Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Draw me a measure o’ buttry ale; d’ye hear, ye slut?” he growled, following her. “If I’m to eat no supper till you get back, I’ll want a bellyful o’ malt to stay me!”

  But Mrs. Bishop waddled on contemptuously, declaring 426 she meant to go to the hospital, and that he could die o’ thirst for aught she cared.

  Dulcima, who stood in her doorway across the corridor, watched the scene stolidly. Bishop turned on her with an oath, and ordered her to draw his evening cup; she unhooked the tankard which hung under the lanthorn, hesitated, and looked straight at her father. He gave her a brutal shove, demanding to know why she dawdled while he thirsted, and the girl moved off sullenly, with flaming cheeks and eyes averted.

  When she returned from the buttry I saw the warden take the frothing tankard, brush the foam away with his forefinger, and drain the measure to the dregs.

  He handed the empty tankard to his daughter, smacking his lips with a wry face, and drawing the back of his hand across his chin. Then he became angry again.

  “Ugh!” he muttered; “the ale’s spoiled! What’s in it, you baggage?” he demanded, suddenly swinging around on his daughter. “Draw me a cider cup to wash this cursed brew out o’ me!”

  There was a crash. The girl had dropped the tankard at her feet.

  Quick as a flash Bishop raised his hand and dealt his daughter a blow on the neck that sent her to her knees.

  “Break another pot and I’ll break your head, you drab!” he roared. “Get up or I’ll—”

  He choked, gasped, lifted his shaking hand to his mouth, and wiped it.

  “Curse that ale!” he stammered; “it’s sickened me to the bones! What in God’s name is in that brew?”

  He turned and pushed open his door, lurching forward across the threshold with dragging feet. A moment later Dulcima passed my cell, her trembling hands over her eyes.

  I went to my cot and lay down, face buried, teeth set in my lip. A numbness which at moments dulled the throbbing of my brain seemed to settle like chains on every limb.

  Dully I waited for the strokes of the iron bell sounding the seventh hour; a lassitude crept over me — almost a stupor. It was not despair; I had long passed that; it was Hope, slowly dying within my body.

  A few moments afterwards a strange movement inside my cell aroused me, and I opened my hot eyes.

  In the dusk I saw the figure of a man seated beside my cot; peering closer, I perceived his eyes were fixed steadily on me. I sat up on my bed and asked him what he desired.

  He did not answer. A ray of candle-light stealing through the barred window fell on the bright barrel of a pistol which lay across his knees.

  “What do you wish?” I repeated, the truth dawning on me. “Can you not watch me from the corridor as well as in my cell?”

  There was no reply.

  Then at last I understood that this gray shape brooding there at my bedside was a guard of the death-watch, pledged never to leave me, never to take his eyes from me for an instant until the warden of the prison delivered me into the hands of the sheriff on the morrow for my execution.

  Ding-dong! Ding-dong! The prison bell was at last striking the seventh hour. I lay still in my blanket, counting the strokes which rang out in thin, peevish monotony, like the cracked voice of a beldame repeating her petty woes.

  At the last jangle, and while the corridor still hummed with the thin reverberations, I rose and began to pace my narrow cell, head bent on my breast, but keeping my eyes steadily on the grating.

  The guard of the death-watch observed me sullenly. I drank from my pot of water, bathed my feverish face, and walked to the grating.

  The lanthorn above Bishop’s doorway burned brightly; the corridor was quiet. No sound came from Mount’s cell. I could hear rain drumming on a roof somewhere, that was all.

  Bishop was due at seven o’clock to inspect our bolts and bars; he had always arrived punctually. I watched his door. Presently it occurred to me that I had not seen Bishop since six o’clock when he had gone into his room, cursing the ale which his daughter had fetched him. This was unusual; he had never before failed to sit there on his threshold after supper, smoking his long clay pipe, and blinking contentedly at our steel bolts.

  Minute after minute passed; behind me I heard my guard beating a slight tattoo with his heavy boots on the stones.

  Suddenly, as I stood at my grating, I saw Dulcima Bishop step from the warden’s door, close it behind her, and noiselessly lock it on the outside. The light of the lanthorn fell full on her face; it was ghastly. The girl stood a moment, swaying, one hand on the door; then she made a signal towards Mount’s cell; and the next instant I saw Jack Mount bound noiselessly into the corridor. He caught sight of me, held up a reddened, dripping knife, pointed to my cell door, and displayed a key.

