'My son! my son!' cried Madam.
CHAPTER L.
THE GREAT LORD CHANCELLOR
But the Prince of Orange had already landed.
We learned this news next day, and you may be sure that we were in the saddle again and riding to Exeter, there to join his standard.
This we did with the full consent of Madam and of Alice. Much as we had suffered already, they would not deter us, because this thing would have been approved by Sir Christopher and Dr. Eykin. Therefore we went. As all the world knows, this expedition was successful. Yet was not Barnaby made an Admiral, nor was I made a Court physician; we got, in fact, no reward at all, except that for Barnaby was procured a full pardon on account of the homicide of his late master.
My second campaign, as everybody knows, was bloodless. To begin with, we had an army, not of raw country lads armed indifferently and untrained, but of veteran troops, fifteen thousand strong, all well equipped, and with the best General in Europe at their head. At first, indeed, such was the dread in men's minds caused by Lord Jeffreys' cruelties, few came in; yet this was presently made up by what followed, when, without any fighting at all, the King's regiments melted away, his priests fled, and his friends deserted him. This was a very different business from that other, when we followed one whom I now know to have been a mere tawdry pretender, no better fitted to be a King than a vagabond actor at a fair is fit to be a Lord. Alas! what blood was wasted in that mad attempt! – of which I was myself one of the most eager promoters. I was then young, and I believed all that I was told by the conspirators in Holland; I took their list of well-wishers for insurgents already armed and waiting only for a signal; I thought that the roll of noble names set down for sturdy Protestants was that of men already pledged to the Cause; I believed that the whole nation would rise at the first opportunity to turn out the priests; I even believed in the legitimacy of the Duke, and that against the express statement of his father (if King Charles was in reality his father); and I believed what they told me of his princely virtues, his knowledge of the art of war, and his heroic valour. I say that I believed all these things and that I became a willing and zealous tool in their hands. As for what those who planned the expedition believed, I know not; nor will any one now ever learn what promises were made to the Duke, what were broken, and why he was, from the outset, save for a few days at Taunton, so dejected and disappointed. As for me, I shall always believe that the unhappy man – unwise and soft-hearted – was betrayed by those whom he trusted.
It is now an old tale, though King Monmouth will not speedily be forgotten in the West Country, nor will the memory of the Bloody Assize. The brave lads who followed him are dead and buried; some in unhonoured graves hard by the place where they were hanged, some under the burning sun of the West Indies. The Duke himself hath long since paid the penalty of his rash attempt. All is over and ended, except the memory of it.
It is now common history, known to everybody, how the Prince of Orange lingered in the West Country, his army inactive, as if he knew (doubtless he was well informed upon this particular) that the longer he remained idle the more likely was the King's Cause to fall to pieces. There are some who think that if King James had risked an action he could not but have gained, whatsoever its event – I mean that, the blood of his soldiers once roused, they would have remained steadfast to him, and would have fought for him. But this he dared not to risk; wherefore the Prince did nothing, while the King's regiments fell to pieces and his friends deserted him. It was in December when the Prince came to Windsor, and I with him, once more Chyrurgeon in a rebel army. While there I rode to London – partly with the intention of judging for myself as to the temper of the people; partly because, after so long an absence, I wished once more to visit a place where there are books and pictures; and partly because there were certain notes and herbs which I desired to communicate to the College of Physicians in Warwick Lane. It happened to be the very day when the King's first flight – that, namely, when he was taken in the Isle of Sheppey – became known. The streets in the City of London I found crowded with people hurrying to and fro, running in bands and companies, shouting and crying, as if in the presence of some great and imminent danger. It was reported and currently believed that the disbanded Irish soldiers had begun to massacre the Protestants. There was no truth at all in the report; but yet the bells were ringing from all the towers, the crowds were exhorting each other to tear down and destroy the Romish chapels, to hunt for and to hang the priests, and especially Jesuits (I know not whether they found any), and to shout for the Prince of Orange. I stood aside to let the crowds (thus religiously disposed) run past, but there seemed no end to them. Presently, however (this was in front of the new Royal Exchange), there drew near another kind of crowd. There marched six or eight sturdy fellows bearing stout cudgels and haling along a prisoner. Round them there ran, shrieking, hooting, and cursing, a mob of a hundred men and more; they continually made attacks upon the guard, fighting them with sticks and fists; but they were always thrust back. I thought at first that they had caught some poor, wretched priest whom they desired to murder. But it proved to be a prize worth many priests. As they drew nearer, I discerned the prisoner. He was dressed in the garb of a common sailor, with short petticoats (which they call slops), and a jacket; his cap had been torn off, leaving the bare skull, which showed that he was no sailor, because common sailors do not wear wigs; blood was flowing down his cheek from a fresh wound; his eyes rolled hither and thither in an extremity of terror; I could not hear what he said for the shouting of those around him, but his lips moved, and I think he was praying his guards to close in and protect him. Never, surely, was seen a more terror-stricken creature.
