CHAPTER XXV
"HIS HOURS TO THEIR LAST MINUTE MOUNTED."
After that night Bertie ceased to believe that he would ever go forth from the Bastille; a lethargy, which was partly despair and partly a fierce, bitter repining at the inexplicable, unmerited cruelty which had consigned him to such a place, took possession of his spirits, and he came to regard himself as one who was dead to the world for ever.
Yet from the other-to whose long sufferings his own could at present form no comparison-he received consolation in many forms; from De Chevagny, continual exhortations were made that he should never lose heart, while even Bluet would tell him, in his own familiar, good-natured manner, that he was far too young a visitor to consider himself a permanency as yet.
"There have been men here," said the marquis, repeating the same stories over and over again to him for his comfort, "who have not given up hope for years, who have then done so and become despairing, and have then, after still more years, gone out free." After which he would tell of the Dutch doctor who had been mistaken for the Alsatian poisoner; of others who had been there ten, fifteen, twenty years, and had at last got away; indeed, to solace poor Bertie, the marquis more than once said that even he himself, after forty-three years, had not lost all courage, and hoped to spend some few of those remaining to him in freedom. Yet, as the other looked in his face and heard his sad, trembling tones, he knew that it was but pity that inspired the words; that, in his heart, De Chevagny knew he would never be released.
From Falmy-by use of their letters which, in spite of the change in lodging, they could still make visible to one another-he received also many sentences of encouragement and counsel, while one day there came from that unhappy man a piece of information which once more set his heart beating with hope, and raised great expectations.
"I have been joined by another prisoner," he signalled across to the window of the calotte. "He is, however, about to obtain his liberty-awaits only his signed acquittal from D'Argenson. If you have messages to send, he will deliver them if possible."
In an instant Bertie had snatched from an old trunk that had been brought by De Chevagny the letters which he used, and a few moments later he had begun to signal a message to his mother, which he intended to augment by another to Kate. His heart beat high as he did so; he knew that, if this prisoner who was to be released was only faithful, in a few days at most the two women who loved him so would know of his whereabouts, though they were powerless to obtain his freedom. Yet, could even that be possible? Who could say? His mother might represent to the King his long and faithful services in the regiment; Kate might have powerful friends at court who could do something.
With trembling hands he formed the words, letter by letter. "Tell him my name is Elphinston. Bid him seek out my mother. She lives at the Rue-" Alas! as he finished the last letter of the word "Rue," upon the calotte about the tower in which Falmy was there appeared the cone-shaped shako, or cap, worn by the corps de garde of the Bastille, followed by the body of a sentry, and, hastily leaving the window, he desisted from his work. He was foiled for the day at least; the sentry he knew, was set on that particular tower, and either he or those who relieved him would be there for twenty-four hours. And as he reflected that in those twenty-four hours the acquit from D'Argenson might come for the prisoner who was about to be released, he felt as if he would go mad.
Falmy appeared at his window often during the day, looking wistfully up to the calotte, though Bertie, who could still observe him when standing back from the window, dared make no sign. It would matter nothing for the soldiers to see him at the opening-the prisoners were allowed the privilege of looking out if the windows were low enough to permit of their doing so-but the slightest communication that should be observed to pass between them would be visited with the most severe punishment, even to confinement in the dungeons beneath the ditch. He perceived, therefore, all the signs of distress on Falmy's face; he even observed him turn round, and saw his lips move as he gesticulated to his new companion within the room; he could guess, as plainly as though he had heard him, what the Genevese was saying. He felt sure that he was explaining that there must be a sentry above them, and that therefore Elphinston dared not signal across.
"Oh!" exclaimed poor Bertie, "oh, if I had but acquainted them with my mother's address at once before the guard was set! that would have been enough. Fool! fool that I am to lose so fair a chance! The very visit of a man set free from this place to my mother's house would have alarmed her suspicions, would have told her all. And now, now, he knows not where to go. God help me! it was my only hope, and I have lost it."
All day he watched the roof of the opposite tower, hoping against hope, for he knew the guard would only be changed, and not removed. He watched still as the shadows of the winter evening deepened into night, and still also he watched until the night itself had come and both tower and sentry were obscured in darkness. And as he kept his dreary vigil all through the day, he saw Falmy's face at his own window, staring at him with sad and melancholy glances, but without any sign being made by him, so that he knew that a guard had been placed above the roof of his tower as well.
