The morning was cold and gray. A drizzling rain was falling. The passers were few, and the appearance of the streets dirty and, with littered kennels, was dreary indeed. I found it hard at once to keep myself warm and to avoid observation as I hung about. Ten o'clock had rung from more than one steeple, and I was beginning to think myself a fool for my pains, when a woman of middle height, slender and young in figure, but wearing a shabby brown cloak, and with her head muffled in a hood, as though she had the toothache or dreaded the weather more than ordinary, turned the corner of the belfry and made straight toward me. She drew near, and seemed about to pass me without notice. But when abreast of me she glanced up suddenly, her eyes the only features I could see.
"Follow me to the church!" she murmured gently. And she swept on to the porch.
I obeyed reluctantly; very reluctantly, my feet seeming like lead. For I knew who she was. Though I had only seen her eyes, I had recognized them, and guessed already what her business with me was. She led the way resolutely to a quiet corner. The church was empty and still, with only the scent of incense in the air to tell of a recent service. It was no surprise to me when she turned abruptly, and, removing her hood, looked me in the face.
"What have you done with him?" she panted, laying her hand on my arm. "Speak! Tell me what you have done with him?"
The question, the very question, I had foreseen! Yet I tried to fence with her. I said, "With whom?"
"With whom?" she repeated bitterly. "You know me! I am not so changed in three years that you do not recognize me?"
"No; I know you," I said.
There was a hectic flush on her cheeks, and it seemed to me that the dark hair was thinner on her thin temples than when I had seen her last. But the eyes were the same.
"Then why ask with whom?" she cried passionately. "What have you done with the man you called Clarence?"
"Done with him?" I said feebly.
"Ay, done with him? Come, speak and tell me!" she repeated in fierce accents, her hand clutching my wrist, her eyes probing my face with merciless glances. "Have you killed him? Tell me!"
"Killed him, Mistress Anne?" I said sullenly. "No, I have not killed him."
"He is alive?" she cried.
"For all I know, he is alive."
She glared at me for some seconds to assure herself that I was telling the truth. Then she heaved a great sigh; her hands fell from my wrists, the color faded out of her face, and she lowered her eyes. I glanced round with a momentary idea of escape--I so shrank from that which was to come. But before I had well entertained the notion she looked up, her face grown calm.
"Then what have you done with him?" she asked.
"I have done nothing with him," I answered.
She laughed; a mirthless laugh. "Bah!" she said, "do not tell me lies! That is your honor, I suppose--your honor to your friends down in the cellar there! Do you think that I do not know all about them? Shall I give you the list? He is a very dangerous conspirator, is Sir Thomas Penruddocke, is he not? And that scented dandy Master Kingston! Or Master Crewdson--tell me of him! Tell me of him, I say!" she exclaimed, with a sudden return from irony to a fierce eagerness, a breathless impatience. "Why did he not come up last night? What have you done with him?"
I shook my head, sick and trembling. How could I tell her?
"I see," she said. "You will not tell me. But you swear he is yet alive, Master Cludde? Good. Then you are holding him for a hostage? Is that it?" with a piercing glance at my face. "Or, you have condemned him, but for some reason the sentence has not been executed!" She drew a long, deep breath, for I fear my face betrayed me. "That is it, is it? Then there is still time."
She turned from me and looked toward the end of the aisle, where a dull red lamp hanging before the altar glowed feebly in the warm scented air. She seemed so to turn and so to look in thankfulness, as if the news she had learned were good instead of what it was. "What is the hour fixed?" she asked suddenly.
I shook my head.
"You will not tell me? Well, it matters not," she answered briskly. "He must be saved. Do you hear? He must be saved, Master Cludde. That is your business."
I shook my head.
"You think it is not?" she said. "Well, I can show you it is! Listen!"
She raised herself on a step of the font, and looked me harshly in the face. "If he be not given up to me safe and sound by sunset this evening, I will betray you all! All! I have the list here," she muttered sternly, touching her bosom. "You, Master Bertie, Penruddocke, Fleming, Barnes--all. All, do you hear? Give him up or you shall hang!"
"You would not do it!" I cried aghast, peering into her burning eyes.
"Would not do it? Fool!" she hissed. "If all the world but he had one head, I would cut it off to save his! He is my husband! Do you hear? He is my husband--my all! Do you think I have given up everything, friends and honor and safety, for him, to lose him now? No! You say I would not do it? Do you know what I have done? You have a scar there."
