GERVASE HERIOT had entered upon the last hours of his life. It was
arranged that he should die at eight o’clock of the April morning. He
lay in his cell during the watches of the night that was to be his
last upon earth, with every sense a-stretch. Try as he would--and
God only could know how he had fought during these last weeks for
self-mastery--he could not subdue the insurgency of ardent blood, the
intense desire to live.
He was too young for death. He loved the sun, the blue sky, the green
grass, the birds in the trees, the spring flowers, the abundant,
sweet-smelling earth. He loved his fellow-men. They amused and
interested him. He adored the beauty of women. His ears were attuned to
delicate harmonies of sound, his eyes were ravished by feasts of color.
The world, that wonderful assemblance of things visible, entranced him
in its glad, mysterious majesty. There was the soul of a poet in a
frame all a-quiver with youth. As he lay in his cell in the darkness,
tossing feverishly upon his pallet through the slow hours, he could not
bear the thought that all too soon he would see the sun rise for the
last time.
It drove him nearly mad to think that he must leave it all, that
his brief sojourn upon the fair and noble earth which he loved so
passionately was at an end. He was too strong of blood for such a
death. With all the force of his will had he striven to compose
himself. Many prayers had he addressed to God that it might be given
to him to meet his fate with the high dignity that was the due of
his manhood. But as now he lay shuddering in the darkness, do as he
would he could not bring his mind to accept the end. Times and again
he pressed his wild eyes to his pallet with a half-strangled moan of
despair.
The fact that he was an entirely innocent man did nothing to console
him. Indeed, had he been guilty, death had been less hard to bear. But
coming to him in this arbitrary, unjust guise, its cruel causelessness
set his every fiber in revolt.
Faint sounds began to creep through the night. All too soon his
quivering senses caught them. Subtle as they were, he knew them at once
for the noise of hammers upon wood. O God! they were setting up the
scaffold in the courtyard. In spite of the strength he had won in these
last few weeks he rolled off the pallet onto his knees and began to
pray wildly. A fever shook his mind. His new-found strength was leaving
him. Death--and such a death!--was a thing he did not know how to meet.
A grim terror took hold of him.
And then a thing happened to him which shook the central forces of his
being.
Suddenly he saw the face of Anne. He saw it all wan and swollen with
tears. And as he looked he saw the eyes grow starlike and great with
their compassion. And then he remembered his vaunt to her that he would
walk firmly in his last hour, and that her name should be upon his
lips. Her image was hardly more than that of a mortal daughter of men;
but that which had sprung from her own bruised spirit, which looked out
of her eyes as now he saw them in the darkness, was the only evidence
he had of the Eternal. Some immortal essence had fused her heart as so
humbly and so pitifully she had looked up to him. Through those eyes he
had seen God.
Such a thought had the power to offer a measure of ease to his
torments. The dreadful tumult began to grow less. Those eyes were as
stars in that gross darkness. No longer was he afraid. A strange peace
had begun to bear him upon its wings.
No longer had he cause to fear the noise of the hammers. Let the
morning break. Let death come when it would. His fainting spirit had
now a manifestation to which to cling. He would walk to the scaffold
with this noble image in his heart, and it should accompany him forever
in his wanderings through the wide fields of eternity.
He crept back to his pallet, and stretched out his fever-racked limbs
to their full length. A profound peace was enfolding him. If only death
could come now!
Long he lay thus, and as he lay he strained his eyes to catch the first
faint light of the dawn. Would it never arrive? All his fear now was
lest this new strength should flee as suddenly as it had been given.
But no!--the ineffable spirit that had entered into him would continue
through all eternity to bear his soul.
At last and quite suddenly a more instant sound began to mingle with
the distant noise of the hammers. A key was grating in the lock of the
door. Yes, his hour was here at last and he had not known it. With a
feeling akin to relief he sat up on his pallet.
He heard the door creak gently. It then came open with so little
sound as to thrill him with surprise. A faint thread of light gleamed
fitfully. But whoever was the visitant, he was accompanied by a silence
so profound as to fill Gervase Heriot with wonder. It was not thus that
his jailers had been wont to visit him.
“Mr. Heriot.”
The name was breathed rather than spoken. There was a curious
familiarity in the voice as it stole through the darkness. His heart
seemed to stop beating.
He tried to answer, but could not.
“Mr. Heriot.”
Beyond the faint rays of a half-shuttered lantern was the outline of a
dark form.
