The King's Men Part 24

There was another also who watched the prisoners with eyes of recognition. Mrs. Oswald Carey had left her lodgings early in the morning so as to secure a good position from which to view the procession, and from a coign of vantage close by the houses of Parliament was feasting her gaze upon the victims of her treachery. A long cloak covered her figure, and her face was m.u.f.fled. Only her beautiful eyes were visible. Owing to the bitter feeling prevalent against the Royalists, she feared to show herself, for she had been so intimately a.s.sociated with the dissipations of the n.o.bility, the people would have stoned her. She felt proof against discovery in her present garb, and had waited for hours, hedged about by the rabble, for a glimpse of Geoffrey Ripon.

Her revenge had been swift and equal to her expectation. Its sequel was yet to follow. As she gazed at the face of the young man, which exposure had rather enn.o.bled and made more handsome, strange feelings were awakened within her. She scarcely knew whether she were sorry to see him there in peril of his life, or that she would be pleased to know that he had paid the penalty of treason with his head. Her love and hate were so intermingled that she could not distinguish which had the upper hand. He pa.s.sed close to where she was standing. But even had he been able to recognize her, he could not have suspected that her perfidy was the occasion of his misfortune. She had guarded her secret carefully.

President Bagshaw had been true to his word. No rumor of the means by which the conspiracy was unearthed had reached the public ear.

As she made her way home through the crowded street after the procession had pa.s.sed, reflection as to what would be Geoffrey's fate absorbed her thoughts. In the present state of the public temper it was not likely that he would escape death. To be shot for high treason seemed the logical sequel to his escapade. Well, if it must be so, she preferred to see him on the scaffold rather than in the arms of another. She would wait until all was over, and then find in America solace for her disappointment. She had played her cards well. The King was madly in love with her, and she had no fear of his sailing away without her. If so, there was Jawkins still. She had lulled the manager into such a feeling of security that he had run up to Scotland to undertake an important contract. An American billionaire, having rented the Trossachs for the season, had engaged him to superintend his arrangements. t.i.tled people were at a premium since the discovery of the conspiracy, and Jawkins could command his own prices. His reply to this patron, "I will provide you with a pair of peers if I have to filch them from prison, but they come high," was ill.u.s.trative alike of the energy and the business sagacity of the man. The poor old Archbishop of Canterbury, who had escaped from Aldershot scot free, was being hurried from one corner of England to the other to supply dinner requirements. Jawkins had caused her some trouble at first, it is true. Upon the receipt of her telegram at Ripon House he had hurried up to London, and ferreting out her lodgings accused her of wis.h.i.+ng to give him the slip. She had a.s.suaged his feelings by lunching with him at a public restaurant and permitting him to engage their pa.s.sages to America for a fortnight later. Had it not been for the King's arrival she would have kept faith with him.

The trial of the prisoners was set down for one week after their consignment to the Tower. It was to take place in the House of Parliament, and the indictment against all was for high treason. The attorney-general, James McPherson, was to conduct the case for the government, and the accused retained the services of Calhoun Benjamin, a great-grandson of the Benjamin for some time a famous lawyer in the reign of Victoria. It was not permissible for any member of either house to appear as counsel. The const.i.tution required that the joint bodies should adjudge the cause. Still, after the formal arguments any member was at liberty to rise to a question of privilege and address the a.s.sembly. Such was indeed the usual custom.

Mary Lincoln doubtless had this in mind when she whispered to her father the evening before the trial, "You will speak for him, will you not, father?"

"I cannot tell," said Richard Lincoln. "Why should I, Mary? His desert is death, and I should not know what to say in his behalf."

"But if all of us were treated according to our deserts, how few of us would escape scathing. Only you, father; I know of no one beside."

The patriot looked down at the pale girl sitting at his feet and stroked her hair. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she gazed at him imploringly. He knew her secret to the uttermost now. She had told him, all the evening of that dreadful day when London saw her throw down a rose to her country's traitor. Still, if it were to do again, would she not do it? Her love was stronger than her sense of shame.

