THE PASSAGE TO THE GARDEN-HOUSE
The two looked at one another with parted lips, but without a word. Then
both rose simultaneously. Then the bell jangled and ceased; and a crowd
of other noises began; there were shouts, tramplings of hoofs in the
court; shrill voices came over the wall; then a scream or two. Mary
sprang to the door and opened it, and stood there listening.
Then from the interior of the house came an indescribable din, tramplings
of feet and shouts of anger; then violent blows on woodwork. It came
nearer in a moment of time, as a tide comes in over flat sands,
remorselessly swift. Then Mary with one movement was inside again, and
had locked the door and drawn the bolt.
"Up there," she said, "it is the only way--they are outside," and she
pointed to the chimney.
Anthony began to remonstrate. It was intolerable, he felt, to climb up
the chimney like a hunted cat, and he began a word or two. But Mary
seized his arm.
"You must not be caught," she said, "there are others"; and there came a
confused battering and trampling outside. She pushed him towards the
chimney. Then decision came to him, and he bent his head and stepped upon
the logs laid upon the ashes, crushing them down.
"Ah! go," said Mary's voice behind him, as the door began to bulge and
creak. There was plainly a tremendous struggle in the little passage
outside.
Anthony threw his hands up and felt a high ledge in the darkness, gripped
it with his hands and made a huge effort combined of a tug and a spring;
his feet rapped sharply for a moment or two on the iron fire-plate; and
then his knee reached the ledge and he was up. He straightened himself on
the ledge, stood upright and looked down; two white hands with rings on
them were lifting the logs and drawing them out from the ashes, shaking
them and replacing them by others from the wood-basket; and all
deliberately, as if laying a fire. Then her voice came up to him, hushed
but distinct.
"Go up quickly. I will feign to be burning papers; there will be smoke,
but no sparks. It is green wood."
Anthony again felt above him, and found two iron half-rings in the
chimney, one above the other; he was in semi-darkness here, but far above
there was a patch of pale smoky light; and all the chimney seemed full of
a murmurous sound. He tugged at the rings and found them secure, and drew
himself up steadily by the higher one, until his knee struck the lower;
then with a great effort he got his knee upon it, then his left foot, and
again straightened himself. Then, as he felt in the darkness once more,
he found a system of rings, one above the other, up the side of the
chimney, by which it was not hard to climb. As he went up he began to
perceive a sharp acrid smell, his eyes smarted and he closed them, but
his throat burned; he climbed fiercely; and then suddenly saw immediately
below him another hearth; he was looking over the fireplate of some other
room. In a moment more he thrust his head over, and drew a long breath of
clear air; then he listened intently. From below still came a murmur of
confusion; but in this room all was quiet. He began to think frantically.
He could not remain in the chimney, it was hopeless; they would soon
light fires, he knew, in all the chimneys, and bring him down. What room
was this? He was bewildered and could not remember. But at least he would
climb into it and try to escape. In a moment more he had lifted himself
over the fireplate and dropped safely on to the hearth of his own
bedroom.
The fresh air and the familiarity of the room, as he looked round, swept
the confusion out of his brain like a breeze. The thundering and shouting
continued below. Then he went on tip-toe to the door and opened it. Round
to the right was the head of the stairs which led straight into the
little passage where the struggle was going on. He could hear Robert's
voice in the din; plainly there was no way down the stairs. To the left
was the passage that ended in a window, with the chapel door at the left
and the false shelves on the right. He hesitated a moment between the two
hiding-places, and then decided for the cupboard; there was a clean
doublet there; his own was one black smear of soot, and as he thought of
it, he drew off his sooty shoes. His hose were fortunately dark. He
stepped straight out of the door, leaving it just ajar. Even as he left
it there was a thunder of footsteps on the stairs, and he was at the
shelves in a moment, catching a glimpse through the window on his left of
the front court crowded with men and horses. He had opened and shut the
secret door three or four times the evening before, and his hands closed
almost instinctively on the two springs that must be worked
simultaneously. He made the necessary movement, and the shelves with the
wall behind it softly slid open and he sprang in. But as he closed it he
heard one of the two books drop, and an exclamation from the passage he
had just left; then quick steps from the head of the stairs; the steps
clattered past the door and into the chapel opposite and stopped.