I knew his face. Once seen (I had seen it once) it could never be forgotten. The red and bloated cheeks, which even his fear could not make pale; the eyes, more terrible than have been given to any other human creature: these I could not forget – in dreams I see them still. I saw that face at Exeter, when the cruel Judge exulted over our misery and rejoiced over the sentence which he pronounced. Yea, he laughed when he told us how we should swing, but not till we were dead, and then the knife – delivering his sentence so that no single point of its horror should be lost to us. Yes; it was the face of Judge Jeffreys – none other – this abject wretch was that great Judge. Why, when we went back to our prison there were some who cast themselves upon the ground, and, for terror of what was to come, fell into mere dementia. And now I saw him thus humbled, thus disgraced, thus threatened, thus in the last extremity and agony of terror.
They had discovered him, thus disguised and in hiding, at a tavern in Wapping, and were dragging him to the presence of the Lord Mayor. It is a long distance from Wapping to Guildhall, and they went but slowly, because they were beset and surrounded by these wolves who howled to have his blood. And all the way he shrieked and trembled for fear!
Sure and certain is the vengeance of the Lord!
This Haman, this unjust Judge, was thus suffering, at the hands of the savage mob, pangs far worse than those endured by the poor rustics whom he had delivered to the executioner. I say worse, because I have not only read, but have myself proved, that the rich and the learned – those, that is, who live luxuriously and those who have power to imagine and to feel beforehand – do suffer far more in disease than the common, ignorant folk. The scholar dies of terror before ever he feels the surgeon's knife, while the rustic bares his limb, insensible and callous, however deep the cut or keen the pain. I make no doubt, therefore, that the great Lord Chancellor, while they haled him all the way from Wapping to Guildhall, suffered as much as fifty ploughboys flogged at the cart-tail.
Many thousands there were who desired revenge upon him – I know not what revenge would satisfy the implacable; because revenge can do no more than kill the body, but his worst enemy should be satisfied with this, his dreadful fate. Even Barnaby, who was sad because he could get no revenge on his own account (he wanted a bloody battle, with the rout of the King's armies and the pursuit of a flying enemy, such as had happened at Sedgemoor), was satisfied with the justice which was done to that miserable man. It is wonderful that he was not killed amidst so many threatening cudgels; but his guards prevented that, not from any love they bore him; but quite the contrary (more unforgiving faces one never saw); for they intended to hand him over to the Lord Mayor, and that he should be tried for all his cruelties and treacheries, and, perhaps, experience himself that punishment of hanging and disembowelling which he had inflicted on so many ignorant and misled men.
How he was committed to the Tower, where he shortly died in the greatest torture of body as well as mind, everybody knows.
CHAPTER LI.
THE CONFESSION
Now am I come to the last event of this history, and I have to write down the confession of my own share in that event. For the others – for Alice and for Robin – the thing must be considered as the crown and completion of all the mercies. For me – what is it? But you shall hear. When the secrets of all hearts are laid open, then will Alice hear it also: what she will then say, or what think, I know not. It was done for her sake – for her happiness have I laid this guilt upon my soul. Nay, when the voice of conscience doth exhort me to repent, and to confess my sin, then there still ariseth within my soul, as it were, the strain of a joyful hymn, a song of gratitude that I was enabled to return her to freedom and the arms of the man she loved. If any learned Doctor of Divinity, or any versed in that science which the Romanists love (they call it casuistry), should happen to read this chapter of confession, I pray that they consider my case, even though it will then be useless as far as I myself am concerned, seeing that I shall be gone before a Judge who will, I hope (even though my earthly affections do not suffer me to separate my sin from the consequences which followed), be more merciful than I have deserved.