Richard Lincoln sat and gazed into the fire. These were indeed troublesome times, but a light seemed breaking just below where the clouds lowered darkest. A week had seen a great change in public sentiment. Debate in Parliament had been fierce and bitter. At the head of his party he had striven to show that those who held the reins of power abused and deceived the ma.s.ses, and that true liberty lay not in ignorant usurpation of right, but intelligent recognition of a lawfully const.i.tuted authority which regarded all alike. At first his purpose had been misinterpreted, but as by degrees the true significance of his words were grasped by the popular mind, groans gave place to silence, and sullenness to cheers. He had not hesitated to wield the axe of reform with a yeoman's hand, and the flying chips told of the havoc he was making among the dead wood of ignorance and craft. It was his aim to demonstrate that a demagogue in the seat of power is no less a menace to the happiness of the people than an aristocrat.

Yet in the face of his triumph arose the shadow of this strange, unnatural love; for it seemed unnatural to him that his only child should have given her heart to one whose ambition it was to destroy that which he had helped to establish and bring back the frippery of an unhallowed past. He had found it difficult at first to conceive it as possible, but her confession, and more eloquently still her pallid cheeks, left no room to question the truth of this misfortune. And to-morrow he would be called upon to doom to the scaffold the man whose being had become so much a part of hers as to have led her to play the traitor also. As thus he pondered the breaking light seemed to fade from the sky, and the clouds lowered gloomy and impenetrable.

"Father," said Mary again, "I am sure you can save him."

Lincoln shook his head. "Not even if I would, girl," he replied, sternly.

"You, too, desert me," she murmured. She covered her face with her hands for a moment, then with a sudden impulse she stood, tall and resolute.

Her eyes flashed fire. "If it is wrong to love a traitor, let it be so.

I cannot help loving John Dacre, and I should like to die with him."

Richard Lincoln gazed at her in amazement. There was pride, too, in his glance. He saw in her transfigured face a repet.i.tion of his own youth when the spirit soared impatient of restraint and knew not yet the curbs that check the extravagance o ardent natures. In those early days he had struck out for the ideal right, even as her heart in the fulness of its love poured out its tide of pa.s.sion. He held out his hands to her, and his lips trembled.

"My child, my child! would to G.o.d I could save your lover. You are dearer to me than all the world beside. Do not spurn your father's arms.

His breast is your rightful place for comfort now."

She suffered him to clasp her in his embrace. "I will be brave," she whispered, looking up into his eyes. "Kiss me; I will be brave, and--and when he dies let me die, too."

"My child!" murmured Lincoln again, and there was terror as well as pity in his tone. He held her close, and her head rested on his shoulder.

"All may yet be well, my dear one," he said tenderly.

Before daybreak the next morning a stream of people was pouring up from the city and winding its way through Cheapside and Fleet Street and the Strand to the judgment hall in the Houses of Parliament. By the time the guard from the Tower reached Westminster, vast mult.i.tudes lined the sidewalks and formed so dense a ma.s.s in the square in front of the gates that progress was well-nigh impossible. The populace was orderly, however, and fell back before the horses of a troop of cavalry, with no further demonstration than a sullen murmur.

The prisoners were brought before the bar of the Commons, and the Upper House entered immediately after to take their seats. It was an impressive scene. One might have heard a pin drop as the officer of the Crown rose to read the indictment, and again when, as he sat down, the hoa.r.s.e voice of the clerk called out the names of the accused, shorn of all t.i.tles, to rise and answer to the charge of high treason against the Republic of Great Britain and Ireland.

"What say you, John Dacre--guilty or not guilty?"

"Not guilty."

Dacre's glance moved gravely around the vast hall and met the gaze of a thousand eyes without flinching. Fate willed that it should distinguish a pale, lovely face amid the press that lined the galleries, and linger thereon a moment as though loath to turn aside; but even while he gazed, the drapery and shoulder of another woman were interposed between his sight and the delicate features of Mary Lincoln, and shut her from his view. "What say you, Geoffrey Ripon? Are you guilty or not guilty?"

It was these words that had caused the stranger to lean forward and crane her neck--a beautiful neck that, m.u.f.fled as she was, did not wholly escape the admiration of her neighbors. Her eyes sparkled with a light cold and malicious as the gleam which emanates from a blade of steel. As the lips of young Geoffrey Ripon flung back a clear denial of the charge, a hope was in his heart that the sweet maiden of his fancy might be among the hundreds looking down. She was not there, but her rival, Mrs. Oswald Carey, sat and watched each shade of his expression.