"On any other day it would have mattered nothing," he moaned to himself. "Oh, why to-day of all days should these towers have been selected!"
It was so absolute a chance, such a coincidence, that the guard should happen to have been placed at this part of the Bastille on this particular occasion that his misery and mental anxiety were not strange. Of all the days he had been in the calotte, there was scarce one that could have been worse for him and his prospects.
The restless night passed, the dawn broke, cold, grey, and miserable, and springing from his bed he rushed to the window-only to see above the opposite tower a sentry still there. The twenty-four hours' guard was not yet finished, would not be until the great clock over the gate should clang out nine. And it was not yet eight o'clock on this dreary February morning! But at last the hour arrived. The sentry presented arms to the King's Lieutenant who came to dismiss him from his post. As the clock struck, the roof was deserted, and a few minutes later Falmy's face appeared at the window. But he shook his head mournfully, and then, with his board and piece of charcoal, he communicated the melancholy words, "The prisoner went forth at eight o'clock."
And now, indeed, Bertie gave himself up to despair-black despair that grew deeper and deeper as the weeks crept by one after the other; as slowly the cruel, griping Paris winter passed, and gradually they knew that spring was coming. Yet to him who had once welcomed the birth of new summers with such eagerness, the one now on its way to gladden the earth brought no comfort. The swallows came back and circled round and round the towers of the prison, and began, with countless chirps and squeaks, to build their nests below the gloomy eaves, yet he only found himself wondering vaguely why, when they were free, they should choose so foul a place. Also, over in the garret windows of the Rue St. Antoine he saw daily a girl tending some flowers in a box, even saw the tint of the flowers themselves as they burst into bloom, and wondered, too, if she, who had her liberty, ever cast one thought to the poor prisoners confined so near to her.
As for his companions, De Chevagny and Fordingbridge, they seemed, from opposite reasons, to be indifferent to any changes that the season might bring, though sometimes the former would stand at the window and hold out his hands and let the warm May sun-for May had come-stream down upon them and his face, and whisper sadly that for those who could be out in the woods and fields it was good, very good. Then, when he was tired of standing or sitting thus, he would cast himself on his bed and sigh, and so sleep away the hours.
With Fordingbridge, both he and Elphinston had ceased to hold any converse at all; nor, indeed, had they been willing to talk with him, was it possible that he could either have understood or replied to them. His madness seemed to grow upon him daily, and, while he became more taciturn, also he became more imbecile. Once he woke Bertie in the early morning by crawling to his bedside, and, holding out a piece of string which he had found imbedded in the filth of the floor, asked him to hang him ere they could lead him to the wheel; and one night he raved and moaned so through the dark hours-and on this occasion the other heard him beyond all doubt mutter the name of Archibald-that the prison doctor was sent for the next day.
This official, who was addressed diversely by Bluet as Monsieur le Docteur Herment and Monsieur l'Abbé Herment when he brought him in, seemed to be in about the same state of semi-drunkenness as the turnkey generally was, and to be also an inordinately vain creature. He had on his head a golden-haired wig which, while he was examining the unhappy wretch Fordingbridge, he was engaged in telling Bertie had been made from the hair of one of his chères amies who loved him truly; and he also remarked that some silver buckles on his shoes had been given him by a grande dame who had recently been released from the Bastille.
"What of the patient?" asked the latter sternly, such observations being unwelcome to him. "Will his lunacy increase, think you?"
"Ma foi!" exclaimed the abbé, or doctor, "so much so that it is my duty to warn the Society of Jesuits to be expeditious with what they have to do. Otherwise they will miss their victim, and our good Parisians will lose a spectacle. The wheel furnishes many a fête in the Place de Grève."
"Will they do that?" asked Bertie. "Will they execute so miserable a wretch as this?"
"Bien sûr, they will. Was there ever a Jesuit who forgave?"
"What has he done? They say he has slain a priest."
