CHAPTER XXV.
"AS THE NIGHT PASSETH AWAY."
Still the days passed and I meditated on whether each as it came was to be my last. Wondered as every morning I watched the opening of the heavily clamped door, if, instead of my loaf and jar of water, that deaf and dumb jailer had come to summon me forth to my fate; and wondered again at what might cause the delay, since morning after morning his behaviour was ever the same, the bread always placed on the rough stone shelf that ran around the room, with the water by its side. That, and nothing more.
That Juana had gone by now with the Alcáide, I thought must surely be the case. I had taken since that night when last we met--and parted forever--to scoring with a nail a mark daily on the whitewashed but filthy wall, so that thereby I might keep some count of the days as they went by, and now there were six of such marks there. Surely she was gone--surely, too, I thought, Gramont's escape had taken place by now--yet they came not for me. What did it mean?
In my agony at the thought that by now, perhaps, Juana was dead by her own hand--I pictured her to myself using the small poniard I knew she carried, or the equally small pistol of which she was possessed--I groaned--nay! almost shrieked sometimes at my horrible picturings of her beautiful form and face stiff with death; in that agony I came to pray at last to God that the day or night which was passing over me might be my last. That He, in His supreme mercy, would see fit to inspire them with the resolve to make an end of me. Prayed that, by the time those never ceasing clocks without had struck once more the hour they were striking as I made my supplication, my soul might have left my body--that that body might be no more than a heap of ashes.
For I could bear my existence no longer. My thoughts--of my beauteous mistress lying in death's hideous grasp, of my poor old father, and the misery which would be his--not at my falling like a soldier, but at the mystery which would forever enshroud my death--were more than I could support.
But still another day passed--the seventh--and still again at daybreak there was no summons to me to go forth and meet my fate. Yet, since by the increased pealings of the bells, and by the ringing of some sweeter sounding ones than those usually heard, I knew it was the Sabbath I wondered that my doom had not come. For the Sabbath was, I remembered, the day of execution in this land, because 'tis always a fête day, when the people are at leisure to be excited and amused.
That day passed, however, the night drew on, the dark had come; and still I was alive; had before me another night of horror and of mortal agony unspeakable to endure.
From my ghastly, silent warder I had tried more than once to obtain some hint, or information, as to when I might expect my sentence to be carried out--if I could have learnt that, I should have known also that Gramont was gone--was free--that, my God! Juana was dead, or near to her death. But as well might I have asked the walls of this cell in which I was, for a word or sign. I wrote on those walls with the nail a question--the question: "When am I to die?" and he stared as stolidly at it as though he were no more able to see than to speak or hear. Thinking, perhaps, that he could not read, I made sighs upon my fingers to him, at all of which he shook his head, though what he meant to convey I know not. Yet, had my mind not been so distraught, I should have remembered that, perhaps, if he could not understand the one neither could he the other. Reflecting later on, however, I felt sure that he was able to do both--it was the only way in which one so afflicted as he was could have been made to understand his orders; and, still later, I knew that such was the case. And now, on that Sunday, as the horrid gloom of the winter night enveloped all the country around, while up from the pastures and fields there rose a vapour or fog, I took a terrible resolve, driven thereto by the misery of my reflections.
I determined that, if my death by the hands of the executioner came not to-morrow, I would take my own life. I could endure no longer, could think no more upon Juana as a dead woman, as one slain by her own hand.
"Oh! Juana, Juana," I wailed more than once, "my lost Juana." Then added, with fierceness, "Yet--no matter. We meet to-morrow at the latest."
Though they had taken my weapons from me ere they brought me here, there was enough of opportunity to my hand for accomplishing my purpose. There was the nail I had found--my sash, or belt--my cravat--either would serve for my purpose if I was brave enough to accomplish it.
"Brave enough--brave enough!" I found myself repeating. "Brave enough! Or," I whispered, "cowardly enough? Which is it? Which?"