“Mr. Heriot.”
His name was being breathed in his ears. A hand had touched him.
“Oh, it is you!” were the first words his tongue could find.
“Do not speak,” whispered Anne Feversham. “Do not make a sound. But if
you would live follow close without a question.”
He rose from his pallet unsteadily. He was utterly bewildered and very
weak from many vigils. But already the lantern had begun to move away
from him, and it was a talisman that had the power to draw him after it.
Almost before he was aware of what he did he realized that he was
beyond the door of his cell.
“Please wait while I lock the door again,” whispered his deliverer, “so
that they may not know too soon.”
Her deliberation, her calmness filled him with wonder.
Step by step they groped their way along a very narrow corridor that
smelled close and evil. The damp glistened from the walls in the light
of the lantern.
With infinite caution they made their way to the end of the long
passage. And as they neared its end there arose the sound of a man
snoring heavily. A jailer was fast asleep on a low stool that had been
placed just within the outer door of the prison. He was a gross-looking
fellow, and his large legs were stretched out to the full, barring
completely the narrow way.
They used great caution in striding over these legs lest they should
wake their owner. When they had safely cleared this obstacle Anne gave
Gervase the lantern, and also a poniard from a belt which she wore
round her waist. “I am going to replace the keys in his girdle,” she
whispered resolutely. “I do not think he will wake; a powder has been
shaken into his posset. But should you see him rousing himself, plunge
the dagger into his heart. I have not the courage to do it myself.”
With a delicate deftness, with a cool precision that was remarkable,
Anne reattached the keys to the girdle of the sleeping man. He did not
so much as stir in his sleep.
“Now!” she whispered.
In the next moment they had crept noiselessly through the unbarred
outer door. The cool morning air rushed upon them. They felt the
delicious green turf under their feet.
For all that the shrewd air played about the condemned man’s temples,
for all that the soft grass was under him, for all that a young moon
and a sky of faint stars was over his head, he could hardly believe he
was alive, or if alive could hardly realize he was broad awake.
Less than a hundred yards away, round an angle of the great building,
the hammers were still mutilating the peace of the night. As Gervase
and Anne stood to listen, not knowing what to do next and uncertain
of the way to go, since peril hemmed them in on every side, they were
greatly startled by a scrunch of feet on the gravel quite close to
them. There was a sudden drone of voices which told them that two men
were quickly approaching the spot on which they stood. Indeed they had
barely time to put out the light of the lantern and to crouch close
under the shadow of the huge wall of the prison before the men passed
them.
They came so near that they almost touched Anne and Gervase as they
knelt. They heard the men open the door through which they had just
come, and as it swung back, so close were Anne and Gervase to it that
it concealed them behind it.
The sudden flash of the light that one of the men carried was very
terrifying.
“Wake up, Nick.” The rough voice the other side of the door was so
loud in the ears of the fugitives that they held their breaths. “Wake
up, Nick.” They heard the man grunt as he gave a vigorous shake to the
turnkey, who was still snoring tremendously. “What a devil you are for
sleeping and drinking! Master Norris the headsman is here and would
have a few words with the condemned.”
A perfect tornado of shakes accompanied the words, which yielded
presently to a series of kicks. Evidently the business of arousing the
turnkey was to prove no light one.
“Wake, you drunken fool. Here is Master Norris the headsman, don’t you
hear? Are you going to keep us here all day?”
Hardly daring to draw breath, Anne and Gervase continued to kneel close
behind the open door. Their terror and their peril suddenly made Anne
desperate. Not daring to speak, she plucked her companion’s sleeve; and
then putting all to the touch and keeping close under the shadow of the
wall, she started to creep away on hands and knees from this position
of imminent danger. Even by the time they had made a distance of fifty
yards in this painful fashion, and had set a buttress of the Castle
between them and the open door, they could still hear the indignant
voice of him who had laid upon himself the task of rousing the sleeping
jailer.
They could breathe a little now. But their position was still one of
very great peril. The whole place seemed to be astir. Men and lights
were moving in all directions. Voices of soldiers, workmen and servants
of the Castle were all about them. As yet there was not a single fleck
of the dawn to be seen, but already the birds had begun their early
notes. Daybreak must be very near.
Not for an instant must they stay in the place they were now in. Even
as they knelt close by the wall they expected to hear the startled
outcry that would announce the escape of the condemned man.