But the other was not to be entrapped like this, so, with a wink, he replied: "Monsieur, you should know by now that Madame La Bastille keeps her secrets well. But this I will tell you," and he pointed as he spoke to Fordingbridge, who was writhing on his bed, though none in the room could guess whether he understood what was being said or not, "he is doomed. And since he appears likely to escape the examiners if there is much more delay, his time will not be long now. Not long. Not very long! Oh, no! Bon jour, messieurs, I have my report to make to the Governor. Yet, since we must not lose our friend, I will send him a draught."
Whether the creature' really made his report as he said he should, and thereby hastened Fordingbridge's end, Bertie Elphinston never knew, but at any rate it came soon afterwards.
It was on one night, one 14th of May, when the weather had taken an extraordinary change, and all the warmth of the coming summer seemed to have disappeared and winter to have returned, and when from their window they could see slight flakes of snow mingled with the falling rain, that Bluet, bringing in the supper, appeared to be especially solicitous that Fordingbridge should make a good meal.
"Mangez, mon ami," he said, as the other crouched on his bed, staring round the room with the hunted expression that was always now in his eyes-"mangez bien. Make a good supper. Mon Dieu! you eat nothing of late," and he came over to the table where the others sat and asked their permission to tempt the idiot with some meat and biscuits. Then, as he bent over to take them from the dish, he whispered significantly:
"He goes to-morrow. Before daybreak."
If Bertie had known that the doomed man had, to his other crimes, added that of cowardly slaying his bosom friend Douglas, could it have been possible that into his heart there could have come the feeling-was it pity-that now arose? At last, then, Fordingbridge's end had come; he was to pay for all! And-and-for of such complex emotions are we formed-as Bertie heard that his doom was sealed, he forgot the wrongs he had suffered at this man's hands; he forgot the wreck of his and of Kate's life; if he did not forgive him, he compassionated him. Rising from his chair he went over to the bed where Fordingbridge was seated, and on which he shrank from him as he approached, and, pointing to the biscuit he held in his trembling hands, he said, very gently, "Eat, Fordingbridge, eat. It will do you good. And, see, you have nothing to drink," and going back to the table he poured out a cup of wine and brought it to him.
With still trembling hands the madman took it from him, glinting at him over the cup as though afraid, and watching him as though fearful that at any moment a blow might be dealt; and then, when he had drained the last drop, he began slowly to munch the biscuit, which he kept shut in the palm of his hand, as though someone was about to take it from him.
"Do you ever," asked Bertie, speaking slowly and distinctly, as if he might thereby make him understand what he was saying, "do you ever think of those who-who were once dear to you? If-if-it should please God in His infinite mercy that, some day, perhaps in some far-off, remote day, I may depart from here, and you-may not-not accompany me, is there any word, any message, you would wish to send?"
Still Fordingbridge shrank from him, creeping, edging farther away from where he had sat down by his side, but he uttered no word. Only, still his eyes roamed restlessly over Bertie's form, and still his mouth worked convulsively as ever, and his hands twitched.
"Think. Reflect, I beseech you," the man whom he had wronged so much continued, "you are not well-you may-at any moment-be worse. And I, forgetful of the past, would, if it ever comes into my power, very willingly do this for you. Fordingbridge, you may trust me. As I sit by you to-night, I cast away for ever from my memory the evil you have wrought me; I desire only that, if I can, I may serve you. Can I do nothing?"
And still the other shrank from him, understanding, perhaps, not one word that he said. Once more, however, Bertie continued:
"If you can comprehend me, I pray you do so. Think, remember. You had a wife once; before God I believe she is your wife now, and always has been; I do not believe that you deceived her. Have you no word for her, no plea for pardon, no request that, as time goes on, she may come to think of you without bitterness? Also there are others-Archibald Sholto and Douglas-"
A cry from the maniacal lips interrupted him-a hoarse cry such as an Animal in pain, an animal that had been struck suddenly and unawares, might utter.
"Douglas! Douglas! Douglas!" he shrieked. "Douglas! Douglas!" and so continued muttering that name again and again. Then, with another sound, half wail, half sigh, he flung himself back on his bed, and thus spent his last night on earth. Yet, even on that night, through the whole of which he chattered unintelligible words to himself, he laughed once or twice convulsively, and as though suffocating with suppressed mirth.