Anthony felt about him in the darkness, found the doublet and lifted it
off the nail; slipped off his own, tearing his ruff as he did so; and
then quickly put on the other. He had no shoes; but that would not be so
noticeable. He had not seriously thought of the possibility of escaping
through the portrait-door, as he felt sure the house would be overrun by
now; but he put his eyes to the pinholes and looked out; and to his
astonishment saw that the gallery was empty. There it lay, with its
Flemish furniture on the right and its row of windows on the left, and
all as tranquil as if there were no fierce tragedy of terror and wrath
raging below. Again decision came to him; by a process of thought so
swift that it was an intuition, he remembered that the fall of the book
outside would concentrate attention on that corner; it could not be long
before the shelves were broken in, and if he did not escape now there
would be no possibility later. Then he unslid the inside bolt, and the
portrait swung open; he closed it behind, and sped on silent shoeless
feet down the polished floor of the gallery.
Of course the great staircase was hopeless. The hall would be seething
with men. But there was just a chance through the servants' quarters. He
dashed past the head of the stairs, catching a glimpse of heads and
sparkles of steel over the banisters, and through the half-opened door at
the end, finding himself in the men's corridor that was a continuation of
the gallery he had left. On his left rose the head of the back-stairs,
that led first with a double flight to the offices, the pantry, the
buttery and the kitchen, and than, lower still, a single third flight
down to the cellar.
He looked down the stairs; at the bottom of the first double flight were
a couple of maids, screaming and white-faced, leaning and pressing
against the door, immediately below the one he had just come through
himself. The door was plainly barred as well, for it was now thudding and
cracking with blows that were being showered upon it from the other side.
The maids, it seemed to him, in a panic had locked the door; but that
panic might be his salvation. He dashed down the stairs; the maids
screamed louder than ever when they saw this man, whom they did not
recognise, with blackened face and hands come in noiseless leaps down
towards them; but Anthony put his finger on his lips as he flew past
them; then he dashed open the little door that shut off the
cellar-flight, closed it behind him, and was immediately in the dark.
Then he groped his way down, feeling the rough brick wall as he went,
till he reached the floor of the cellar. The air was cool and damp here,
and it refreshed him, for he was pouring with sweat. The noise, too, and
confusion which, during his flight, had been reverberating through the
house with a formidable din, now only reached him as a far-away murmur.
As he counted the four steps up, and then lifted the overhanging edge,
there came upon him irresistibly the contrast between the serene party
here last night, with their tapers and their delicate dresses and Mary's
cool clear-clipped voice--and his own soot-stained person, his desperate
energy and his quick panting and heart-beating. Then the steps dropped
and he slid in; lifted them again as he lay on his back, and heard the
spring catch as they closed. Then he was in silence, too, and comparative
safety. But he dared not rest yet, and edged himself along as he had seen
Mr. Buxton do last night. Which brick was it? "The fourth of the fourth,"
he murmured, and counted, and pressed it. Again the door pushed back, and
with a little struggle he was first on his knees, and then on his feet.
Then he swung the door to again behind him.
Then for the first time he rested; he leaned against the brick-lined side
of the tunnel and passed his blackened hands over his face. Five minutes
ago--yes--certainly not five minutes ago he was lounging in the west
parlour, at the other end of the house, while Mary played the prelude to
an Italian love-song.--What was she doing now? God bless her for her
quick courage!--And Isabel and Buxton--where were they all? How deadly
sick and tired he felt!--Again he passed his hands over his face in the
pitch darkness.--Well, he must push on.
He turned and began to grope patiently through the blackness--step by
step--feeling the roughness of the bricks beneath with his shoeless feet
before he set them down; once or twice he stepped into a little icy pool,
which had collected through some crack in the vaulting overhead; once,
too, he slipped on a lump of something wet and shapeless; and thought
even then of Mary's suspicions the night before. He pushed on, shivering
now with cold and excitement, through what seemed the interminable
tunnel, until at last his outstretched hands touched wood before him. He
had not seen this end of the passage for nearly two years, and he
wondered if he could remember the method of opening, and gave a gulp of
horror at the thought that he might not. But there had been no reason to
make a secret of the inside of the door, and he presently found a button
and drew it; it creaked rustily, but gave, and the door with another pull
opened inwards, and there was a faint glimmer of light. Then he
remembered that the entrances to the tunnel at either end were exactly on
the same system; and putting out his hands felt the slope of the
underside of the staircase, cutting diagonally across the opening of the
passage. He slid himself on to the boarding sideways, and drew the
brickwork towards him till the spring snapped, and lay there to consider
before he went farther.
First he ran over in his mind the construction of the garden-house.
