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.