And now the witnesses were summoned and confronted the prisoners. The proofs were ample and overwhelming. It almost seemed mistrusting the intelligence of the judges to dwell upon the evidence, to quote the opening words of the attorney-general, and as a consequence the argument of that official was a model of conciseness. Then the time was come for the defendants' counsel. Mr. Benjamin arose and spoke for an hour. His speech was painstaking, but not particularly impressive. In conclusion he said that rebellion had often been punished before without the shedding of blood. He instanced Jefferson Davis, the great Secessionist, and the clemency of the American people. Mr. McPherson in reply adduced the Irish rebels executed by the government of Victoria, and thereat a shout arose which shook the walls of Parliament and was echoed by the crowd outside. Even the prisoners glanced at each other with downcast looks. The perspiration stood out in beads on the bald head of the Duke of Bayswater.

"It is all up with us," whispered Ripon to Dacre.

"My G.o.d and my King! It is a n.o.ble cause to die for," answered the cavalier, and his proud face looked beatified.

There was a dread and awful silence as the attorney-general finished his last words. The hour for judgment had arrived, unless it were that some senator or commoner wished to speak for or against the prisoners. A bitter and illiterate friend of the government saw fit to spring to his feet and enter upon a violent harangue. Clemency would be misplaced in the present juncture, he said. Death for one and all was the proper measure to be meted out to Royalists and traitors. His truculent words seemed to please the audience, and he sat down amid a tempest of applause. For an instant there was no movement on either side of the house, and then Richard Lincoln, the leader of the opposition, arose and stepped out into the aisle, so as to command his hearers. A flutter of expectation, a murmur of surprise, spread through the a.s.sembly, and as he opened his mouth to speak, every ear was alert to catch his words.

"I rise," he said, "to speak for the people, the great, true-souled people. They have, it seems to me, no representative here, or I have failed to interpret aright the language of my predecessor. Are the people merciless? Have they no heart? I know that the contrary is true.

It is no argument with them that others have preferred cruelty to mercy, and vengeance to justice. I stand here to-day, for the people and for justice."

He paused, and as no sound expressed one way or the other the feelings of his auditors, he spoke once more:

"Let these men live. Fine or imprisonment will accomplish all that you desire, save the satisfaction of revenge. Capital punishment in this age of the world is an ugly smear upon the escutcheon of const.i.tutional liberty. Let these men live, and your children's children will write you down in their books as worthy of remembrance. They are guilty, but blood will not atone for wrong-doing. Let them live, I say, in the name of justice and the people."

He finished and sat down. Not much of a speech in the way of argument, some will say. It is the manner more than the matter of words that sways men's hearts. No cheers were heard, it is true, but his hearers sat upon the benches thoughtful and silent. The Speaker of the House glanced about him, but no one rose to contradict the testimony that had fallen from the lips of Richard Lincoln.

And now the judges arose and left the hall. For four hours the a.s.sembly and the crowds in the streets waited in patience. Before the fifth had elapsed the usher's rod announced that a verdict had been reached. The silence was breathless. The Speaker took the scroll from the hands of William Peters, the leader of the House, and read aloud that John Dacre, as the master spirit of the late rebellion at Aldershot, was sentenced to be shot to death at noon of the next day, and that all the other leaders were to be imprisoned for the term of fifteen years.

There was a roar and a rush as the people rose to escape from the galleries, and few observed a slender girl slip from her seat to the floor. A woman with beautiful eyes, whose face was otherwise veiled from view, stooped to her succor, then gave a shrill cry. Mary Lincoln lay lifeless. Mrs. Oswald Carey, whose shriek it was that made this known, was not one to believe that a woman can die of a broken heart. But if even such a result of her treachery had been foreshadowed to her, she would not have faltered.

CHAPTER XIII.

AN UNFINISHED TASK.

Immediately after the sentence was p.r.o.nounced the prisoners were led back to the Tower. They were chained together by twos, and Sir John walked with Geoffrey. During the entire walk from St. Stephen's, along the river embankment, neither of them spoke to the other. For Geoffrey, at least, it was a subject of life-long regret that he had not done so.