She touched me lightly on the breast. "I did it," she said.
"You?" I muttered.
"Yes, I, you blind fool! I did it," she answered. "You escaped then, and I was glad of it, since the wound answered my purpose. But you will not escape again. The cord is surer."
Something in her last words crossed my memory and enlightened me.
"You were the woman I saw last night," I said. "You followed us from High gate."
"What matter! What matter!" she exclaimed impatiently. "Better be footsore than heartsore. Will you do now what I want? Will you answer for his life?"
"I can do nothing without the others," I said.
"But the others know nothing," she answered. "They do not know their own danger. Where will you find them?"
"I shall find them," I replied resolutely. "And in any case I must consult Master Bertie. Will you come and see him?"
"And be locked up too?" she said sternly, and in a different tone. "No. It is you must do this, and you must answer for it, Francis Cludde. You, and no one else."
"I can do nothing by myself," I repeated.
"Ay, but you can--you must!" she retorted, "or Heaven's curse will be upon you! You think me mad to say that. Listen! Listen, fool! The man whom you have condemned, whom you have left to die, is not only my husband, wedded to me these three years, but your father--your father, Ferdinand Cludde!"
I stood glaring at her.
"You were a blind bat or you would have found it out for yourself," she continued scornfully. "A babe would have guessed it, knowing as much of your father as you did."
"Does he know himself?" I muttered hoarsely, looking anywhere but at her now. The shock had left me dull and confused. I did not doubt her word, rather I wondered with her that I had not found this out for myself. But the possibility of meeting my father in that wide world into which I had plunged to escape from the knowledge of his existence, had never occurred to me. Had I thought of it, it would have seemed too unlikely; and though I might have seen in Gardiner a link between us, and so have identified him, the greatness of the Chancellor's transactions, and certain things about Clarence which had seemed, or would have seemed, had I ever taken the point into consideration, at variance with my ideas of my father, had prevented me getting upon the track.
"Does he know that you are his son, do you mean?" she said. "No, he does not."
"You have not told him?"
"No," she answered with a slight shiver.
I understood. I comprehended that even to her the eagerness with which, being father and son, we had sought one another's lives during those days on the Rhine, had seemed so dreadful that she had concealed the truth from him.
"When did you learn it?" I asked, trembling too.
"I knew his right name before I ever saw you," she answered. "Yours I learned on the day I left you at Santon." Looking back I remembered the strange horror, then inexplicable, which she had betrayed; and I understood it. So it was that knowledge which had driven her from us! "What will you do now?" she said. "You will save him? You must save him! He is your father."
Save him? I shuddered at the thought that I had destroyed him! that I, his son, had denounced him! Save him! The perspiration sprang out in beads on my forehead. If I could not save him I should live pitied by my friends and loathed by my enemies!
"If it be possible," I muttered, "I will save him."
"You swear it?" she cried. Before I could answer she seized my arm and dragged me up the dim aisle until we stood together before the Figure and the Cross. The chimes above us rang eleven. A shaft of cold sunshine pierced a dusty window, and, full of dancing motes, shot athwart the pillars.
"Swear!" she repeated with trembling eagerness, turning her eyes on mine, and raising her hand solemnly toward the Figure. "Swear by the Cross!"
"I swear," I said.
She dropped her hand. Her form seemed to shrink and grow less. Making a sign to me to go, she fell on her knees on the step, and drew her hood over her face. I walked away on tiptoe down the aisle, but glancing back from the door of the church I saw the small, solitary figure still kneeling in prayer. The sunshine had died away. The dusty window was colorless. Only the red lamp glowed dully above her head. I seemed to see what the end would be. Then I pushed aside the curtain, and slipped out into the keen air. It was hers to pray. It was mine to act.
I lost no time, but on my return I could not find Master Bertie either in the public room or in the inn yard, so I sought him in his bedroom, where I found him placidly reading a book; his patient waiting in striking contrast with the feverish anxiety which had taken hold of me. "What is it, lad?" he said, closing the volume, and laying it down on my entrance. "You look disturbed?"
"I have seen Mistress Anne," I answered. He whistled softly, staring at me without a word. "She knows all," I continued.
"How much is all?" he asked after a pause.
