"FROM CHAIN TO CHAIN."
"Mr. Windsor," said the Duke of Bayswater to his host, as the two were
sitting in the library of the latter's house in Boston, "I have received
to-day a letter from our poor friend Sydney from my late residence,
Dartmoor Prison. It is exceedingly interesting to me."
"Poor fellow," answered Mr. Windsor. "What a pity it was that we could
not effect his escape with the rest of you. How does he bear up?"
"Ah! pretty well, pretty well," answered the Duke, rubbing his
gold-bowed spectacles with a white silk handkerchief. "But still, I must
say that the poor fellow seems very down-hearted. Shall I read you his
letter?"
Mr. Windsor bowed assent, and the Duke adjusted his spectacles to his
sharp aquiline nose, and read, in faltering tones:
"DARTMOOR PRISON, 198-.
"DEAR DUKE: I was delighted that you all made good escape on that
eventful night of the fog. It is foolish to complain of fate, or
rather of the life of free living, which made me have a tendency to
rheumatic gout. As I sat on the edge of the canal and watched you
then, as you suddenly disappeared over the hill, I cursed all
French cooks and vintages, and my roystering old grandfather to
boot. But I led the guard, who were hot on your scent, a devil's
own dance when they found that the lock of the last bridge was
filled with pebbles. But I am delighted that you others escaped; I
could not bear to imagine you, dear Duke, whose magnificent
hospitality I had enjoyed in days gone by, cramped in a narrow
cell, or mopping up the corridors of this jail."
The Duke broke down completely as he remembered his life at Dartmoor,
and Mr. Windsor looked out of the window to conceal the smile which this
picture of his venerable old friend brought to his mind. The Duke, after
vigorously rubbing his spectacles and clearing his throat, remarked:
"Excuse my stopping, Mr. Windsor, but poor Sydney's handwriting never
was good. I remember I used to tell him, when he answered my
invitations, that I should have imagined that a fly dipped in ink had
crawled over the paper." He laughed for a moment at his former
moss-encrusted and ducal witticism, and continued reading Sydney's
letter:
"However, I have become resigned. I was born under an unlucky star,
and the uninvited bad fairy at my christening, after the others had
given me beauty, riches, and wit, hopped in malevolently upon her
crutch and shouted in a disagreeable falsetto: 'He shall have all
these, to be sure, but he shall have a poor digestion and the
gout!' and whirled away on the evening wind astride her
broomstick."
Mr. Windsor laughed out loud; the Duke seemed annoyed at this, and,
begging not to be interrupted again, continued his reading in a rather
offended tone:
"Since your escape I have been under the strictest surveillance,
and as I have recovered from my gout I have been set to work upon
the ignoble task of breaking stone into small bits with a hammer. I
am known as No. 5, and am called by no other name. Imagine me, who
found it so difficult to look out for Number One, having to care
for No. 5. Indeed, I should find it well-nigh impossible were it
not for the assistance which I have from the warders and turnkeys,
who look after me with a touching solicitude. No physician could
have kept me to a regimen so suitable for my health as strictly as
they. You remember how I used to enjoy lying abed in the morning.
What a pleasure it was to wake up, to feel that the busy world was
astir around you, and lie half awake, half asleep, stretching your
toes into cool recesses of a soft, luxurious bed. But it made me
idle, very idle. But now I must be off my hard cot, be dressed and
have my cot made up by half-past five; then I breakfast off a piece
of bread, washed down with a pint of unsweetened rye coffee
innocent of milk, drunk _au naturel_ out of a tin pail. And how I
miss my after-breakfast cigar and the _Times_, as I put my hands
upon a fellow-convict's shoulder and march in slow procession to my
task. The work of breaking a large piece of stone into smaller bits
with a hammer is not an intellectual one; but it has got me into
tolerable training; I have lost twenty pounds already, and am, as
we used to say at the university, as 'hard as nails.' I am afraid
that my old trousers, which my tailor used to let out year by year,
would be a world too large for my shrunk shanks now. I dine at
noon, as you remember, and for the first time in my life I do not
dress for dinner; indeed, a white cravat and a dress coat would be
inappropriate, when one sits down to bean porridge and boiled beef
served in the same tin plate. But I have a good appetite after my
pulverizing of the morning, and I am not compelled to set the table
in a roar under duress. I am surprised what good things I think of
now that I am not expected to and have no one to whom to say them.
Jawkins would double my salary could he get me out. Rye coffee is a
poor substitute for Chambertin, but it does not aggravate my gout.
After dinner I return to my stone-breaking, and feel with delight
my growing biceps muscle, and after my supper, which is
monotonously like my breakfast, I tackle the tracts, which are left
with me by kindly souls. They are of a class of literature which I
have neglected since childhood, having, as you may remember, a
leaning toward 'facetiae.' In fact, since my great-aunt's withdrawal
to another world, where it may be hoped that the stones are more
brittle and the coffee better, I have seen none. I cannot say that
I have been comforted by the tracts, but I have been interested by
them, and I spend the brief hours of leisure which are vouchsafed
to me in annotating my editions. And yet, my dear Duke, unfortunate
as my situation is, I would not exchange places with my old self, a
hired jester at rich men's tables, selling myself for a dinner
which I could not digest, nor with that wretched monarch, in whose
cause we all suffered, who left his gallant gentleman to die for
his cause while he pursued his selfish pleasures. If it were chance
that I get out of here, I shall strive to earn my bread, in the
appointed way, by the sweat of my brow, and to work with my
fellow-men. Present my kindest regards to our good friend Mr.