The basement in which he was lying corresponded to the cellar under the
house from which he had come, and ran the whole length of the building,
about forty feet by twenty. It was a large empty chamber, where nothing
of any value was kept. He remembered last time he was here seeing a heap
of tiles in one corner, with a pile of disused poles; pieces of rope, and
old iron in another. The stairs led up through an ordinary trap-door into
what was the ground-floor of the house. This, too, was one immense room,
with four latticed windows looking on to the garden, and one with opaque
glass on to the lane at the back; and a great door, generally kept
locked, for rather more valuable things were kept here, such as the
garden-roller, flower-pots, and the targets for archery. Then a light
staircase led straight up from this room to the next floor, which was
divided into two, both of which, so far as Anthony remembered, were
empty. Mr. Buxton had thought of letting his gardeners sleep there when
he had at first built this immense useless summer-house; but he had
ultimately built a little gardener's cottage adjoining it. The two
fantastic towers that flanked the building held nothing but staircases,
which could be entered by either of the two floors, and which ascended to
tiny rooms with windows on all four sides.
When Anthony had run over these details as he lay on his back, he pushed
up the stair over his face and let the front of it with the step of the
next swing inwards; the light was stronger now, and poured in, though
still dim, through three half-moon windows, glazed and wired, that just
rose above the level of the ground outside. Then he extricated himself,
closed the steps behind him, and went up the stairs.
The trap-door at the top was a little stiff, but he soon raised it, and
in a moment more was standing in the ground-floor room of the
garden-house. All round him was much as he remembered it; he first went
to the door and found it securely fastened, as it often was for days
together; he glanced at the windows to assure himself that they were
bottle-glass too, and then went to them to look out. He was fortunate
enough to find the corner of one pane broken away; he put his eye to
this, and there lay a little lawn, with a yew-hedge beyond blotting out
all of the great house opposite except the chimneys,--the house which
even across the whole space of garden hummed like a hive. On the lawn was
a chair, and an orange-bound book lay face down on the grass beside it.
Anthony stared at it; it was the book that he had seen in Isabel's hand
not half an hour ago, as she had gone out into the garden from the hall
to wait until he and Mary joined her with the lute.
And at that the priest knelt down before the window, covered his face
with his hands, and began to stammer and cry to God: "O God! God! God!"
he said.
* * * *
When Mary Corbet had seen Anthony's feet disappear, she already had the
outline of a plan in her mind. To light a fire and pretend to be burning
important papers would serve as an excuse for keeping the door fast; it
would also suggest at least that no one was in the chimney. The ordinary
wood, however, sent up sparks; but she had noticed before a little green
wood in the basket, and knew that this did not do so to the same extent;
so she pulled out the dry wood that Anthony had trodden into the ashes
and substituted the other. Then she had looked round for paper;--the lute
music, that was all. Meantime the door was giving; the noise outside was
terrible; and it was evident that one or two of the servants were
obstructing the passage of the pursuivants.
When at last the door flew in, there was a fire cracking furiously on the
hearth, and a magnificently dressed lady kneeling before it, crushing
paper into the flames. Half a dozen men now streamed in and more began to
follow, and stood irresolute for a moment, staring at her. From the
resistance they had met with they had been certain that the priest was
here, and this sight perplexed them. A big ruddy man, however, who led
them, sprang across the room, seized Mary Corbet by the shoulders and
whisked her away against the wall, and then dashed the half-burnt paper
out of the grate and began to beat out the flames.
Mary struggled violently for a moment; but the others were upon her and
held her, and she presently stood quiet. Then she began upon them.
"You insolent hounds!" she cried, "do you know who I am?" Her cheeks were
scarlet and her eyes blazing; she seemed in a superb fury.
"Burning treasonable papers," growled the big man from his knees on the
hearth, "that is enough for me."
"Who are you, sir, that dare to speak to me like that?"
The man got up; the flames were out now, and he slipped the papers into a
pocket. Mary went on immediately.
"If I may not burn my own lute music, or keep my door locked, without a
riotous mob of knaves breaking upon me---- Ah! how dare you?" and she
stamped furiously.
The pursuivant came up close to her, insolently.
"See here, my lady----" he began.
The men had fallen back from her a little now that the papers were safe,
and she lifted her ringed hand and struck his ruddy face with all her
might. There was a moment of confusion and laughter as he recoiled.
"Now will you remember that her Grace's ladies are not to be trifled
with?"