"Our names--all our names, Penruddocke's, Kingston's, the others; our meeting-place, and that we hold Clarence a prisoner. She was that old woman whom we saw at the Gatehouse tavern last night."
He nodded, appearing neither greatly surprised nor greatly alarmed. "Does she intend to use her knowledge?" he said. "I suppose she does."
"Unless we let him go safe and unhurt before sunset."
"They will never consent to it," he answered, shaking his head.
"Then they will hang!" I cried.
He looked hard at me a moment, discerning something strange in the bitterness of my last words. "Come, lad," he said, "you have not told me all. What else have you learned?"
"How can I tell you?" I cried wildly, waving him off, and going to the lattice that my face might be hidden from him. "Heaven has cursed me!" I added, my voice breaking.
He came and laid his hand on my shoulder. "Heaven curses no one," he said. "Most of our curses we make for ourselves. What is it, lad?"
I covered my face with my hands. "He--he is my father," I muttered. "Do you understand? Do you see what I have done? He is my father!"
"Ha!" Master Bertie uttered that one exclamation in intense astonishment; then he said no more. But the pressure of his hand told me that he understood, that he felt with me, that he would help me. And that silent comprehension, that silent assurance, gave the sweetest comfort. "He must be allowed to go, then, for this time," he resumed gravely, after a pause in which I had had time to recover myself. "We will see to it. But there will be difficulties. You must be strong and brave. The truth must be told. It is the only way."
I saw that it was, though I shrank exceedingly from the ordeal before me. Master Bertie advised, when I grew more calm, that we should be the first at the rendezvous, lest by some chance Penruddocke's orders should be anticipated; and accordingly, soon after two o'clock, we mounted, and set forth. I remarked that my companion looked very carefully to his arms, and, taking the hint, I followed his example.
It was a silent, melancholy, anxious ride. However successful we might be in rescuing my father--alas! that I should have to-day and always to call that man father--I could not escape the future before me. I had felt shame while he was but a name to me; how could I endure to live, with his infamy always before my eyes? Petronilla, of whom I had been thinking so much since I returned to England, whose knot of velvet had never left my breast nor her gentle face my heart--how could I go back to her now? I had thought my father dead, and his name and fame old tales. But the years of foreign life which yesterday had seemed a sufficient barrier between his past and myself--of what use were they now? Or the foreign service I had fondly regarded as a kind of purification?
Master Bertie broke in on my reverie much as if he had followed its course. "Understand one thing, lad!" he said, laying his hand on the withers of my horse. "Yours must not be the hand to punish your father. But after to-day you will owe him no duty. You will part from him to-day and he will be a stranger to you. He deserted you when you were a child; and if you owe reverence to any one, it is to your uncle and not to him. He has himself severed the ties between you."
"Yes," I said. "I will go abroad. I will go back to Wilna."
"If ill comes of our enterprise--as I fear ill will come--we will both go back, if we can," he answered. "If good by any chance should come of it, then you shall be my brother, our family shall be your family. The Duchess is rich enough," he added with a smile, "to allow you a younger brother's portion."
I could not answer him as I desired, for we passed at that moment under the archway, and became instantly involved in the bustle going forward in the courtyard. Near the principal door of the inn stood eight or nine horses gayly caparisoned and in the charge of three foreign-looking men, who, lounging in their saddles, were passing a jug from hand to hand. They turned as we rode in and looked at us curiously, but not with any impertinence. Apparently they were waiting for the rest of their party, who were inside the house. Civilly disposed as they seemed, the fact that they were armed, and wore rich liveries of black and gold, caused me, and I think both of us, a momentary alarm.
"Who are they?" Master Bertie asked in a low voice, as he rode to the opposite door and dismounted with his back to them.
"They are Spaniards, I fancy," I said, scanning them over the shoulders of my horse as I too got off. "Old friends, so to speak."
"They seem wonderfully subdued for them," he answered, "and on their best behavior. If half the tales we heard this morning be true, they are not wont to carry themselves like this."
Yet they certainly were Spanish, for I overheard them speaking to one another in that language; and before we had well dismounted, their leader--whom they received with great respect, one of them jumping down to hold his stirrup--came out with three or four more and got to horse again. Turning his rein to lead the way out through the north gate he passed near us, and as he settled himself in his saddle took a good look at us. The look passed harmlessly over me, but reaching Master Bertie became concentrated. The rider started and smiled faintly. He seemed to pause, then he raised his plumed cap and bowed low--covered himself again and rode on. His train all followed his example and saluted us as they passed. Master Bertie's face, which had flushed a fiery red under the other's gaze, grew pale again. He looked at me, when they had gone by, with startled eyes.