While, then, I stood watching this signal example of God's wrath, I was plucked gently by the sleeve, and, turning, saw one whose countenance I knew not. He was dressed as a lawyer, but his gown was ragged, and his bands yellow; he looked sunk in poverty; and his face was inflamed with those signs which proclaim aloud the habit of immoderate drinking.
'Sir,' he said, 'if I mistake not, you are Dr. Humphrey Challis?'
'The same, Sir; at your service,' I replied with some misgivings. And yet, being one of the Prince's following, there needed none.
'I have seen you, Sir, in the chambers of your cousin, Mr. Benjamin Boscorel, my brother learned in the law. We drank together, though (I remember) you still passed the bottle. It is now four or five years ago. I wonder not that you have forgotten me. We change quickly, we who are the jolly companions of the bottle; we drink our noses red, and we paint our cheeks purple; nay, we drink ourselves out of our last guinea, and out of our very apparel. What then, Sir? a short life and a merry. Sir, yonder is a sorry sight. The first Law Officer of the Crown thus to be haled along the streets by a howling mob. Ought such a thing to be suffered? 'Tis a sad and sorry sight, I say!'
'Sir,' I replied hotly, 'ought such villains as Judge Jeffreys to be suffered to live?'
He considered a little, as one who is astonished and desires to collect his thoughts. Perhaps he had already taken more than a morning draught.
'I remember now,' he said. 'My memory is not so good as it was. We drink that away as well. Yes, I remember – I crave your forgiveness, Doctor. You were yourself engaged with Monmouth. Your cousin told me as much. Naturally you love not this good Judge, who yet did nothing but what the King, his master, ordered him to do. I, Sir, have often had the honour of sitting over a bottle with his Lordship. When his infirmities allowed (though not yet old, he is grievously afflicted) he had no equal for a song or a jest, and would drink so long as any were left to keep him company. Ha! they have knocked him down – now they will kill him. No; he is again upon his feet; those who protect him close in. So – they have passed out of our sight. Doctor, shall we crack a flask together? I have no money, unhappily; but I will with pleasure drink at your expense.'
I remembered the man's face now, but not his name. 'Twas one of Ben's boon companions. Well; if hard drinking brings men so speedily to rags and poverty, even though it be a merry life (which I doubt), give me moderation.
'Pray, Sir,' I said coldly, 'to have me excused. I am no drinker.'
'Then, Doctor, you will perhaps lend me, until we meet again, a single guinea?'
I foolishly complied with this request.
'Doctor, I thank you,' he said. 'Will you now come and drink with me at my expense? Sir, I say plainly, you do not well to refuse a friendly glass. I could tell you many things, if you would but drink with me, concerning my Lord Jeffreys. There are things which would make you laugh. Come, Doctor; I love not to drink alone. Your cousin, now, was always ready to drink with any man, until he fell ill' —
'How? is my cousin ill?'
'Assuredly; he is sick unto death. Yesterday I went to visit him, thinking to drink a glass with him, and perhaps to borrow a guinea or two, but found him in bed and raving. If you will drink with me, Doctor, I can tell you many curious things about your cousin. And now I remember, you were sent to the Plantations; your cousin told me so. You have returned before your time. Well, the King hath run away; you are, doubtless, safe. Your cousin hath gotten his grandfather's estate. Lord Jeffreys, who loved him mightily, procured that grant for him. When your cousin wakes at night he swears that he sees his grandfather by his bedside looking at him reproachfully, so that he drinks the harder; 'tis a merry life. He hath also married a wife, and she ran away from him at the church door, and he now cannot hear of her or find her anywhere, so that he curses her and drinks the harder. Oh! 'tis always the jolliest dog. They say that he is not the lawyer that he was, and that his clients are leaving him. All mine have left me long since. Come and drink with me, Doctor.'
I broke away from the poor toper who had drunk up his wits as well as his money, and hurried to my cousin's chambers, into which I had not thought to enter save as one who brings reproaches – a useless burden.
Benjamin was lying in bed: an old crone sat by the fire, nodding. Beside her was a bottle, and she was, I found, half drunk. Her I quickly sent about her business. No one else had been attending him. Yet he was laid low, as I presently discovered, with that kind of fever which is bred in the villainous air of our prisons – the same fever which had carried off his grandfather.