It was part of the policy of Bagshaw's government thus to march them through the streets, a spectacle, like a caravan of caged beasts, for the populace. Geoffrey thought to himself, curiously, of the old triumphs of the Roman emperors he had read about as a schoolboy. Then, as now, the people needed bread and loved a show. But the people, even then, had caught something of the dignity of power. Silently they pressed upon the sidewalks and thronged the gardens by the river. Not a voice was raised in mockery of these few men; there is something in the last extremity of misfortune which commands respect, even from the mult.i.tude. And, perhaps, even then the first-fruits of freedom might have been marked in their manner, and magnanimity, the first virtue of liberty, kept the London rabble hushed.

Geoffrey's eyes were turned within as he walked, as if he were thinking, but of thoughts far distant, far back in the past. Dacre held his glance still high and forward, fixed and straight upon the road before him.

Only once, when they pa.s.sed the Temple gardens, did Geoffrey's eyes stray outward; it was when he marked the windows of his old study in the Inner Temple, where he had studied to be a barrister in days gone by; then his look grew introspective as before.

When they came to the gate of the Tower the soldiers divided and drew apart in two lines, between which the prisoners pa.s.sed into the great courtyard. A squad of the Tower garrison--no longer in the gay livery of the King, but in the plain black coat and helmet of policemen--stood before the door. The banner of the British Republic--the red and white stripes, with the green union and the harp--floated over the loftiest tower of all. The prisoners were then separated, and each was led to a different cell. Then for the first time Geoffrey thought of Dacre; but he was already under a special escort and being led away; it was too late. The last that Geoffrey saw of him he was walking erect, with his silent lips still closed, steady like the course of some strong stream above the fall. As he watched him, Geoffrey heard the distant murmur of the people beyond the gates.

Geoffrey well remembered the room that was his prison. He had been taken there as a sightseer when a child. It was in the Beauchamp Tower; and--strange coincidence--there was the bear and ragged staff of Warwick, still visible, cut deep into the old stone walls.

So, thought he, it had all ended. History repeats itself, but in strange new forms that seem as if they half mock, half follow, the old. Then, the King was wrong; was now the people in the right? They brought him some food; and after eating he threw himself on the ground and tried to sleep. But his sleep was troubled with his dreams of waking: now he heard Margaret Windsor's broken words again; now he was in the great hall of St. Stephen's speaking; then he heard again the echo of the gun that shot down the royal flag, and then the silence of the people, forever estranged, more dread, more terrible than any words of enemies or noise of battle. Again he thought of Dacre and his look when all was lost: a look unchanged, unmoved; a look less of despair than the majesty of certain fate--a fate not new nor sudden, but chosen of his own calm will. A man of stone, thought Geoffrey; the incarnation of one thought; hardly human in his conscious strength. And yet, as Geoffrey saw him in the darkness of the night, his heart went out to him, and he felt that he loved this man as he had never loved a friend before.

The dawn came, and its gray damp breath broke through the iron bars. It seemed all unreal in the daylight. Old stones of escape pa.s.sed through his mind: how men, in childish stories of history or romance, with some rude instrument of iron, had carved their will and way through walls as thick as these. But how idle they seemed! How futile, how vain to make with his two hands a way through stone, or burrow like a mole into the earth! And yet those legends seemed no less a dream than this of his.

There was a strange silence as the morning grew on; he wondered if the world outside were all asleep. He had foreseen it; and yet he had not quite foreseen this; some glorious end, in a battle, perhaps, fighting out in the free country, beneath the sun. Again his thoughts turned to his friend, and he felt a strange a.s.surance that Dacre had foreseen it all along, but not held back his steps one whit for that. And there was Maggie--in America--could she, and her life, be in the same world with this? Yet it was natural enough, and such things had always been, only he had never truly pictured them. The day seemed endless. If he could only hear something of the others, and not be so terribly alone. If he could but learn where they were--where Dacre was. He heard a dull sound like the noise of distant firing, but more like thunder, coming heavily through the ground. Geoffrey ran to the window, drew himself up, and looked out through the bars. There was a sea of upturned faces, all pale and with one fixed look, a myriad times repeated, pointed to the base of the Tower below his window where he could not see. Then he fell back upon the ground, burying his face in his hands.

Dacre himself had slept that night a dreamless sleep, as he had slept any night before in the years since he had seen his path and chosen it.

At noon the people came to his cell and led him out. Numbers of men were standing in the corridor and on the stairs; he looked on between the lines and walked to the door. Then he begged that his handcuffs might be removed. As he paused a moment, Richard Lincoln stepped forward and ordered that it should be done. Then he fell back, bowing once to Dacre.