"Do you know who that was?" he said, speaking like one who had received a blow and did not yet know how much he was hurt.
"No," I said.
"It was the Count de Feria, the Spanish Ambassador," he answered. "And he recognized me. I met him often, years ago. I knew him again as soon as he came out, but I did not think he would by any chance recognize me in this dress."
"Are you sure," I asked in amazement, "that it was he?"
"Quite sure," he answered.
"But why did he not have you arrested, or at least detained? The warrants are still out against you."
Master Bertie shook his head. "I cannot tell," he said darkly. "He is a Spaniard. But come, we have the less time to lose. We must join our friends and take their advice; we seem to be surrounded by pitfalls."
At this moment the lame ostler came up, and grumbling at us as if he had never seen us in his life before, and never wished to see us again, took our horses. We went into the kitchen, and taking the first chance of slipping upstairs to No. 15, we were admitted with the same precautions as before, and descending the shaft gained the cellar.
Here we were not, as we had looked to be, the first on the scene. I suppose a sense of the insecurity of our meeting-place had led every one to come early, so as to be gone early. Penruddocke indeed was not here yet, but Kingston and half a score of others were sitting about conversing in low tones. It was plain that the distrust and suspicion which we had remarked on the previous day had not been allayed by the discovery of Clarence's treachery.
Indeed, it was clear that the distrust and despondency had to-day become a panic. Men glared at one another and at the door, and talked in whispers and started at the slightest sound. I glanced round. The one I sought for with eager yet shrinking eyes was not to be seen. I turned to Master Bertie, my face mutely calling on him to ask the question. "Where is the prisoner?" he said sharply.
A moment I hung in suspense. Then one of the men said, "He is in there. He is safe enough!" He pointed, as he spoke, to a door which seemed to lead to an inner cellar.
"Right," said Master Bertie, still standing. "I have two pieces of bad news for you nevertheless. Firstly I have just been recognized by the Spanish Ambassador, whom I met in the courtyard above."
Half the men rose to their feet. "What is he doing here?" they cried, one boldly, the others with the quaver very plain in their voices.
"I do not know; but he recognized me. Why he took no steps to detain or arrest me I cannot tell. He rode away by the north road."
They gazed at one another and we at them. The wolfish look which fear brings into some faces grew stronger in theirs.
"What is your other bad news?" said Kingston, with an oath.
"A person outside, a friend of the prisoner, has a list of our names, and knows our meeting-place and our plans. She threatens to use the knowledge unless the man Clarence or Crewdson be set free."
There was a loud murmur of wrath and dismay, amid which Kingston alone preserved his composure. "We might have been prepared for that," he said quietly. "It is an old precaution of such folk. But how did you come to hear of it?"
"My friend here saw the messenger and heard the terms. The man must be set free by sunset."
"And what warranty have we that he will not go straight with his plans and his list to the Council?"
Master Bertie could not answer that, neither could I; we had no surety, and if we set him free could take none save his word.His word!Could even I ask them to accept that? To stake the life of the meanest of them on it?
I saw the difficulties of the position, and when Master Kingston pronounced coolly that this was a waste of time, and that the only wise course was to dispose of the principal witness, both in the interests of justice and our own safety, and then shift for ourselves before the storm broke, I acknowledged in my heart the wisdom of the course, and felt that yesterday it would have received my assent.
"The risk is about the same either way," Master Bertie said.
"Not at all," Kingston objected, a sparkle of malice in his eye. Last night we had thwarted him. To-night it was his turn; and the dark lowering looks of those round him showed that numbers were with him. "This fellow can hang us all. His accomplice who escapes can know nothing save through him, and could give only vague and uncertain evidence. No, no. Let us cast lots who shall do it, get it done quickly, and begone."
"We must wait at least," Bertie urged, "until Sir Thomas comes."
"No!" retorted Kingston, with heat. "We are all equal here. Besides the man was condemned yesterday, with the full assent of all. It only remains to carry out the sentence. Surely this gentleman," he continued, turning suddenly upon me, "who was so ready to accuse him yesterday, does not wish him spared to-day?"