* * * * * * *
As the shadows of the night departed and the morning gave signs of breaking, with still the snow-flakes mingling with the rain that beat against the windows of the towers, they came for him-the King's Lieutenant, accompanied by four of the corps de garde.
"Put on your cloak, if you have one," that officer said to the miserable creature shrinking back to the wall, while he shivered all over and uttered his broken cries-"put on your cloak, and come."
"In pity leave him!" exclaimed Bertie; "in the name of Christianity, of humanity, refrain from taking so miserable a life as this! Vile as he has been, see, see what he is now! It is as though you took the life of a helpless child, of a dumb brute. As you hope for mercy, show some."
"I am but an instrument," said the Lieutenant; "I have my orders; willingly or unwillingly I must obey them. And if I would spare him, nay, if my master the King would spare him, the Church would not. He is in their grip; it will be unfastened an hour hence, when he is dead." Then, turning to the soldiers, he said, "Bring him away."
They took the shaking wretch-no longer a man but only a living thing-by the arms and led him moaning to the door; yet, when he had arrived there, he had the strength to wrench one of them free; and looking round at Bertie for the last time in the world, and with his starting, scintillating eyes fixed on him, he raised that arm, the hand clenched as though grasping a weapon, and-once-twice-struck downward fiercely with it.
Then he was gone for ever.
CHAPTER XXVI
KATE LEARNS SHE IS FREE
A great masked ball was over at the opera house; the candles were burning down into their sockets in the girandoles and lustres; the May morning, which under ordinary circumstances should have broken so soft and bright, had dawned foul, rainy, and snowy; and carriages, hackney coaches, and sedan chairs were pushing their way up to the doors of the theatre and carrying off their employers to their houses and beds.
But all were not yet departed; some still sat drinking or chatting at the supper tables; some danced in groups without any music to accompany them except the airs which they hummed or whistled themselves, for the orchestra had put up its instruments and gone also to its bed; and some, principally men, struggled and pushed in the vestiaires to obtain cloaks, roquelaures, hats and riding hoods, and swords-which latter could not by law be worn in the ball-room. Mock harlequins jostled imitation Henrys of Navarre; mock monks swore at supposed Crusaders; minotaurs and cavaliers and priests all contended against one another for their and their female companions' wraps, and at the same time laughed and jested and proposed breakfasts at neighbouring taverns, or a visit to the gambling hells, which on such nights as these kept their doors perpetually open.
Amidst all this confusion there ran through the whole place a rumour-a whisper, which reached first those in the vestiaires, and next the people at the supper tables-that those who so chose might yet finish their night's enjoyment with another spectacle-a grim and dismal but still enjoyable one-which was far better than any tavern breakfast or punting at the gaming table.
"Figurez-vous!" screamed one reveller, a deformed creature by nature, who had, with true Parisian appreciation of ludicrousness, arrayed himself consequently as Venus-"figurez-vous, mes enfants, there are two for execution, although, malheureusement, but only one is to be broken. The other, they say-because, peste! he is a sal Anglais and also of high rank-escapes the wheel and is only to be decapitated. A curse upon the law, say I, that treats an Englishman better than us!"
"Ma petite Vénus de poche," remarked another to him, clad as an arquebusier, "have a care how you curse the law; otherwise you may get broken yourself. There are plenty of police here in disguise, and if they hear you, that goodly hump of yours will stand a fine chance of being smashed by the executioner's bar. Ma foi! the coup de grâce is generally administered to the chest bone; with you, I presume, it will be administered on the bosse."
"I spoke only in jest," exclaimed the deformed one, glancing round apprehensively; "I meant no harm. A good subject, I, of the King of France and all his ministers. But come, let us away. Who's for the Grève? Mon Dieu! we must not miss the show!"
"I am for it, for one!" screamed a girl not over twenty, whose golden hair hung down over her back, and whose tones and glances proclaimed her to be already far sunken in dissipation. "I have never yet seen a man done to death; and as for the wheel, why, I have prayed often for a chance of seeing it. They say the coup de grâce is magnificent if the-the patient-is still sensible. Now, in our old village, before the young lord brought me to town, we never saw anything but a beggar in the stocks. And, dame! les ceps cease to be interesting after one has pelted the occupiers for half an hour."
