Complete works of hall c.., p.34
Complete Works of Hall Caine, page 34
When Mrs. Garth had reached the bridge Rotha stepped out and confronted her. The woman gave a little start and then a short forced titter.
“Deary me, lass, ye mak a ghost of yersel’, coming and going sa sudden.”
“And you make ghosts of other people.” Then, without a moment’s warning, Rotha looked close into her eyes and said, “Who killed James Wilson? Tell me quick, quick.”
Mrs. Garth flinched, and for the instant looked confused.
“Tell me, woman, tell me; who killed him there — there where you’ve been beating the ground to conceal the remaining traces of a struggle?”
“Go off and ask thy father,” said Mrs. Garth, recovering herself; and then she added, with a sneer, “but mind thou’rt quick, or he’ll never tell thee in this world.” “Nor will you tell me in the next. Woman, woman!” cried Rotha in another tone, “woman, have you any bowels? You have no heart, I know; but can you stand by and be the death of two men who have never, never done you wrong?”
Rotha clutched Mrs. Garth’s dress in the agony of her appeal.
“You have a son, too. Think of him standing where they stand, an innocent man.”
Rotha had dropped to her knees in the road, still clinging to Mrs. Garth’s dress.
“What’s all this to me, girl? Let go yer hod, do you hear? Will ye let go? What wad I know about Wilson — nowt.”
“It’s a lie,” cried Rotha, starting to her feet. “What were you doing in his room at Fornside?”
“Tush, maybe I was only seeking that fine father of thine. Let go your hod, do you hear? Let go, or I’ll — I’ll—”
Rotha had dropped the woman’s dress and grasped her shoulders. In another instant the slight pale-faced girl had pulled this brawny woman to her knees. They were close to the parapet of the bridge, and it was but a few inches high.
“As sure as God’s in heaven,” cried Rotha with panting breath and flaming eyes, “I’ll fling you into this river if you utter that lie again. Woman, give me the truth! Cast away these falsehoods, that would blast the souls of the damned in hell.”
“Get off. Wilta not? Nay, then, but I’ll mak thee, and quick.”
The struggle was short. The girl was flung aside into the road.
Mrs. Garth rose from her knees with a bitter smile on her lips. “I mak na doubt ‘at thou wouldn’t be ower keen to try the same agen,” she said, going off. “Go thy ways to Doomsdale, my lass, and ax yer next batch of questions there. I’ve just coom’t frae it mysel’, do you know?”
Late the same evening, as the weary sun went down behind the smithy, Rotha hastened from the cottage at Fornside back to the house on the Moss at Shoulthwaite. She had a bundle of papers beneath her cloak, and the light of hope in her face.
The clew was found.
CHAPTER XLV. THE CONDEMNED IN DOOMSDALE.
When Ralph, accompanied by Sim, arrived at Carlisle and surrendered himself to the high sheriff, Wilfrey Lawson, he was at once taken before the magistrates, and, after a brief examination, was ordered to wait his trial at the forthcoming assizes. He was then committed to the common gaol, which stood in the ruins of the old convent of Black Friars. The cell he occupied was shared by two other prisoners — a man and a woman. It was a room of small dimensions, down a small flight of steps from the courtyard, noisome to the only two senses to which it appealed — gloomy and cold. It was entered from a passage in an outer cell, and the doors to both were narrow, without so much as the ventilation of an eye-hole, strongly bound with iron, and double locked. The floor was the bare earth, and there was no furniture except such as the prisoners themselves provided. A little window near to the ceiling admitted all the light and air and discharged all the foul vapor that found entrance and egress.