"I do wish it," I said, in a low tone.
"Ho! ho!" he cried, folding his arms and throwing back his head, astonished at the success of his own question. "Then may we ask for your reasons, sir? Last night you could not lay your tongue to words too bad for him. Tonight you wish to spare him, and let him go?"
"I do," I said. I felt that every eye was upon me, and that, Master Bertie excepted, not one there would feel sympathy with me in my humiliation. They were driven to the wall. They had no time for fine feeling, for sympathy, for appreciation of the tragic, unless it touched themselves. What chance had I with them, though I was a son pleading for a father? Nay, what argument had I save that I was his son, and that I had brought him to this? No argument. Only the appeal to them that they would not make me a parricide! And I felt that at this they would mock.
And so, in view of those stern, curious faces, a new temptation seized me--the temptation to be silent. Why should I not stand by and let things take their course? Why should I not spare myself the shame which I already saw would be fruitless? When Master Kingston, with a cynical bow, said, "Your reasons, sir?" I stood mute and trembling. If I kept silence, if I refused to give my reasons, if I did not acknowledge the prisoner, but merely begged his life, he would die, and the connection between us would be known only to one or two. I should be freed from him and might go my own way. The sins of Ferdinand Cludde were well-nigh forgotten--why take to myself the sins of Clarence, which would otherwise never stain my name, would never be associated with my father or myself?
Why, indeed? It was a great and sore temptation, as I stood there before all those eyes. He had deserved death. I had given him up in perfect innocence. Had I any right to call on them to risk their lives that I might go harmless in conscience, and he in person? Had I----
What, was there after all some taint in my blood? Was I going to become like him--to take to myself a shame of my own earning, in the effort to escape from the burden of his ill-fame? I remembered in time the oath I had sworn, and when Kingston repeated his question, I answered him quickly. "I did not know yesterday who he was," I said. "I have discovered since that he is my father. I ask nothing on his account. Were he only my father I would not plead for him. I plead for myself," I murmured. "If you show no pity, you make me a parricide."
I had done them wrong. There was something in my voice, I suppose, as I said the words which cost me so much, which wrought with almost all of them in a degree. They gazed at me with awed, wondering faces, and murmured "His father!" in low tones. They were recalling the scene of last night, the moment when I had denounced him, the curse he had hurled at me, the half-told story of which that had seemed the climax. I had wronged them. They did see the tragedy of it.
Yes, they pitied me; but they showed plainly that they would still do what perhaps I should have done in their place--justice. "He knows too much!" said one. "Our lives are as good as his," muttered another--the first to become thoroughly himself again--"why should we all die for him?" The wolfish glare came back fast to their eyes. They handled their weapons impatiently. They were longing to be away. At this moment, when I saw I had indeed made my confession in vain, Master Bertie struck in. "What," he said, "if Master Carey and I take charge of him, and escorting him to his agent without, be answerable for both of them?"
"You would be only putting your necks into the noose!" said Kingston.
"We will risk that!" replied my friend--and what a friend and what a man he seemed amid that ignoble crew!--"I will myself promise you that if he refuse to remain with us until midnight, or tries wherever we are to raise an alarm or communicate with any one, I will run him through with my own hand? Will not that satisfy you?"
"No," Master Kingston retorted, "it will not! A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!"
"But the woman outside?" said one timidly.
"We must run that risk!" quoth he. "In an hour or two we shall be in hiding. Come, the lot must be drawn. For this gentleman, let him stand aside."
I leaned against the wall, dazed and horror-stricken. Now that I had identified myself with him I felt a great longing to save him. I scarcely noticed the group drawing pieces of paper at the table. My every thought was taken up with the low door over there, and the wretched man lying bound in the darkness behind it. What must be the horror, the black despair, the hate and defiance of his mind as he lay there, trapped at last like any beast of prey? It was horrible! horrible! horrible!
I covered my face and could not restrain the cry of unutterable distress which rose to my lips. They looked round, two or three of them, from the table. But the impression my appeal had made upon them had faded away already, and they only shrugged their shoulders and turned again to their task. Master Bertie alone stood apart, his arms folded, his face grave and dark. He too had abandoned hope. There seemed no hope, when suddenly there came a knocking at the door. The papers were dropped, and while some stood as if stiffened into stone, others turned and gazed at their neighbors. It was a knocking more hasty and imperative than the usual summons, though given in the same fashion. At last a man found tongue. "It is Sir Thomas," he suggested, with a sigh of relief. "He is in a hurry and brings news. I know his knock."