There was a murmur from the crowded room, and a voice near the door
cried:
"She says truth, Mr. Nichol. It is Mistress Corbet."
Nichol had recovered himself, but was furiously angry.
"Very good, madam, but I have these papers now," he said, "they can still
be read."
"You blind idiot," hissed Mary, "do you not know lute music when you see
it?"
"I know that ladies do not burn lute music with locked doors," observed
Nichol bitterly.
"The more fool you!" screamed Mary, "when you have caught one at it."
"That will be seen," sneered Mr. Nichol.
"Not by a damned blind scarlet-faced porpoise!" screamed Mary, apparently
more in a passion than ever, and a burst of laughter came from the men.
This was too much for Mr. Nichol. This coarse abuse stung him cruelly.
"God's blood," he bellowed at the room; "take this vixen out and search
the place." And a torrent of oaths drove the crowd about the door out
into the passage again.
A couple of men took Mary by the fierce ringed hands of hers that still
twitched and clenched, and led her out; she spat insults over her
shoulders as she went. But she had held him in talk as she intended.
"Now then," roared Nichol again, "search, you dogs!"
He himself went outside too, and seeing the stairs stamped up them. He
was just in time to see the Tacitus settle down with crumpled pages;
stopped for a moment, bewildered, for it lay in the middle of the
passage; and then rushed at the open door on the left, dashed it open,
and found a little empty room, with a chair or two, and a table--but no
sign of the priest. It was like magic.
Then out he came once more, and went into Anthony's own room. The great
bed was on his right, the window opposite, the fireplace to the left, and
in the middle lay two sooty shoes. Instinctively he bent and touched
them, and found them warm; then he sprang to the door, still keeping his
face to the room, and shouted for help.
"He is here, he is here!" he cried. And a thunder of footsteps on the
stairs answered him.
* * * *
Meanwhile the men that held Mary followed the others along the passage,
but while the leaders went on and round into the lower corridor, the two
men-at-arms with their prisoner turned aside into the parlour that served
as an ante-chamber to the hall beyond, where they released her. Here,
though it was empty of people, all was in confusion; the table had been
overturned in the struggle that had raged along here between Lackington's
men, who had entered from the front door, and the servants of the house,
who had rushed in from their quarters at the first alarm and intercepted
them. One chair lay on its side, with its splintered carved arm beside
it. As Mary stood a moment looking about her, the door from the hall that
had been closed, again opened, and Isabel came through; and a man's voice
said:
"You must wait here, madam"; then the door closed behind her.
"Isabel," said Mary.
The two looked at one another a moment, but before either spoke again the
door again half-opened, and a voice began to speak, as if its owner still
held the handle.
"Very well, Lackington, keep him in his room. I will go through here to
Nichol."
Isabel had drawn a sharp breath as the voice began, and as the door
opened wider she turned and faced it. Then Hubert came in, and recoiled
on the threshold. There fell a complete silence in the room.
"Hubert," said Isabel after a moment, "what are you doing here?"
Hubert shut the door abruptly and leaned against it, staring at her; his
face had gone white under the tan. Isabel still looked at him steadily,
and her eyes were eloquent. Then she spoke again, and something in her
voice quickened the beating of Mary's heart as she listened.
"Hubert, have you forgotten us?"
Still Hubert stared; then he stood upright. The two men-at-arms were
watching in astonishment.
"I will see to the ladies," he said abruptly, and waved his hand. They
still hesitated a moment.
"Go," he said again sharply, and pointed to the door. He was a
magistrate, and responsible; and they turned and went.
Then Hubert looked at Isabel again.
"Isabel," he said, "if I had known----"
"Stay," she interrupted, "there is no time for explanations except mine.
Anthony is in the house; I do not know where. You must save him."
There was no entreaty or anxiety in her voice; nothing but a supreme
dignity and an assurance that she would be obeyed.
"But----" he began. The door was opened from the hall, and a little party
of searchers appeared, but halted when the magistrate turned round.
"Come with me," he said to the two women, "you must have a room kept for
you upstairs," and he held back the door for them to pass.
Isabel put out her hand to Mary, and the two went out together into the
hall past the men, who stood back to let them through, and Hubert
followed. They turned to the left to the stairs, looking as they went
upon the wild confusion. Above them rose the carved ceiling, and in the
centre of the floor, untouched, by a strange chance, stood the
dinner-table, still laid with silver and fruit and flowers. But all else
was in disarray. The leather screen that had stood by the door into the
entrance hall had been overthrown, and had carried with it a tall
flowering plant that now lay trampled and broken before the hearth. A
couple of chairs lay on their backs between the windows; the rug under
the window was huddled in a heap, and all over the polished boards were
scratches and dents; a broken sword-hilt lay on the floor with a
feathered cap beside it. There were half a dozen men guarding the four
doors; but the rest were gone; and from overhead came tramplings and
shouts as the hunt swept to and fro in the upper floors.
