"Twelve to-night cell door unlocked. Lift
small window in corridor. Back to wall go
right to road. Left two hundred paces to path.
Left to river. Right twenty to thicket."
Having read the figures, I rolled the tissue firmly, and hid it in
my ear. It was a day of some excitement, I remember, for that very
afternoon I was condemned to death. A priest, having heard of my
plight, came in that evening, and offered me the good ministry of
the church. The words, the face, of that simple man, filled me
with a deep tenderness for all who seek in the shadows of this
world with the lantern of God's mercy. Never, so long as I live,
shall an ill word of them go unrebuked in my hearing. He left me
at 10.30, and as he went away, my jailer banged the iron door
without locking it. Then I lay down there in the dark, and began
to tell off the time by my heartbeats, allowing forty-five hundred
to the hour, and was not far wrong. I thought much of his Lordship
as I waited. To him I had been of some service, but, surely, not
enough to explain this tender regard, involving, as it must have
done, bribery and no small degree of peril to himself. My counting
over, I tried the door, which swung easily as I put my hand upon
it, The little corridor was dark and I could hear no sound save the
snoring of a drunken soldier, committed that day for fighting, as
the turnkey had told me. I found the small window, and slid the
sash, and let my boots fall to the ground, then climbing through
and dropping on them. It was a dark night, but I was not long in
reaching the road and pacing my way to the path and river. His
Lordship and a boatman lay in the thicket waiting for me.
"This way," the former whispered, taking my arm and leading me to
the mouth of a little brook, where a boat was tied, the bottom
muffled with blankets. I took the stern seat, his Lordship the
bow, and we pushed off. The boatman, a big, husky fellow, had been
rowing a long hour when we put into a cove under the high shore of
an island. I could see a moving glow back in the bushes. It swung
slowly, like a pendulum of light, with a mighty flit and tumble of
shadows. We tied our boat, climbed the shore, and made slowly for
the light. Nearing it, his Lordship whistled twice, and got
answer. The lantern was now still; it lighted the side of a
soldier in high boots; and suddenly I saw it was D'ri. I caught
his hand, raising it to my lips. We could not speak, either of us.
He stepped aside, lifting the lantern. God! there stood Louise.
She was all in black, her head bent forward.
"Dear love!" I cried, grasping her hands, "why--why have you come
here?"
She turned her face away, and spoke slowly, her voice trembling
with emotion.
"To give my body to be burned," said she.
I turned, lifting my arm to smite the man who had brought me there;
but lo! some stronger hand had struck him, some wonder-working
power of a kind that removes mountains. Lord Ronley was wiping his
eyes.
"I cannot do this thing," said he, in a broken voice. "I cannot do
this thing. Take her and go."
D'ri had turned away to hide his feelings.
"Take them to your boat," said his Lordship.
"Wait a minute," said D'ri, fixing his lantern. "Judas Priest! I
ain't got no stren'th. I 'm all tore t' shoe-strings."
I took her arm, and we followed D'ri to the landing. Lord Ronley
coming with us.
"Good-by," said he, leaning to push us off. "I am a better man for
knowing you. Dear girl, you have put all the evil out of me."
He held a moment to the boat, taking my hand as I came by him.
"Bell," said he, "henceforward may there be peace between you and
me."
"And between your country and mine," I answered.
And, thank God! the war was soon over, and ever since there has
been peace between the two great peoples. I rejoice that even we
old men have washed our hearts of bitterness, and that the young
have now more sense of brotherhood.
Above all price are the words of a wise man, but silence, that is
the great counsellor. In silence wisdom enters the heart and
understanding puts forth her voice. In the hush of that night ride
I grew to manhood; I put away childish things. I saw, or thought I
saw, the two great powers of good and evil. One was love, with the
power of God in it to lift up, to ennoble; the other, love's
counterfeit, a cunning device of the devil, with all his power to
wreck and destroy, deceiving him that has taken it until he finds
at last he has neither gold nor silver, but only base metal hanging
as a millstone to his neck.
At dawn we got ashore on Battle Point. We waited there, Louise and
I, while D'ri went away to bring horses. The sun rose clear and
warm; it was like a summer morning, but stiller, for the woods had
lost their songful tenantry. We took the forest road, walking
slowly. Some bugler near us had begun to play the song of
Yankee-land. Its phrases travelled like waves in the sea, some
high-crested, moving with a mighty rush, filling the valleys,
mounting the hills, tossing their spray aloft, flooding all the
shores of silence. Far and near, the trees were singing in praise
of my native land.
"Ramon," said Louise, looking up at me, a sweet and queenly dignity
in her face, "I have come to love this country."
"And you could not have done so much for me unless you had loved--"
She looked up at me quickly, and put her finger to her lips. My
tongue faltered, obeying the command. How sweet and beautiful she
was then, her splendid form erect, the light of her eyes softened
by long lashes! She looked down thoughtfully as she gave the
bottom of her gown a shake.
"Once upon a time," said she, slowly, as our eyes met again, "there
was a little country that had a cruel king. And he commanded that
none of all his people should speak until--until--"
She hesitated, stirring the dead leaves with her dainty foot.
"Until a great mountain had been removed and buried in the sea,"
she added in a low tone.
"Ah, that was hard."
"Especially for the ladies," she went on, sighing. "Dieu! they
could only sit and hold their tongues and weep and feel very
foolish. And the longer they were silent the more they had to say."
"And those who broke the law?" I inquired.
"Were condemned to silence for their lives," she answered. "Come,
we are both in danger; let us go."
A bit farther on we came to a log house where a veteran of the old
war sat playing his bugle, and a motherly woman bade us sit awhile
at the door-step.