"Then open the door, fool," cried Kingston. "If you can see through a two-inch plank, why do you stand there like a gaby?"
Master Bertie anticipated the man, and himself opened the door and admitted the knocker. Penruddocke it was; he came in, still drumming on the door with his fist, his eyes sparkling, his ruddy cheeks aglow. He crossed the threshold with a swagger, and looking at us all burst into a strange peal of laughter. "Yoicks! Gone to earth!" he shouted, waving his hand as if he had a whip in it. "Gone to earth--gone forever! Did you think it was the Lords of the Council, my lads?"
He had left the door wide open behind him, and we now saw in the doorway the seafaring man who usually guarded the room above. "What does this mean, Sir Thomas?" Kingston said sternly. He thought, I fancy, as many of us did, that the knight was drunk. "Have you given that man permission to leave his post?"
"Post? There are no more posts," cried Sir Thomas, with a strange jollity. He certainly was drunk, but perhaps not with liquor. "Except good fat posts," he continued, smacking Master Bertie on the shoulder, "for loyal men who have done the state service, and risked their lives in evil times! Posts? I shall get so drunk to-night that the stoutest post on Ludgate will not hold me up!"
"You seem to have gone far that way already," my friend said coldly.
"So will you, when you hear the news!" Penruddocke replied more soberly. "Lads, the Queen is dying!"
In the vaulted room his statement was received in silence; a silence dictated by no feeling for the woman going before her Maker--how should we who were plotting against her feel for her, we who were for the most part homeless and proscribed through her?--but the silence of men in doubt, in doubt whether this might mean all that from Sir Thomas's aspect it seemed to mean.
"She cannot live a week!" Penruddocke continued. "The doctors have given up hope, and at the palace all is in confusion. She has named the Princess Elizabeth her successor, and even now Cecil is drawing up the proclamations. To show that the game is really up, the Count de Feria, the Spanish Ambassador, has gone this very day to Hatfield to pay his respects to the coming queen."
Then indeed the vaulted roof did ring--ring and ring again with shouts of "The Coming Queen!" Men over whom the wings of death had seemed a minute ago to be hovering, darkening all things to them, looked up and saw the sun. "The Coming Queen!" they cried.
"You need fear nothing!" continued Penruddocke wildly. "No one will dare to execute the warrants. The Bishops are shaking in their miters. Pole is said to be dying. Bonner is more likely to hang himself than burn others. Up and out and play the man! Away to your counties and get ready your tar-barrels! Now we will give them a taste of the Cujus Regio! Ho! drawer, there! A cup of ale!"
He turned, and shouting a scrap of a song, swaggered back into the shaft and began to ascend. They all trooped after him, talking and laughing, a reckless, good-natured crew, looking to a man as if they had never known fear or selfishness--as if distrust were a thing impossible to them. Master Kingston alone, whom his losses had soured and who still brooded over his revenge, went off moodily.
I was for stopping one of them; but Master Bertie directed my eyes by a gesture of his hand to the door at the far end of the cellar, and I saw that the key was in the lock. He wrung my hand hard. "Tell him all," he muttered. "I will wait above."
Tell him all? I stood thinking, my hand on the key. The voices of the rearmost of the conspirators sounded more and more faintly as they passed up the shaft, until their last accents died in the room above, and silence followed; a silence in strange contrast with the bright glare of the torches which burned round me and lit up the empty cellar as for a feast. I was wondering what he would say when I told him all--when I said "I am your son! I, whom Providence has used to thwart your plans, whose life you sought, whom, without a thought of pity, you left to perish! I am your son!"
Infinitely I dreaded the moment when I should tell him this, and hear his answer; and I lingered with my hand on the key until an abrupt knocking on the other side of the door brought the blood to my face. Before I could turn the key the hasty summons was repeated, and grew to a frantic, hurried drumming on the boards--a sound which plainly told of terror suddenly conceived and in an instant full-grown. A hoarse cry followed, coming dully to my ears through the thickness of the door, and the next moment the stout planks shook as a heavy weight fell against them.
I turned the key, and the door was flung open from within. My father stumbled out.
