The Light of Scarthey: A Romance

Upon his guardian's entrance he roused himself, however, and begged him, when he should return for the dish, to restore neatness to the bed and to assist him in the ordering of his toilet which he wished to be spick and span.

"For I expect a visitor," said Captain Jack gravely.

When in due course the fellow had carried out these wishes with the surly good-nature characteristic of him, Jack set himself to wait.

The square of sky through his window grew from dazzling white to deepest blue, the shadows travelled along the blank walls, the street noises rose and fell in capricious gusts, the church bells jangled, all the myriad sounds which had come to measure his solitary day struck their familiar course upon his ear; yet the expected visitor delayed. But the captain, among other things, had learnt to possess his soul in patience of late; and so, as he slowly paced his cell after his wont, he betrayed neither irritation nor melancholy. If she did not come to-day, then it would be to-morrow. He had no doubt of this.

The afternoon had waned – golden without, full of grey shadows in the prison room – when light footfalls mingled with the well-known heavy tread and jangle of keys, along the echoing passage.

There was the murmur of a woman's voice, a word of gruff reply, and the next moment a tall form wrapped in a many-folded black cloak and closely veiled, advanced a few steps into the room, while, as before, the turnkey retired and locked the door behind him.

His heart beating so thickly that for the moment utterance was impossible, Captain Jack made one hurried pace forward with outstretched hands, only to check himself, however, and let them fall by his side. He would meet her calmly, humbly, as he had resolved.

The woman threw back her veil, and it was Molly's dark gaze, Molly's brown face, flushed and haggard, yet always beautiful, that looked out of the black frame.

An ashen pallor spread over the prisoner's countenance.

"Madeleine?" he asked in a whisper; then, with a loud ring of stern demand, "Madeleine!"

"I went for her, I went for her myself – I did all I could – she would not come."

She would not come!

It is a sort of unwritten law that the supremely afflicted have the right, where possible, to the gratification of the least of their wishes. That Madeleine could refuse to come to him in his last extremity, had never once crossed her lover's brain. He stood bewildered.

"She is not ill?"

"Ill!" Lady Landale's red lips curved in scorn, "No – not ill – but a coward!" She spat the word fiercely as if at the offender's face.

There fell a minute's silence, broken only by a few labouring deep-drawn breaths from the prisoner's oppressed lungs. Then he stood as if turned to stone, not a muscle moving, his eyes fixed, his jaw set.

Molly trembled before this composure, beneath which she divined a suffering so intense that her own frail barriers of self-restraint were well-nigh broken down by a torrent of passionate pity.

But she braced herself with the feeling of the moment's urgency. She had no time to lose.

"Hear me," she cried in low hurried tones, laying a hand upon his folded arm and then drawing it away again as if frightened by the rigid tension she felt there. "Waste no more thought on one so unworthy – all is not lost – I bring you hope, life. Oh, for God's sake, wake up and listen to me – I can save you still. Captain Smith, Jack —Jack!"

Her voice rose as high as she dare lift it, but no statue could be more unhearing.

The woman cast a desperate look around her; hearkened fearfully, all was silent within the prison; then with tremulous haste she cast off her immense cloak, pulled her bonnet from her head, divested herself of her long full skirt and stood, a strange vision, lithe, unconscious, unashamed, her slender woman's figure clad in complete man's raiment, with the exception of the coat. Her dark head cropped and curly, her face, with its fever-bloom, rising flower-like above the folds of her white shirt.

With anxious haste she compared herself with the prisoner.

"René told me well," she said; "with your coat upon me none would tell the difference in this dark room. I am nearly as tall as you too. Thanks be to God that he made me so. Jack," calling in his ear, "don't you see? Don't you understand? It is all quite easy. You have only to put on these clothes of mine, this cloak, the bonnet comes quite over the face; stoop a little as you go out and hold this handkerchief to your face as if in tears. The carriage waits outside and René. The rest is planned. I shall sit on the bed with your coat on. It is a chance – a certainty. When I found René had failed, I swore that I would save you yet. Ever since I came from Pulwick this morning he and I have worked together upon this last plan. There is not a flaw; it must succeed. Oh, God, he does not hear me! Jack – Jack!"

She shook him with a sort of fury, then, falling at his feet, clasped his knees.

"For God's sake – for God's sake!"

He sighed, and again came the murmur:

"She would not come – " He lifted his hand to his forehead and looked round, then down at her, as if from a great height.

She saw that he was aroused at last, sprang to her feet, and poured out the details of the scheme again.

"I run no risk, you see. They would not dare to punish me, a woman – Lady Landale – even if they could. Be quick, the precious moments are going by. I gave the man some gold to leave us as long as he could, but any moment he may be upon us."

"Poor woman," said Jack, and his voice seemed as far off as his gaze; "see these chains."

She staggered back an instant, but the next, crying:

"The file – the file – that was why René gave it to me." She seized the skirt as it lay at her feet, and, striving with agonised endeavours to control the trembling of her hands, drew forth from its pocket a file and would have taken his wrist. But he held his hands above his head, out of her reach, while a strange smile, almost of triumph, parted his lips.

"The bitterness of death is past," he said.

She tore at him in a frenzy, but, repulsed by his immobility, fell again broken at his feet.

In a torrent of words she besought him, for Adrian's sake, for the sake of the beautiful world, of his youth, of the sweetness of life – in her madness, at last, for her own sake! She had ruined him, but she would atone, she would make him happy yet. If he died it was death to her…

When at length her voice sank away from sheer exhaustion, he helped her to rise, and seated her on the chair; then told her quietly that he was quite determined.

"Go home," said he, "and leave me in peace. I thank you for what you would have done, thank you for trying to bring Madeleine," he paused a moment. How purely he had loved her – and twice, twice she had failed him. "Yet, I do not blame her," he went on as if to himself; "I did not deserve to see her, and it has made all the rest easy. Remember," again addressing the woman whom hopelessness seemed for a moment to have benumbed, "that if you would yet do me a kindness, be kind to her. If you would atone – atone to Adrian."

"To Adrian?" echoed Molly, stung to the quick, with a pale smile of exceeding bitterness. And with a rush of pride, strength returned to her.

"I leave you resolved to die then?" she asked him, fiercely.

"You leave me glad to die," he replied, unhesitatingly.

She spoke no more, but got up to replace her garments. He assisted her in silence, but as his awkward bound hands touched her she shuddered away from him.

As she gathered the cloak round her shoulders again, there was a noise of heavy feet at the door.

The jailer thrust in his rusty head and looked furtively from the prisoner to his visitor as they stood silently apart from each other; then, making a sign to some one whose dark figure was shadowed behind him without, entered with a hesitating sidelong step, and, drawing Captain Jack on one side, whispered in his ear.

"The blacksmith's yonder. He's come to measure you, captain, for them there irons you know of – best get the lady quietly away, for he wunnut wait no longer."

The prisoner smiled sternly.

"I am ready," he said, aloud.

"I'll keep him outside a minute or two," added the man, wiping his brow, evidently much relieved by his charge's calmness. "I kep' him back as long as I could – but happen it's allus best to hurry the parting after all."

He moved away upon tiptoe, in instinctive tribute to the lady's sorrow, and drew the door to.

Molly threw back her veil which she had lowered upon his entrance, her face was livid.

"What is it?" she asked, articulating with difficulty.