling with both hands-shut your eyes. When on
the other side--you see the window of Birnie's room,--enter it--descend
the stairs--let yourself out, and you are safe."
"Go first," said Morton, in the same tone: "I will not leave you now: you
will be longer getting across than I shall. I will keep guard till you
are over."
"Hark! hark!--are you mad? You keep guard! what is your strength to
mine? Twenty men shall not move that door, while my weight is against
it. Quick, or you destroy us both! Besides, you will hold the rope for
me, it may not be strong enough for my bulk in itself. Stay!--stay one
moment. If you escape, and I fall--Fanny--my father, he will take care
of her,--you remember--thanks! Forgive me all! Go; that's right!"
With a firm impulse, Morton threw himself on the dreadful bridge; it
swung and crackled at his weight. Shifting his grasp rapidly--holding
his breath--with set teeth-with closed eyes--he moved on--he gained the
parapet--he stood safe on the opposite side. And now, straining his eyes
across, he saw through the open casement into the chamber he had just
quitted. Gawtrey was still standing against the door to the principal
staircase, for that of the two was the weaker and the more assailed.
Presently the explosion of a fire-arm was heard; they had shot through
the panel. Gawtrey seemed wounded, for he staggered forward, and uttered
a fierce cry; a moment more, and he gained the window--he seized the
rope--he hung over the tremendous depth! Morton knelt by the parapet,
holding the grappling-hook in its place, with convulsive grasp, and
fixing his eyes, bloodshot with fear and suspense, on the huge bulk that
clung for life to that slender cord!
"Le voiles! Le voiles!" cried a voice from the opposite side. Morton
raised his gaze from Gawtrey; the casement was darkened by the forms of
his pursuers--they had burst into the room--an officer sprang upon the
parapet, and Gawtrey, now aware of his danger, opened his eyes, and as he
moved on, glared upon the foe. The policeman deliberately raised his
pistol--Gawtrey arrested himself--from a wound in his side the blood
trickled slowly and darkly down, drop by drop, upon the stones below;
even the officers of law shuddered as they eyed him--his hair bristling
--his cheek white--his lips drawn convulsively from his teeth, and his
eyes glaring from beneath the frown of agony and menace in which yet
spoke the indomitable power and fierceness of the man. His look, so
fixed--so intense--so stern, awed the policeman; his hand trembled as he
fired, and the ball struck the parapet an inch below the spot where
Morton knelt. An indistinct, wild, gurgling sound-half-laugh, half-yell
of scorn and glee, broke from Gawtrey's lips. He swung himself on--near
--near--nearer--a yard from the parapet.
"You are saved!" cried Morton; when at the moment a volley burst from
the fatal casement--the smoke rolled over both the fugitives--a groan, or
rather howl, of rage, and despair, and agony, appalled even the hardest
on whose ear it came. Morton sprang to his feet and looked below. He
saw on the rugged stones far down, a dark, formless, motionless mass--the
strong man of passion and levity--the giant who had played with life and
soul, as an infant with the baubles that it prizes and breaks--was what
the Caesar and the leper alike are, when the clay is without God's
breath--what glory, genius, power, and beauty, would be for ever and for
ever, if there were no God!
"There is another!" cried the voice of one of the pursuers. "Fire!"
"Poor Gawtrey!" muttered Philip. "I will fulfil your last wish;" and
scarcely conscious of the bullet that whistled by him, he disappeared
behind the parapet.