  Instantly I turned around and sauntered away from the grating towards my tumbled bed. As I passed the death-watch, he rose and walked over to the outer window where my pot of water stood to cool.

  Eying me cautiously he lifted the jug and drank, then set the pot back and silently resumed his seat, laying his pistol across his knees.

  How was I to get at him? If Mount made the slightest noise in the corridor, the guard was certain to go to the grating.

  Pretending to be occupied in smoothing out my tumbled bedding, I strove to move so that I might get partly behind him, but the fellow’s suspicions seemed to be aroused, for he turned his head as I moved, and watched me steadily.

  To spring on him meant to draw his fire, and a shot would be our undoing. But whatever I did must be done now; I understood that.

  As I hesitated there, holding the blanket in my hands as though I meant to fling it on the bed again, the lamp in the corridor suddenly went out, plunging my cell in darkness.

  The guard sprang to his feet; I fairly flung my body at him, landing on him in a single bound, and hurling him to the stone floor.

  Instantly the light of the lanthorn flooded my cell again; I heard my iron door opening; I crouched in fury on the struggling man under me, whose head and arms I held crushed under the thick blanket. Then came a long, silent struggle, but at last I tore the heavy pistol from his clutch, beat him on the head with the steel butt of it until, through the 429 blanket over his face, red, wet stains spread, and his straining chest and limbs relaxed.

  Pistol in hand, I rose from the lifeless heap on the floor, and turned to find my cell door swinging wide, and Dulcima Bishop watching me, with dilated eyes.

  “Is he dead?” she asked, and broke out in an odd laugh which stretched her lips tight over her teeth. “Best end him now if he still lives,” she added, with a sob; “death is afoot this night, and I have done my part, God wot!”

  I struck the man again — it sickened me to do it. He did not quiver.

  She lifted the lanthorn from the floor and motioned me to follow. At the end of the corridor Mount stood, wiping his reeking knife on the soft soles of his moccasins.

  “The trail’s clear,” he whispered, gayly; “now, lass, where is the scullions’ stairway? Blow out that light, Cardigan! Quiet, now — quiet as a fox in the barn! Give me your hand, lass — and t’other to the lad.”

  The girl caught me by the arm and blew out the light, then she drew me into what seemed to be an impenetrable wall of darkness. Groping forward, I almost fell down a steep flight of stone steps which appeared to lead into the bowels of the earth. Down, down, then through a passage, Mount leading, the girl fairly dragging me off my feet in her excitement, and presently a wooden door creaked open, and a deluge of icy water dashed over me.

  It was rain; I was standing outside the prison, ankle-deep in mud, the free wind blowing, the sleet driving full in my eyes.

  “Oh, this is good, this is good!” muttered Mount, in ecstasy, spreading out his arms as though to take the world to his sick heart once more. “Smell the air, lad! Do you smell it? God! How sweet is this wind in my throat!”

  The girl shivered; her damp, dishevell
ed hair blew in her face. She laid one shaking hand on Mount’s wet sleeve, then the other, and bowed her head on them, sobbing convulsively.

  Mount bent and kissed her.

  “I swear I will use you kindly, child,” he said, soberly. “Come, lass, gay! gay! What care we for a brace o’ dead 430 turnkeys? Lord, how the world will laugh at Billy Bishop when they hear I stole his girl, along with the prison keys! Laugh with me, lass! I mean honestly and kindly by you; I’m fit for a rope at the gibbet’s top if I use you ill!”

  “Would — would you truly wed me?” she stammered, raising her white face to his.

  He swore roundly that he would wed her and end his days in serving her on his marrow-bones for gratitude.

  And, as he made his vow, a startling change passed over her face; she laughed, turned her bright, feverish eyes on us with a reckless toss of her head, and drew the poison-flask from her bosom.

  “You think,” she said, “that we no longer need this little friend to sorrow? You are wrong!”

  And, ere Mount or I could move, she raised the tiny flask betwixt forefinger and thumb, and dropped the dark scarlet contents between her teeth.