The prisoners boarded themselves. For an impost of 7s per week, an under gaoler undertook to provide food for Ralph and to lend him a mattress. His companions in this wretched plight were a miserable pair who were suspected of a barbarous and unnatural murder. They had been paramours, and their victim had been the woman’s husband. Once and again they had been before the judges, and though none doubted their guilt, they had been sent back to await more conclusive or more circumstantial evidence. Whatever might hitherto have been the ardor of their guilty passion, their confinement together in this foul cell had resulted in a mutual loathing. Within the narrow limits of these walls neither seemed able to support the barest contact with the other. They glared at each other in the dim light with ghoul-like eyes, and at night they lay down at opposite sides of the floor on bundles of straw for beds. This straw, having served them in their poverty for weeks and even months, had fermented and become filthy and damp.
Such was the place and such the society in which Ralph spent the seven days between the day on which he surrendered and that on which he was indicted for treason.
The little window looked out into the streets, and once or twice daily Simeon Stagg, who discovered the locality of Ralph’s confinement, came and exchanged some words of what were meant for solace with his friend. It was small comfort Ralph found in the daily sight of the poor fellow’s sorrowful face; but perhaps Ralph’s own brighter countenance and cheerier tone did something for the comforter himself.
Though the two unhappy felons were made free of the spacious courtyard for an hour every day, the like privilege was not granted to Ralph, who was kept close prisoner, and, except on the morning of his trial, was even denied water for washing and cleansing.
When he was first to appear before the judges of assize, this prisoner of state, who had voluntarily surrendered himself, after many unsuccessful efforts at capturing him, was bound hand and foot. On the hearing of his case being adjourned, he was taken back to the cell which he had previously shared; but whether he felt that the unhappy company was more than he could any longer support, or whether the foul atmosphere of the stinking room seemed the more noisome from the comparative respite of a crowded court, he determined to endure the place no longer. He asked to be permitted to write to the governor of the city. The request was not granted. Then, hailing Sim from the street, he procured by his assistance a bundle of straw and a candle. The straw, clean and sweet, he exchanged with his fellow-prisoners for that which had served them for beds. Then, gathering the rotten stuff into a heap in the middle of the floor, he put a light to it and stirred it into a fire. This was done partly to clear the foul atmosphere, which was so heavy and dank as to gather into beads of moisture on the walls, and partly to awaken the slugglish interest of the head gaoler, whose rooms, as Ralph had learned, were situated immediately above this cell. The former part of the artifice failed (the filthy straw engendered as much stench as it dissipated), but the latter part of it succeeded effectually. The smoke found its way where the reeking vapor which was natural to the cell could not penetrate.
Ralph was removed forthwith to the outer room. But for the improvement in his lodgings he was punished indirectly. Poor Sim had dislocated a bar of the window in pushing the straw into Ralph’s hands, and for this offence he was apprehended and charged with prison breaking. Four days later the paltry subterfuge was abandoned, as we know, for a more serious indictment. Ralph’s new abode was brighter and warmer than the old one, and had no other occupant. Here he passed the second week of his confinement. The stone walls of this cell had a melancholy interest. They were carved over nearly every available inch with figures of men, birds, and animals, cut, no doubt, by the former prisoners to beguile the weary hours.
In these quarters life was at least tolerable; but tenancy of so habitable a place was not long to be Ralph’s portion.
When the trial for murder had ended in condemnation, Ralph and Sim were removed from the bar, not to the common gaol from whence they came, but to the castle, and were there committed to a pestilential dungeon under the keep. This dungeon was known as Doomsdale. It was indeed a “seminary of every vice and of every disease.” Many a lean and yellow culprit, it was said, had carried up from its reeking floor into the court an atmosphere of pestilence which avenged him on his accusers. Some affirmed that none who ever entered it came out and lived. The access to it was down a long flight of winding stairs, and through a cleft hewn out of the bare rock on which the castle stood. It was wet with the waters that oozed out of countless fissures and came up from the floor and stood there in pools of mire that were ankle deep.
Ralph was scarcely the man tamely to endure a horrible den like this. Once again he demanded to see the governor, but was denied that justice.