"Pretty things," said the arquebusier, looking down sardonically on her, "have a care, ma chère, that you never come to worse than les ceps yourself. I have known many country girls brought to town by their young lords, and-hem! – who got worse shift than the stocks when they were discarded."
"Ah! voyons!" exclaimed the girl, "avec ça! Look you, my figure of fun, you are insolent. Get you home to your wife and family, and earn bread for them. We of the fashion desire none of your banalités."
Yet, as she spoke, she was being inducted into her long cloak by some of her would-be admirers, and also many others were getting ready. For Paris had not had an execution for some two months now, and the "half-tiger, half-monkey nature" which Voltaire attributed to his countrymen was thirsty for its favourite form of entertainment.
In the ball-room itself there sat, however, a group very different from those in the vestibule, who, since the masquerades were open to all who could pay for admission, had attended the ball. This group consisted of Sir Charles and Lady Ames-once Lady Belrose-and Kate, who, in spite of her melancholy and her ill-health, had been persuaded to accompany them. Heaven knows such diversions were little enough in her way now! yet Lady Ames had been kind to her when she needed kindness, and, at the express desire of Sir Charles and his wife, she had consented to go with them.
In one way she was not unhappy: she knew, she felt certain, that this second disappearance of Bertie Elphinston from the knowledge of the world was not of his own accord. That something terrible had happened she could not doubt; yet she knew also that, whatever that something might be, it was not due to any desire to hide himself from her-that was, if he was still alive. But was he?
Douglas's awful death by an unknown hand might also have been Elphinston's lot: who could tell? And then her own husband's disappearance! Did not that point to some catastrophe? Over and over again she had meditated on all these things, lying awake for nights together, pondering over them, wondering, wondering always. For even now she was in total ignorance of who the murderer of Douglas had been, of what Archibald had discovered. He had written to her at intervals, it was true, but he had either avoided all reference to the tragedy, or had said that, if the murderer was ever brought to justice, she would doubtless know all. Her husband he never mentioned.
Yet, those who are aware of what she could not guess can understand how difficult a task it would have been for the Jesuit to tell her that he had discovered the assassin, and that Fordingbridge, her husband, was the man. It may be that, after he had handed him over to the proper authorities, he hoped, nay, endeavoured so to arrange that she should never discover that her husband was the criminal. Better that he should disappear from her knowledge forever, go to his doom without her dreaming that he had paid for the crime with his life, than that she should know to what a foul thing she had been united.
The candles guttered lower in their sockets, the attendants were putting out even the few lights that still burned; it was time to go. The opera house was emptying fast of all who had danced the night away there; amidst shrieks and whoops and yells the lower class of visitors were departing in coaches and chairs or on foot-some to their homes, but many to the Place de Grève. The spectacle of one man being broken to death and another decapitated was not to be missed.
"They say," exclaimed Sir Charles, as he returned with the cloaks and hoods of the two ladies, "that an execution takes place this morning on the Place de Grève. Hark! you may hear the creatures chattering over it as they go forth. Well, our coachman need not go through the Place, though it is on our road. Surely he can skirt round it. At least, I will bid him do so," and he escorted his wife and Kate to their carriage.
Outside, the crowd that was making its way to the place of execution was stamping down the now fast-falling snow as it fell, and hurrying forward for fear it should be too late for the show. With renewed shrieks and yells it went onward, singing songs and choruses, roaring out ballads that perhaps it deemed suitable to the occasion, beating on tambours-de-basque and little tabours which formed the accompaniments of many of the masquers' costumes, and hammering on doors that were as yet unopened, with their shepherds' crooks and wooden swords (which were allowed to form part of their dress) and canes, and howling at the inhabitants to arise and come forth to le spectacle. They halted very little on their short way, sometimes only to shake the falling snow off their clothes, sometimes to wipe the paint and raddle from their faces which the wet snow had turned into sticky filth, and sometimes to kick over the braziers of the early morning chestnut-sellers, or to run into an early-opened wineshop, hastily gulp down a drink, and then go on again.