  “I drink to your freedom, Jack,” she said, blindly, reeling into Mount’s arms. “Your — freedom — Jack,” she gasped, smiling; “my father drank to it — in ale. He lies dead on the floor of it. All this — for — for your freedom, Jack!”

  Mount was kneeling in the mud; she lay in his arms, the sleet pattering on her upturned face.

  “For your freedom,” she murmured, drowsily— “a maid must burn in hell for that. I burn, I burn! Oh, the fire in me, Jack!”

  Her body writhed and twisted; her great bright eyes never left his. Presently she lay still. A moment later the prison bell broke out wildly through the storm, and a gunshot rang from the north guard-house.

  We placed the dead child under a tree in the new grass, and covered her face with willow branches, all silky with the young buds of April. Then, bending almost double, we ran south along the prison wall, turning west as the wall turned, and presently came to the wooden fence of King’s Chapel.

  Mount gained the top of the fence from my shoulders, and drew me up. Then we dropped.

  There were lights moving in Governor’s Alley and the mews; through the sleet great snow-flakes whirled into the 431 slush of the filthy street. The prison bell rang frantically behind us.

  “It’s the alarm, Jack!” I whispered.

  He gave me a dull look, then shivered in his wet buckskins.

  “She can’t lie out there in the sleet,” he muttered, blood-shot eyes roving restlessly in the darkness. “I am going back!”

  “For God’s sake, don’t do that!” I begged; but he cursed me and brushed me aside.

  Back over the wall he dropped. I started to follow, but he shoved me roughly and bade me mind my own concerns.

  I leaned against the foot of the wall; the sleet pelted me; I bared my throat to it. After a while I heard Mount’s labouring breath on the other side of the wall, and I climbed up to aid him.

  He held the dead child in his arms; I took the body from him; he climbed over, and received it again, bearing it as though it were but a snow-flake’s weight in his great arms.

  “Go you and find a pick and spade in the mews, yonder,” he said. There was a fixed stare in his eyes that alarmed me. “Damn you,” he said, “it is the least we can do!”

  “Jack,” I said, “we cannot stay here to be taken again! You cannot bury her now; the ground is frosted; people will hear us!”

  He glared at me, then swung his heavy head right and left. The next moment he started running through the storm, cradling the burden in his arms. I followed, not knowing what he meant to do.

  At the King’s Chapel gate he turned in along a dim gravel path, hedged with dripping box. Around us lay the headstones of the dead, with here and there a heavy tomb looming up in the storm around us.

  For a moment he halted, peering about him. A square white sepulchre surmounted a mound on his right; he motioned me to hold the dead child and stepped forward, laying his hands on the slab. Then, with a heave of his powerful back, he lifted the huge stone, laying open the shadowy sepulchre below.

  Again he took the dead in his arms, wiped the rain-drops 432 from the face, laid the limp form in the sepulchre, and smoothed the clothing. Together we replaced the slab; it taxed all my strength to lift one end of it. The bell of the prison clanged frantically.

  Mount stood back, breathing heavily, hands hanging. I waited in silence.

  “What a little thing she was!” he muttered; “what a child — to — do — that! Do you think she will lie easy there?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  At the sound of my voice Mount roused and turned sharply to me.

  “The thief and the thief-taker’s daughter!” he whispered, with a ghastly laugh. “They’ll make a book of it — I warrant you! — and hawk it for a penny in Boston town!”

  He touched the slab, all glistening with sleet, gripped the edge of the sepulchre, turned, and shook his fist at the prison. Then, quietly passing his arm through mine, he led the way out of the chapel yard, guiding me between the soaking hedges to the iron gate, and so out into the black alley.

  Almost immediately a man shouted: “Stop thief! Turn out the guard!” and a soldier, in the shadow of the wall, fired at us.

  Mount glared at him stupidly, hands dangling; the soldier ran up to him and presented his bayonet, calling on us to give up.

  The sound of his voice appeared to rouse Mount to fury; he seized the musket, wrenched it from the soldier, and beat him into the mud. Then swinging the weapon by the barrel, he knocked down two bailiffs who were closing in on us, and started after another, with a yell of rage.

  “Jack! Jack!” I cried. “Are you mad? Follow me; quick! We can’t stay here, you great fool!”