Perhaps, if there were no foul and stinking wards, jails, and clinks, this kind of fever would be banished altogether, and be no more seen. So, if we could discover the origin and cause of all diseases, we might once more restore man to his primitive condition, which I take to have been one free from any kind of disease or infirmity, designed at first by his Creator so to live for ever, and, after the Fall, enabled (when medicine shall be so far advanced) to die of old age after such prolongation of life and strength as yet we cannot even understand.
'Cousin,' I said, 'I am sorry to find thee lying in this condition.'
'Ay,' he replied, in a voice weak and low, not like his old blustering tones. 'Curse me and upbraid me, if thou wilt. How art thou come hither? Is it the ghost of Humphrey? Art thou dead like my grandfather? Are we on the Plantations of Barbadoes?'
'Indeed, I am no ghost, Benjamin. As for curses, I have none; and as for reproaches, I leave them to thy conscience.'
'Humphrey, I am sore afflicted. I am now so low that I cannot even sit upright in my bed. But thou art a doctor – thou wilt bring me back to health. I am already better only for seeing thee here.'
I declare that as yet I had no thought, no thought at all, of what I was to do. I was but a physician in presence of a sick man, and therefore bound to help him if I could.
I asked him first certain questions, as physicians use, concerning his disorder and its symptoms. I learned that, after attending at the Court, he was attacked by fits of shivering and of great heat, being hot and cold alternately, and that in order to expel the fever he had sat drinking the whole evening – a most dangerous thing to do. Next, that in the morning he had been unable to rise from his bed, and, being thirsty, had drunk more wine – a thing enough of itself to kill a man in such a fever. Then he lost his head, and could tell me no more what had happened until he saw me standing by his bedside. In short, he had been in delirium, and was now in a lucid interval, out of which he would presently fall a-wandering again, and, perhaps, raving, and so another lucid interval, after which he would die, unless something could be done for him.
I liked not his appearance nor the account which he gave me, nor did I like his pulse, nor the strange look in his eyes – death doth often show his coming by such a prophetic terror of the eyes.
'Humphrey,' he said pitifully. 'It was no fault of mine that thou wast sent to the Plantations.'
'That I know full well, Cousin,' I answered him. 'Be easy on that score.'
'And as for Alice,' he went on. 'All is fair in love.'
I made no reply, because at this point a great temptation assailed my soul.
You have heard how I learned many secrets of the women while I was abroad. Now, while we were in Providence Island I found a woman of the breed they call half caste – that is, half Indian and half Portuguese – living in what she called wedlock with an English sailor, who did impart to me a great secret of her own people. I obtained from her not only the knowledge of a most potent drug (known already to the Jesuits), but also a goodly quantity of the drug itself. This, with certain other discoveries and observations of my own, I was about to communicate to the College in Warwick Lane.
As for this drug, I verily believe it is the most potent medicine ever yet discovered. It is now some years since it was first brought over to Europe by the Jesuits, and is therefore called Pulvis Jesuiticus, and sometimes Peruvian Bark. When administered at such a stage of the fever as had now been reached by my unhappy cousin, it seldom fails to vivify the spirits, and so to act upon the nerves as to restore the sinking, and to call back to life a man almost moribund.
Remembering this, I lugged the packet out of my pocket and laid it on the table.
'Be of good cheer, Cousin,' I said; 'I have a drug which is strong enough, with the help of God, to make a dying man sit up again. Courage, then!'
When I had said these words my temptation fell upon me. It came in the guise of a voice which whispered in my ear.
'Should this man die,' it said, 'there will be freedom for Alice. She can then marry the man she loves. She will be restored to happiness. While he lives, she must still continue in misery, being cut off from love. Let him die therefore.'
'Humphrey,' said Ben; 'in this matter of Alice: if she will come to me, I will make her happy. But I know not where she is hidden. Things go ill with me since that unlucky day. I would to God I had not done it! Nothing hath gone well since; and I drink daily to hide her face. Yet at night she haunts me – with her father, who threatens, and her mother, who weeps, and my grandfather, who reproaches. Humphrey – tell me – what is it, man? What mean thy looks?'
For while he spoke that other voice was in my ears also.
'Should he die, Alice will be happy again. Should he live, she will continue in misery.' At these words (which were but my own thoughts, yet involuntary), I felt so great a pity, such an overwhelming love for Alice, that my spirit was wholly carried away. To restore her freedom! Oh! what price was too great for such a gift? Nay – I was seized with the thought that to give her so great a thing, even my own destruction would be a light price to pay. Never, until that moment, had I known how fondly and truly I loved her. Why, if it were to be done over again – but this matters not. I have to make my confession.