The strong light for an instant blinded him, and he blinked as an owl does brought to the sunshine. Even in him the long hours passed in solitude and the blackness of despair had worked changes. His hair was grayer; in patches it was almost white, and then again dark. He had gnawed his lower lip, and there were bloodstains on it. His mustache, too, was ragged and torn, as if he had gnawed that also. His eyes were bloodshot, his lean face was white and haggard and fierce.
"Ha!" he cried, trembling, as he peered round, "I thought they had left me to starve! There were rats in there! I thought----"
He stopped. He saw me standing holding the edge of the door. He saw that otherwise the room was empty, the farther door leading to the shaft open. An open door! To him doubtless it seemed of all sights the most wonderful, the most heavenly! His knees began to shake under him.
"What is it?" he muttered. "What were they shouting about? I heard them shouting."
"The queen is dying," I answered simply, "or dead, and you can do us no more harm. You are free."
"Free?" He repeated the word, leaning against the wall, his eyes wild and glaring, his lips parted.
"Yes, free," I answered, in a lower voice--"free to go out into the air of heaven a living man!" I paused. For a moment I could not continue. Then I added solemnly, "Sir, Providence has saved you from death, and me from a crime."
He leaned still against the wall, dazed, thunderstruck, almost incredulous, and looked from me to the open door and back again as if without this constant testimony of his eyes he could not believe in his escape.
"It was not Anne?" he murmured. "She did not----"
"She tried to save your life," I answered; "but they would not listen to her."
"Did she come here?"
As he spoke, he straightened himself with an effort and stood up. He was growing more like himself.
"No," I answered. "She sent for me and told me her terms. But Kingston and the others would not listen to them. You would have been dead now, though I did all I could to save you, if Penruddocke had not brought this news of the queen."
"She is dead?"
"She is dying. The Spanish Ambassador," I added, to clinch the matter, for I saw he doubted, "rode through here this afternoon to pay his court to the Princess Elizabeth at Hatfield."
He looked down at the ground, thinking deeply. Most men would have been unable to think at all, unable to concentrate their thoughts on anything save their escape from death. But a life of daily risk and hazard had so hardened this man that I was certain, as I watched him, that he was not praying nor giving thanks. He was already pondering how he might make the most out of the change; how he might to the best advantage sell his knowledge of the government whose hours were numbered to the government which soon would be. The life of intrigue had become second nature to him.
He looked up and our eyes met. We gazed at one another.
"Why are you here?" he said curiously. "Why did they leave you? Why were you the one to stop to set me free, Master Carey?"
"My name is not Carey," I answered.
"What is it, then?" he asked carelessly.
"Cludde," I answered softly.
"Cludde!" He called it out. Even his self-mastery could not cope with this surprise. "Cludde," he said again--said it twice in a lower voice.
"Yes, Cludde," I answered, meeting and yet shrinking from his questioning eyes, "my name is Cludde. So is yours. I tried to save your life, because I learned from Mistress Anne----"
I paused. I shrank from telling him that which, as it seemed to me, would strike him to the ground in shame and horror. But he had no fear.
"What?" he cried. "What did you learn?"
"That you are my father," I answered slowly. "I am Francis Cludde, the son whom you deserted many years ago, and to whom Sir Anthony gave a home at Coton."
I expected him to do anything except what he did. He stared at me with astonished eyes for a minute, and then a low whistle issued from his lips.
"My son, are you! My son!" he said coolly. "And how long have you known this, young sir?"
"Since yesterday," I murmured. The words he had used on that morning at Santon, when he had bidden me die and rot, were fresh in my memory--in my memory, not in his. I recalled his treachery to the Duchess, his pursuit of us, his departure with Anne, the words in which he had cursed me. He remembered apparently none of these things, but simply gazed at me with a thoughtful smile.
"I wish I had known it before," he said at last. "Things might have been different. A pretty dutiful son you have been!"
The sneer did me good. It recalled to my mind what Master Bertie had said.
"There can be no question of duty between us," I answered firmly. "What duty I owe to any one of my family, I owe to my uncle."
"Then why have you told me this?"
"Because I thought it right you should know it," I answered, "were it only that, knowing it, we may go different ways. We have nearly done one another a mischief more than once," I added gravely.