And, as still the long hours of the night went on, and I lay on my pallet staring up into the darkness, listening to the hours told over and over again by the bells, until my soul sickened at their sound, watching a glint of the moon's rays on the metal roof of the cathedral, I answered my own question, reasoned with myself that self-destruction was the coward's, not the brave man's, act, and resolved at last to cast that awful resolution behind me, to endure and meet my fate like a man, as a gallant soldier should.
And so, eased--I scarce knew why--by my determination, I fell at last into a tranquil sleep, and dreamt that I was back in England, walking in my father's old flower garden in the Weald, with my love, Juana, by my side.
Some unaccustomed noise awoke me from that fair dream--something to which I was not used in the long silence of the nights--some sound which, as I raised myself on my elbow and peered around the cell, I could not understand; for in that cell there was no other presence, as for a moment I had imagined when I sprang up, half asleep and half awake; the moon, which had now overtopped the cathedral towers, showed that plain enough. Deep scurrying clouds were passing beneath her face swiftly--obscuring sometimes her brilliancy for some moments, 'tis true; yet, as she emerged now and again from them, her flood poured in and lit up the whole chamber. There was no one in it but myself!
What, therefore, was the sound I had heard? Stealthy footsteps outside?--those of my doomsmen, perhaps!--or was it some silent executioner about to steal in on me in the night, thereby to prevent the publicity of a death in the market place--a death which might by chance be reported to my own countrymen afar off, and like enough, if the war rolled down this way, be bitterly avenged? Was that it?
Again beneath the moon there passed heavy clouds, extinguishing her light so that for a moment my prison was once more steeped in darkness--I found myself thinking that there would be snow ere morning; that, if that morning brought my death, 'twould be a bleak and wintry scene which the flames of the braséro would illuminate!--then through a break in those clouds a ray stole forth, a ray that glinted in through the iron bars of the window grate, across the stone-flagged floor, and onward to the heavily clamped door, then was arrested there--one spot shining out amidst those beams with the brightness and the dazzle of a diamond.
What was that thing, that spot on which the ray glinted so?
Creeping toward the door, as silently and lightly as I could go, I reached it, put out my finger and touched that gleaming spark, and found that it proceeded from the extremity of a key which was in the lock and which now protruded by a trifle into the room. It was the insertion of that key which had awakened me.
Yet--what did it mean, and why, when once in the lock, was it not turned; why not followed by the entry of one or more persons into the cell?
Were they coming back later to fall on me? Had the key been first inserted by some who had withdrawn directly afterward, so that, if the noise awakened me, I should sleep again shortly, when they could return to finish their work? This must be the true explanation--I was to be executed in the depth of the night when all were asleep in the old town, when no cry of anguish, no scream from one being done to death, would be heard.
"Yet," I thought to myself, "these precautions are useless. As well here as in the flames to-morrow. What matters where or how?"
At that moment my ears caught a sound--something was passing down the stone passage outside--something that was not the heavy tread of the jailer. Instead, a muffled sound--yet perceptible to me. A shuffling, scraping sound as though one who was shoeless was dragging each foot carefully along after the other.
Then I saw the end of the key which projected through the lock turn--I saw it sparkle in the moon's rays--once it grated harshly, creaked! And, slowly, a moment afterward the door opened inward, leaving the passage outside dark and cavernous. He who had so opened it with one hand carried no light in the other.
Stepping back from it, watching what should happen next--yet, I swear before heaven, with no fear at my heart--why should there be, since I desired to die and join my love? yet still with that heart beating loudly from excitement--I saw the blackness of the doorway blurred with a deeper intensity by a form standing outside it. I saw the moonbeams reach that form, lighting it up for a moment and glistening on the eyes of it. I saw before me the great figure and heavy, stolid face of my dumb, impenetrable jailer. The mute! Also observed that under his arm he carried something long--a sword.
His eyes upon me, he advanced into the cell--I seeing that his feet were bare except for thick, coarse stockings which he wore--yet making no motion as though to attack me, his action not such as would have rendered a more desperate man than myself resolved to defend himself. Then slowly, while I, my back against the farthest wall, stared at him more in wonder than in awe, he raised the arm under which the sword was not borne, and motioned to me with his finger, crooked somewhat, to follow him, pointing a moment afterward down the dark passage.