At the top of the stairs was Mary's room; the two ladies, who had gone
silently upstairs with Hubert behind them, stopped at the door of it.
"Here, if you please," said Mary.
Before Hubert could answer, Lackington came down the passage, hurrying
with a drawn sword, and his hat on his head. Isabel did not recognise him
as he stopped and tapped Hubert on the arm familiarly.
"The prisoners must not be together," he said.
Hubert drew back his arm and looked the man in the face.
"They are not prisoners; and they shall be together. Take off your hat,
sir."
Then, as Lackington drew back astonished, he opened the door.
"You shall not be disturbed here," he said, and the two went in, and the
door closed behind them. There was a murmur of voices outside the door,
and they heard a name called once or twice, and the sound of footsteps.
Then came a tap, and Hubert stepped in quietly and closed the door.
"I have placed my own man outside," he said, "and none shall trouble
you--and--Mistress Isabel--I will do my best." Then he bowed and went
out.
* * * *
The long miserable afternoon began. They watched through the windows the
sentries going up and down the broad paths between the glowing
flower-beds; and out, over the high iron fence that separated the garden
from the meadows, the crowd of villagers and children watching.
But the real terror for them both lay in the sounds that came from the
interior of the house. There was a continual tramp of the sentries placed
in every corridor and lobby, and of the messengers that went to and fro.
Then from room after room came the sounds of blows, the rending of
woodwork, and once or twice the crash of glass, as the searchers went
about their work; and at every shout the women shuddered or drew their
breath sharply, for any one of the noises might be the sign of Anthony's
arrest.
The two had soon talked out every theory in low voices, but they both
agreed that he was still in the house somewhere, and on the upper floor.
It was impossible, they thought, for him to have made his way down. There
were four possibilities, therefore: either he might still be in the
chimney--in that case it was no use hoping; or he was in the chapel-hole;
or in that behind the portrait; or in one last one, in the room next to
their own. The searchers had been there early in the afternoon, but
perhaps had not found it; its entrance was behind the window shutter, and
was contrived in the thickness of the wall. So they talked, these two,
and conjectured and prayed, as the evening drew on; and the sun began to
sink behind the church, and the garden to lie in cool shadow.
About eight there was a tap at the door, and Hubert came in with a tray
of food in his hands, which he set down.
"All is in confusion," he said, "but this is the best I can do."--He
broke off.
"Mistress Isabel," he said, coming nearer to the two as they sat together
in the window-seat, "I can do little; they have found three hiding-holes;
but so far he has escaped. I do what I can to draw them off, but they are
too clever and zealous. If you can tell me more, perhaps I can do more."
The two were looking at him with startled eyes.
"Three?" Mary said.
"Yes, three--and indeed----" He stopped as Isabel got up and came towards
him.
"Hubert," she said resolutely, "I must tell you. He must be still in the
chimney of the little west parlour. Do what you can."
"The west parlour!" he said. "That was where Mistress Corbet was burning
the papers?"
"Yes," said Mary.
"He is not there," said Hubert; "we have sent a boy up and down it
already."
"Ah! dear God!" said Mary from the window-seat, "then he has escaped."
Isabel looked from one to the other and shook her head.
"It cannot be," she said. "The guards were all round the house before the
alarm rang."
Hubert nodded, and Mary's face fell.
"Then is there no way out?" he asked.
Mary sprang up with shining eyes.
"He has done it," she said, and threw her arms round Isabel and kissed
her.
"Well," said Hubert, "what can I do?"
"You must leave us," said Isabel; "come back later."
"Then when we have searched the garden-house--why, what is it?"
A look of such anguish had come into their faces that he stopped amazed.
"The garden-house!" cried Mary; "no, no, no!"
"No, no, Hubert, Hubert!" cried Isabel, "you must not go there."
"Why," he said, "it was I that proposed it; to draw them from the house."
There came from beneath the windows a sudden tramp of footsteps, and then
Nichol's voice, distinctly heard through the open panes.
"We cannot wait for him. Come, men."
"They are going without me," said Hubert; and turned and ran through the
door.