He laughed. He was not one whit abashed by the discovery, nor awed, nor cast down. There was even in his cynical face a gleam of kindliness and pride as he scanned me. We were almost of a height--I the taller by an inch or two; and in our features I believe there was a likeness, though not such as to invite remark.
"You have grown to be a chip of the old block," he said coolly. "I would as soon have you for a son as another. I think on the whole I am pleased. You talked of Providence just now"--this with a laugh of serene amusement--"and perhaps you were right. Perhaps there is such a thing. For I am growing old, and lo! it gives me a son to take care of me."
I shook my head. I could never be that kind of son to him.
"Wait a bit," he said, frowning slightly. "You think your side is up and mine is down, and I can do you no good now, but only harm. You are ashamed of me. Well, wait," he continued, nodding confidently. "Do not be too sure that I cannot help you. I have been wrecked a dozen times, but I never yet failed to find a boat that would take me to shore."
Yes, he was so arrogant in the pride of his many deceits that an hour after Heaven had stretched out its hand to save him, he denied its power and took the glory to himself. I did not know what to say to him, how to undeceive him, how to tell him that it was not the failure of his treachery which shamed me, but the treachery itself. I could only remain silent.
And so he mistook me; and, after pondering a moment with his chin in his hand, he continued:
"I have a plan, my lad. The Queen dies. Well--I am no bigot--long live the Queen and the Protestant religion! The down will be up and the up down, and the Protestants will be everything. It will go hard then with those who cling to the old faith."
He looked at me with a crafty smile, his head on one side.
"I do not understand," I said coldly.
"Then listen. Sir Anthony, will hold by his religion. He used to be a choleric gentleman, and as obstinate as a mule. He will need but to be pricked up a little, and he will get into trouble with the authorities as sure as eggs are eggs. I will answer for it. And then----"
"Well?" I said grimly. How was I to observe even a show of respect for him when I was quivering with fierce wrath and abhorrence? "Do you think that will benefityou?" I cried. "Do you think that you are so high in favor with Cecil and the Protestants that they will set you in Sir Anthony's place? You!"
He looked at me still more craftily, not put out by my indignation, but rather amused by it.
"No, lad, not me," he replied, with tolerant good-nature. "I am somewhat blown upon of late. But Providence has not given me back my son for nothing. I am not alone in the world now. I must remember my family. I must think a little of others as well as of myself."
"What do you mean?" I said, recoiling.
He scanned me for a moment, with his eyes half-shut, his head on one side. Then he laughed, a cynical, jarring laugh.
"Good boy!" he said. "Excellent boy! He knows no more than he is told. His hands are clean, and he has friends upon the winning side who will not see him lose a chance, should a chance turn up. Be satisfied. Keep your hands clean if you like, boy. We understand one another."
He laughed again and turned away; and, much as I dreaded and disliked him, there was something in the indomitable nature of the man which wrung from me a meed of admiration. Could the best of men have recovered more quickly from despair? Could the best of men, their plans failing, have begun to spin fresh webs with equal patience? Could the most courageous and faithful of those who have tried to work the world's bettering, have faced the downfall of their hopes with stouter hearts, with more genuine resignation? Bad as he was, he had courage and endurance beyond the common.
He came back to me when he had gone a few paces.
"Do you know where my sword is?" he asked in a matter-of-fact tone, as one might ask a question of an old comrade.
I found it cast aside behind the door. He took it from me, grumbling over a nick in the edge, which he had caused by some desperate blow when he was seized. He fastened it on with an oath. I could not look at the sword without remembering how nearly he had taken my life with it. The recollection did not trouble him in the slightest.
"Now farewell!" he said carelessly, "I am going to turn over a new leaf, and begin returning good for evil. Do you go to your friends and do your work, and I will go to my friends and do mine."
Then with a nod he walked briskly away, and I heard him climb the ladder and depart.
What was he going to do? I was so deeply amazed by the interview that I did not understand. I had thought him a wicked man, but I had not conceived the hardness of his nature. As I stood alone looking round the vault, I could hardly believe that I had met and spoken to my father, and told him I was his son--and this was all! I could hardly believe that he had gone away with this knowledge, unmoved and unrepentant; alike unwarned by the Providence which had used me to thwart his schemes, and untouched by the beneficence which had thrice held him back from the crime of killing me--ay, proof even against the long-suffering which had plucked him from the abyss and given him one more chance of repentance.