Windsor, who has dared so much for our sake, and believe me, my
dear old friend,
"Yours faithfully,
"No. 5 (_ne_ JAMES SYDNEY)."
The Duke, when he had finished reading the letter, folded it carefully,
and returned it into his pocket. His eyes were full of tears, and his
voice broke as he read the quaint, pathetic words.
Mr. Windsor slapped his bony knee energetically, and arose from his
chair.
"I must try to set the poor fellow free," he said energetically. "I do
not believe that a forcible prison delivery would be successful again,
when our former attempt is so fresh in the mind of the prison governor;
but the presidential election in Great Britain and Ireland is
approaching, and if I judge the signs of the times aright, the Radicals
under Bagshaw will enter the campaign heavily weighted. If the
Liberal-Conservatives put up such a man as Richard Lincoln they will
re-elect him, and if the administration is changed, diplomacy and
entreaty may accomplish a general release of political prisoners. The
cause of the House of Hanover is so dead that, as Mother Goose says:
"'All the king's horses and all the king's men,
Couldn't set Humpty Dumpty up again.'
By the way, I believe they call George King Humpty Dumpty in the comic
papers."
The Duke smiled ruefully; in his heart he despised the King, and faintly
saw that his class had lost their privileges, but he could not get used
to it. He knew that he was a broken old man, an exile from home, and
dependent upon the kindness of Mr. Windsor; and he sighed deeply,
wishing that he had died before the deluge which had gulfed all that was
holy and precious to him.
Mr. Windsor saw that his thoughts were too sad and solemn for an alien
intrusion, and left the old gentleman, still motionless, looking
vacantly at the wall. The old Duke saw no Mount Ararat rising from the
troubled waters; all that made life worth living for him had passed
away, and he lagged superfluous on the stage; a supernumerary with a
pasteboard coronet; laughed at and ranted about in the pantomime at
which the world had laughed, "King Humpty Dumpty."
That afternoon Maggie Windsor had gone for her usual walk upon the
Charles River embankment, a fine esplanade stretching for seven miles
along the river-side. It was a beautiful day--one of those rare days
which gladden the drear northern spring and remind dwellers in Boston
that they live under the same latitude under which Naples idles. A turn
of the Gulf Stream and the descendants of the Puritans would lose the
last vestige of their inherited consciences and bask in the sun like
happy animals. But though the sky was violet, the bright sunlight was
cold.
Maggie walked briskly along, by the water park, out by the great houses
in Longwood, to the light bridge which swept over the river to
Cambridge. There were but few people walking on the embankment this cold
day; a stream of carriages bright with glistening harness rolled by. A
barge, filled with a merry party, and drawn by four horses, aroused
Maggie from her thoughts, which had been of Geoffrey. She had not seen
him since the evening of the King's drawing-room, when he had broken his
sword before the monarch, and had returned his empty title to the dry
fountain of honor. Her suspicions of him had died away long before she
had received his letter by Reynolds's hand. She had heard of the
_emeute_ with an aching heart, and from her distant home in America she
had watched the proceedings of the trial eagerly. Her life had died away
within her when she read of the sentence of the prisoners, and knew that
the man she loved was shut up from the world for fifteen years, like a
common felon. And he owed his liberty to her, and yet he did not know
it. He should have known it, by instinct, she thought. She had fancied
that she knew the moment when he had made good his escape. Of a sudden,
one day, during her father's absence in the yacht, the load from her
soul had rolled away. She felt that he was free, and speeding over the
sea to meet her. Now that he was arrived in America, she had seen him
but once, and he had not spoken to her; he had bowed, with a stern, set
face, and left the apartment. Had her cruel words there on the cliff by
Ripon village cut away his love for her? Then the message which she had
sent to him by his servant: "Tell your master that I am to be married."
She had almost forgotten that. But his heart should have told him what
she meant by that, she argued. "She was to be married, if only he wished
it." Why did he not come to her? Could it be possible that he thought
she was to marry another?
Such thoughts the rush and jingle of the great barge had interrupted.
The barge rushed by, and looking up the strait she saw coming toward
her, his form dark against the red sunset, Geoffrey Ripon.
He saw her at the same moment, and he took off his hat. She walked up to
him and offered him her hand.
"Miss Windsor, Maggie," he said as he grasped it.
"You received my message?" she asked, looking into his eyes.
"I did. Is it true?"
"I do not know," she answered, looking down at the river, which gleamed
below rosy with the sunset; a happy omen. "It depends--"
"Upon what?" asked Geoffrey, eagerly.
"Upon you, Geoffrey," she answered. "Did you not know it?" And the sun,
which just then disappeared over the Brookline hills, did not in his
circuit of the world look upon a happier pair than these two lovers,
clasped in each other's arms.