'Humphrey, speak!' I suppose that my trouble showed itself in my face.
'Thou art married to Alice,' I said slowly. 'That cannot be denied. So long as thou livest, Benjamin, so long will she be robbed of everything that she desires, so long will she be unhappy. Now, if thou shouldst die' —
'Die? I cannot die; I must live.' He tried to raise himself, but he was too weak. 'Cousin, save my life.'
'If thou shouldst die, Benjamin,' I went on, regardless of his words, 'she will be set free. It is only by thy death that she can be set free. Say then to thyself: "I have done this poor woman so great an injury that nothing but my death can atone for it. Willingly, therefore, will I lay down my life, hoping thus to atone for this abominable wickedness."'
'Humphrey, do not mock me. Give me – give me – give me speedily the drug of which you spoke. I die – I die! – Oh! – give me of thy drug.'
Then I took the packet containing the Pulvis Jesuiticus and threw it upon the fire, where in a moment it was a little heap of ashes.
'Now, Benjamin,' I said, 'I cannot help thee. Thou must surely die.'
He shrieked, he wept, he implored me to do something – something to keep him alive. He began to curse and to swear.
'No one can now save thee, Benjamin,' I told him. 'Not all the College of Physicians; not all the medicines in England. Thou must die. Listen and heed: in a short time, unless thy present weakness causeth thee to expire, there will fall upon thee another fit of fever and delirium, after which another interval of reason: perhaps another – but yet thou must surely die. Prepare thy soul, therefore. Is there any message for Alice that thou wouldst send to her, being now at the point of death?'
His only answer was to curse and weep alternately.
Then I knelt beside his bed, and prayed aloud for him. But incessantly he cried for help, wearing himself out with prayers and curses.
'Benjamin,' I said, when I had thus prayed a while, but ineffectually, 'I shall take to Alice, instead of these curses, which avail nothing, a prayer for pardon, in order to touch her heart and cause her to think of thee with forgiveness, as of one who repented at the end. This I shall do for her sake. I shall also tell thy father that thy death was repentant, and shall take to him also a prayer for forgiveness as from thee. This will lighten his sorrow, and cause him to remember thee with the greater love. And to Robin, too, so that he may cease to call thee villain, I will carry, not these ravings, but a humble prayer (as from thyself) for forgiveness.'
This is my confession: I, who might have saved my cousin, suffered him to die.
The sick man, when he found that prayers or curses would not avail, fell to moaning, rolling his head from side to side. When he was thus quiet I prayed again for him, exhorting him to lift up his soul to his Judge, and assuring him of our full forgiveness. But, indeed, I know not if he heard or understood. It was then about four of the clock, and growing dark. I lit a candle, and examined him again. I think that he was now unconscious. He seemed as if he slept. I sat down and watched.
I think that at midnight, or thereabouts, I must have fallen asleep.
When I awoke the candle was out, and the fire was out. The room was in perfect darkness. I laid my hand upon my cousin's forehead. He was cold and dead.
Then I heard the voice of the watchman in the street: 'Past two o'clock, and a frosty morning!'
The voice I had heard before whispered again in my ear.
'Alice is free – Alice is free! Thou – thou – thou alone hast set her free! Thou hast killed her husband!'
I threw myself upon my knees and spent the rest of that long night in seeking for repentance; but then, as now, the lamentation of a sinner is also mingled with the joy of thinking that Alice was free at last, and by none other hand than mine.
This I repeat is my confession: I might have saved my cousin, and I suffered him to die. Wherefore I have left the profession in which it was my ambition to distinguish myself, and am no longer anything but a poor and obscure person, living on the charity of my friends in a remote village.
Two days afterwards I was sitting at the table, looking through the dead man's papers, when I heard a footstep on the stair.
It was Barnaby, who broke noisily into the room.
'Where is Benjamin?' he cried. 'Where is that villain?'
'What do you want with him?'
'I want to kill him. I am come to kill him.'
'Look upon the bed, Barnaby.' I laid back the sheet and showed him the pale face of the dead man.
'The hand of the Lord – or that of another – hath already killed him. Art thou now content?'