"Heavens!" exclaimed Sir Charles, as the slow-progressing coach kept pace with the creatures that passed along the miserable three-foot sideways or crunched along the road-"heavens! what a crowd is a Parisian one! Their laughter is as ferocious in its way as the roughness of our English rabble-nay, I believe, far more deadly. How they revel in what they are going to see!"
"I tell you, my friends," screamed one painted harridan from the sedan chair she was being carried in, to a number of her friends who walked beside it, "that it is a great, a magnificent spectacle. I have seen it, voyez-vous, at Lyons, on the Place Bellecour, often-once, twice, thrice. Ma foi! the shriek at the first blow as the man lies back, his body tied to the wheel, is pénétrant écrasant! And so on, the cries becoming lower, till they are no better than sobs or groans, until the coup de grâce. Then, sometimes, but alas! not always, there will be one more wild shriek, and voilà! c'est fini. After that it is always time for breakfast."
One or two girls in the crowd making its way onward glanced at the ogress in the sedan chair and turned white; and Kate, who had heard all her words, grasped Lady Belrose's hand; while a man, walking steadily along through the snow, answered the woman, saying:
"Peste! 'tis not always as good as that. I waited once all through a summer night at Caen to see a man broken-I remember we played cards, I and the others, in the moonlight, and I lost four gold pistoles-and, dame! the fellow was a favoured one. Favoured, you understand. A vile aristocrat. So, as we thought, they strangled him as they bound him, and, malediction! he suffered not at all. Never screamed once-not once. 'Twas a cruel wrong to the spectators."
"'Tis an aristocrat who suffers to-day, they say," another man exclaimed.
"Nay," screamed still another, "not so. The aristocrat will suffer not; they will but slice his head off with the axe. There is no suffering in that; 'tis done and over in a moment. Yet I would see him die, too. He is an English aristocrat, and I hate all English; one beat me the other day for regarding his flaxen-haired wife too admiringly! I have never seen an Englishman die. They are brutes, yet they have the courage of devils."
"An English aristocrat!" said Sir Charles to his companions. "I do not understand this. There have been no Englishmen arrested in Paris for a longtime; otherwise I must have heard of it among our friends here. What does he mean?"
"My dear Charles," replied his wife, "you do not know the Parisians very well. An English aristocrat to them is any Englishman who is outside his own country for pleasure and with his pocket well lined with guineas. Doubtless, however, this is some needy ragamuffin or copper captain, who has come to the scaffold for his sins, and they suppose him an aristocrat."
Whatever Sir Charles may have replied was drowned now by an increase of the howls and yells of the crowd, by fiercer beatings on the tambours-de-basque and tabours, by snatches of wild, frenzied songs, and by bursts of hysterical laughter.
The Place de Grève was in sight.
"Turn off!" said Sir Charles, putting his head out of the window and addressing the coachman-"turn off, I say! I told you to leave the route to that infernal Place and avoid it. Why have you disobeyed me?"
The man shrugged his shoulders as he looked round from his seat-doubtless, in spite of the orders he had received, he meant to see le spectacle himself if possible-then he said:
"Monsieur, it is impossible to turn off, or scarcely now to proceed. The crowd encompasses us. Yet the Place is not so full but we may pass through it. Mon Dieu! if it had been a fine May morning, a fly could not have passed."
"Is-is there anything-dreadful-taking place yet? If so, we will not proceed."
The driver stood up on his box and gazed forward; then he shook his head and said:
"Non, monsieur, there is nothing. Only the erection itself, and the soldiers and people; not many of the latter, either. Nous autres," pointing to the howling crowd from the Bal Masqué seething around them, "will double the sightseers." But he muttered to himself, "Ere we get into the middle of the Place we shall see something, or I'm a stupid escargot."
"Go on, then," said Sir Charles, "as quickly as you can, since you cannot now turn round. Lose no time." And he spoke to his companions, saying, "Best put on your masks. This is no place for ladies to be seen in. But we shall be through it all in five minutes."
Lady Belrose and Kate did as he bade them, and then the coach went on, slowly following all those in the road before them. Unfortunately, it had no curtains to the windows, which shut from within as was the custom of the day, otherwise the baronet would have closed out the whole of their surroundings. But this was impossible.