  He heard me, halted, hurled the musket after his flying foe, and broke out into a harsh laugh.

  “Come on, lad,” he said. “I did but mean to warm my blood and purge it of the prison rust. Truly I think we must make for the purlieus till they lose our trail!”

  Through reeking lanes, foul alleys, and muddy mews where gaunt dogs battled over scraps with gaunter children, we ran, 433 or lurked to listen, shunning the bleared lanthorn-light, shining through the storm.

  At times the horror of that flight even now appalls me — that flight through the starving town o’ Boston, where old women mouthed at us with their scurvy-cankered gums; where, slinking along dead walls, we stumbled over old men patiently picking with skinny fingers in the rotted herbage for roots to stay their starved stomachs’ craving; where, in doorways, naked children, with bellies bloated by famine, stared at us out of hollow eyes.

  The town appeared to be alive with British soldiery; mounted pickets roved through the streets; parties of officers passed continually; squad after squad of marines crossed our path, and at first we thought that all this show of troops was due to us and our escape, the hour being late for so many troops to be abroad.

  “There’s something else in the wind,” muttered Mount, as we hid in Belcher’s Lane to avoid a party of dragoons; “all this pother is never made on our account. There’s deviltry a-brewing, lad. We had best start for the ‘Wild Goose.’”

  Through the mud of Cow Lane, Flounder Mews, and Battery Marsh we crept on, on, along back roads and shiny lanes, then, alarmed by a galloping dragoon, we threaded the marshy alleys to the north, from Hancock’s Wharf clear around the peninsula to Back Street and Link Alley.

  From thence through Hog Alley and Frog Lane south towards the Neck, only to be frightened north once more by the mad gallop of dragoons, and so to hide in Mackerel Lane.

  And I am minded, as I recall that night’s skulking flight, of a bandy little watchman who, at the mere sight of us, did drop his lanthorn and make off, bawling for aid, until Jack came up with him and fetched him a clip which knocked him and his noisy rattle into the mud of Mackerel L
ane.

  We fled as though all Boston ran snapping at our shin-bones, and at last we turned, unmolested, into Green Lane, and so came in sight of the “Wild Goose Tavern.” Then, as we dropped into a breathless trot and began to plod across Chambers Street, a man, standing in the shadow of a tree, started forward as we came u

  Mount halted and drew his knife, snarling like a jaded wolf.

  “Mount! Cardigan!” cried the man.

  “Paul!” exclaimed Mount, eagerly.

  The goldsmith wrung our hands with a grip of iron.

  “It is the beginning of the end,” he said. “The Grenadiers are to march. I’ve a horse on the Charlestown shore. Gage has closed the gates on the Neck.”

  “What do the Grenadiers want?” asked Mount, all on fire again, fagged and exhausted as he was.

  “They want the cannon and stores at Concord,” replied Revere, in a low, eager voice. “I’m waiting for Clay Rolfe. If the Grenadiers march by land, Rolfe hangs a lamp in the steeple of the Old North; if they take boats, he hangs two lamps. I guess they mean to cross the bay. The boats have been moored under the sterns of the war-ships for a week. I’ve a good horse across the water; I’ll have the country-folk out by daylight if the troops stir an inch to-night. Wait; there’s Rolfe now!”

  A dark cloaked figure came swiftly out of the mews, swinging two unlighted lanthorns. It was Clay Rolfe, our landlord at the “Wild Goose,” and he grasped our hands warmly, laughing in his excitement.

  “Your boatman is ready under Hunt’s Wharf, Paul,” he said. “You had best row across the bay while the rain lasts. It will clear before midnight, and the Somerset is moored close to the Lively to-night.”

  “Yes,” said Revere, “I’ve no mind to run the fleet yonder under a full moon.” And he offered his hand to us, one after another, giving our hands a terrific squeeze.

  “Don’t forget, Rolfe,” he said— “one if by land; two if by sea!”

  Rolfe turned to us.

  “Gage has officers watching every road outside of Boston; but Paul will teach them how fast news can travel.” He glanced at the sky; rain fell heavily. “It won’t last,” he muttered; “there’ll be a moon to-night; Paul, you had best row across now. The oars are muffled.”