"So," I whispered to myself, drawing a deep breath as I did so, "the hour has come. He bids me follow him. I understand--it is to be done before daylight. Well, I am ready. God give me strength and pardon me."
Then I made ready to follow him, while he, observing this, prepared to lead the way.
All was profound and dark outside that cell when once we were in the passage--so dark that, ere I had barely reached it, I felt his great hand upon my arm, felt him clutching my sleeves between his fingers. And thus together we went on, he silent as a corpse, except for his breathing, which sometimes I heard--sometimes, too, felt upon my cheek--I going to my death.
One thing I noticed, even in these moments of intensity. We went the opposite way from that by which I had first been brought--the opposite way from which his footsteps, when he had been shod, had invariably sounded; also the opposite way from which my love had come to bid me a last farewell, and had been carried insensible after our parting.
Whither was I being taken?
The end of the corridor was reached in the darkness; I knew that by the fact that his grasp tightened perceptibly on my sleeve; also that, by a pressure of his fingers on it, he was turning me somewhat to the left; likewise, that grasp put a degree of curb upon me; a moment later seemed to signify that I was to go on again. And it felt to me that, in a way, I was being supported--held up.
Another instant, and I knew why. We were descending stairs--on the way down, doubtless, to some exit that should lead to my place of doom! Still I resisted not. One path to oblivion served as well as another.
By the manner in which the steps were cut I knew at once that we were in some tower, and that the stairs were circular; also my hand, which I kept against the side, told me the same thing. Moreover, there were [oe]illets, or arrow slits, in the wall, through which I could see the moon shining on another wall, which seemed to be some fifty paces off--probably, I thought, the opposite wall of some courtyard built into, or by the side of, the huge ramparts.
Of sound there was none, no noise of any kind, no tramp of sentry to be heard, although I knew well enough that on the ramparts themselves soldiers were kept constantly on guard. Nothing; all as still as death, the death to which I was being led.
At last the stairs ended. My feet told me we were on the level now, a level into which they sank somewhat as I took step after step, whereby I judged that we were walking on sand, and wondered in what part of that prison, of those huge ramparts, we might be. Surely, I thought, some lowermost vault or dungeon, perhaps beneath the foundations of the structure, beneath the rocks between which the river flowed.
"My God!" I murmured to myself, "is this my fate? To be immured forever in some dark dungeon in the bowels of the earth, where neither light, nor sound--never hope--can come again. Better death at once, swift and merciful, than this. Far better."
Yet almost it seemed to my now frighted heart that this alone could be the case.
The air reeked and was clammy, as though with long confinement in this underground place, and by remaining ever unrefreshed from without by heaven's pure breezes was mawkish and sickly as the breath of a charnel house--perhaps 'twas one!--perhaps those who died here were left to fester and moulder away till their corpses turned to skeletons and their skeletons to dust; to die here, where no cry for help could issue forth, no more than any sound except a muffled one could penetrate, as I knew at this moment, for far above I heard a deep boom that seemed like the muffled roar of a cannon--a sound that was in truth the eternal bell of the cathedral telling the hour; also another broke on my ear--a swift, rushing noise, yet deadened, too--the sound, I thought, of the Minho passing near.
Then, all at once--as I knew that the sickly, reeking air would choke me, felt sure that ere many paces more had been traversed I must reel and fall upon that sanded floor--there blew upon my face a gust of air--oh! God! it was as though I had changed a monumental vault all full of rankling dead for some pure forest through which fresh breezes swept--far down toward where my dimmed eyes gazed I saw a glimmer of something that looked like the light of a coming dawn.
And I thanked heaven that, at least, these horrid vaults were not to be my prison or my grave; that, let whatever might befall me, my punishment was not to be dealt out here.
And ever still as I went on that stricken man walked by my side, held my arm with his hand, and directed the way toward the sombre light that gleamed afar.