As a prisoner condemned to die, he, with Sim, was allowed to attend service daily in the chapel of the castle. The first morning of his imprisonment in this place he availed himself of the privilege. Crossing the castle green towards the chapel, he attempted to approach the governor’s quarters, but the guard interposed. Throughout the service he was watchful of any opportunity that might arise, but none appeared. At the close he was being taken back to Doomsdale, side by side with his companion, when he saw the chaplain, in his surplice, crossing the green to his rooms. Then, at a sudden impulse, Ralph pushed aside the guard, and, tapping the clergyman on the shoulder, called on him to stop and listen.
“We are condemned men,” he said; “and if the law takes its course, in six days we are to die; but in less time than that we will be dead already if they keep us in that hell on earth.”
The chaplain stared at Ralph’s face with a look compounded equally of amazement and fear.
“Take him away,” he cried nervously to the guard, who had now regained possession of their prisoner.
“You are a minister of the Gospel,” said Ralph.
“Your servant,” said the clergyman, with mock humility.
“My servant, indeed!” said Ralph; “my servant before God, yet beware of hypocrisy. You are a Christian minister, and you read in your Bible of the man who was cast into a lion’s den, and of the three men who were thrown into the fiery furnace. But what den of lions was ever so deadly as this, where no fire would burn in the pestilential air?”
“He is mad,” cried the chaplain, sidling off; “look at his eyes.” The guard were making futile efforts to hurry Ralph away, but he shouted again, in a voice that echoed through the court, —
“You are a Christian minister, and your Master sent his disciples over all the earth without purse or scrip, but you lie here in luxury, while we die there in disease. Look to it, man, look to it! A reckoning day is at hand as sure as the same God is over us all!”
“The man is mad and murderous!” cried the affrighted chaplain. “Take him away.”
Not waiting for his order to be executed, the spick-and-span wearer of the unsoiled surplice disappeared into one of the side rooms of the court.
This extraordinary scene might have resulted in a yet more rigorous treatment of the prisoners, but it produced the opposite effect. Within the same hour Ralph and Sim were removed from Doomsdale and imprisoned in a room high up in the Donjon tower.
Their new abode was in every way more tolerable than the old one. It had no fire, and it enjoyed the questionable benefit of being constantly filled with nearly all the smoke of every fire beneath it. The dense clouds escaped in part through a hole in the wall where a stone had been disturbed. This aperture also served the less desirable purpose of admitting the rain and the wind.
Here the days were passed. They were few and short. Doomsdale itself could not have made them long.
With his long streaky hair hanging wild about his temples, Sim sat hour after hour on a low bench beneath the window, crying at intervals that God would not let them die.
CHAPTER XLVI. THE SKEIN UNRAVELLED.
It was Thursday when they were condemned, and the sentence was to be carried into effect on the Thursday following. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday passed by without any event of consequence. On Tuesday the under gaoler opened the door of their prison, and the sheriff entered. Ralph stepped out face to face with him. Sim crept closer into the shadow.
“The King’s warrant has arrived,” he said abruptly.
“And is this all you come to tell us?” said Ralph, no less curtly.
“Ray, there is no love between you and me, and we need dissemble none.”
“And no hate — at least on my part,” Ralph added.
“I had good earnest of your affections,” answered the sheriff with a sneer; “five years’ imprisonment.” Then waving his hand with a gesture indicative of impatience, he continued, “Let that be as it may. I come to talk of other matters.”
Resting on a bench, he added, —
“When the trial closed on Thursday, Justice Hide, who showed you more favor than seemed to some persons of credit to be meet and seemly, beckoned me to the antechamber. There he explained that the evidence against you being mainly circumstantial, the sentence might perchance, by the leniency of the King, be commuted to one of imprisonment for life.”
A cold smile passed over Ralph’s face.
“But this great mercy — whereof I would counsel you to cherish no certain hope — would depend upon your being able and willing to render an account of how you came by the document — the warrant for your own arrest — which was found upon your person. Furnish a credible story of how you came to be possessed, of that instrument, and it may occur — I say it may occur — that by our Sovereign’s grace and favor this sentence of death can yet be put aside.”
Sim had risen to his feet in obvious excitement.
Ralph calmly shook his head.
“I neither will nor can,” he said emphatically.
Sim sank back into his seat.
A look of surprise in the sheriff’s face quickly gave way to a look of content and satisfaction.
“We know each other of old, and I say there is no love between us,” he observed, “but it is by no doing of mine that you are here. Nevertheless, your response to this merciful tender shows but too plainly how well you merit your position.”
“It took you five days to bring it — this merciful tender, as you term it,” said Ralph.
“The King is now at Newcastle, and there at this moment is also Justice Hide, in whom, had you been an innocent man, you must have found an earnest sponsor. I bid you good day.”
The sheriff rose, and, bowing to the prisoner with a ridiculous affectation of mingled deference and superiority, he stepped to the door.
“Stop,” said Ralph: “you say we know each other of old. That is false! To this hour you have never known, nor do you know now, why I stand here condemned to die, and doomed by a harder fate to take the life of this innocent old man. You have never known me: no, nor yourself neither — never! But you shall know both before you leave this room. Sit down.”
“I have no time to waste in idle disputation,” said the sheriff testily; but he sat down, nevertheless, at his prisoner’s bidding, as meekly as if the positions had been reversed.
“That scar across your brow.” said Ralph, “you have carried since the day I have now to speak of.”
“You know it well,” said the sheriff bitterly. “You have cause to know it.”
“I have,” Ralph answered.
After a pause, in which he was catching the thread of a story half forgotten, he continued: “You said I supplanted you in your captaincy. Pehaps so; perhaps not. God will judge between us. You went over to the Royalist camp, and you were among the garrison that had reduced this very castle. The troops of the Parliament came up one day and summoned you to surrender. The only answer your general gave us was to order the tunnel guns to fire on the white flag. It went down. We lay entrenched about you for six days. Then you sent out a dispatch assuring us that your garrison was well prepared for a siege, and that nothing would prevail with you to open your gates. That was a lie!”
“Well?”
“Your general lied; the man who carried your general’s dispatch was a liar too, but he told the truth for a bribe.”
“Ah! then the saints were not above warming the palm?”
“He assured our commander we might expect a mutiny in your city if we continued before it one day longer; that your castle was garrisoned only by a handful of horse, and two raw, undisciplined regiments of militia; that even from these desertions occurred hourly, and that some of your companies were left with only a score of men. This was at night, and we were under an order to break up next morning. That order was countermanded. Your messenger was sent back the richer by twenty pounds.”
“How does this concern me?” asked the sheriff.
“You shall hear. I had been on the outposts that night, and, returning to the camp, I surprised two men robbing, beating, and, as I thought, murdering a third. One of the vagabonds escaped undetected, but with a blow from the butt of my musket which he will carry to his grave. The other I thrashed on the spot. He was the bailiff Scroope, whom you put up to witness against me. Their victim was the messenger from the castle, and he was James Wilson, otherwise Wilson Garth. You know this? No? Then listen. Rumor of his treachery, and of the price he had been paid for it, had already been bruited abroad, and the two scoundrels had gone out to waylay and rob him. He was lamed in the struggle and faint from loss of blood. I took him back and bound up his wound. He limped to the end of his life.”
“Still I fail to see how this touches myself,” interrupted the sheriff.
“Really? I shall show you. Next morning, under cover of a thick fog, we besieged the city. We got beneath your guns and against your gates before we were seen. Then a company of horse came out to us. You were there. You remember it? Yes? At one moment we came within four yards. I saw you struck down and reel out of the saddle. ‘This man,’ I thought, ‘believes in his heart that I did him a grievous wrong. I shall now do him a signal service, though he never hear of it until the Judgment Day.’ I dismounted, lifted you up, bound a kerchief about your head, and was about to replace you on your horse. At that instant a musket-shot struck the poor beast, and it fell dead. At the same instant one of our own men fell, and his riderless horse was prancing away. I caught it, threw you on to its back, turned his head towards the castle, and drove it hard among your troops. Do you know what happened next?”
