Kate Aylesford: A Story of the Refugees

by Charles J. Peterson

But directly she recovered the energy natural to her. In truth, her slumbers had vastly recruited her strength and spirits; and of this she began soon to be sensible. She sprang to her feel, saying to herself with decision,

“But why do I waste precious moments? There may yet be hope—they seem to sleep as soundly as ever—at the most I can but fail.”

As she pronounced these words, she began, though with hands trembling with eagerness, to move the bedstead from the door sufficiently to allow egress. With what intense anxiety she listened, during this proceeding, lest the fabric should, by creaking, awaken the refugees! Even if one should be aroused it would be fatal to her; and the slightest noise might produce this result. She was almost breathless with suspense, until the bedstead had been removed enough to allow her to pass. But when this was effected, her heart was fluttering so wildly, that she had to pause an instant, pressing her hand on it to still its throbbings, for while it palpitated to such a degree she was too weak to proceed.

She now ventured to lift the latch, which at first resisted her efforts, and which, when at last it yielded, gave forth a sudden, sharp click, that, for a moment, made her fear it had awakened one or more of the outlaws. She waited, therefore, to assure herself that no one was stirring, before she ventured to draw the door towards her. In the unnaturally excited state of her nerves, the almost imperceptible sound of the hinges smote on her ear with alarming distinctness, so that she felt confident that now at least some one of the outlaws must awake. In fact a burly ruffian, in whom, to her horror, she recognized Arrison, and who lay directly across the doorway, not a foot from her, actually stirred, muttering incoherently, as if about to arouse from sleep; and at this sight Kate, brave as she was, felt all her courage and strength desert her, and was compelled to lean against the wall, in order to support herself from falling.

The ruffian, however, proved to have been only dreaming. After mumbling a few broken sentences, and tossing his arm over his head, as if to relieve it by a change of posture, he sunk into slumber again. Never was sound sweeter to Kate’s ears than the loud, almost stertorous breathing of the inebriated sleeper. Reassured of this, the violent beating of her heart ceased, and she recovered strength to renew her attempt at escape.

The door of the outer apartment was fortunately open, and the moonlight, streaming in, lit up a scene, such as the Flemish masters loved to paint. Down the centre of the apartment ran a table, covered with overturned drinking glasses, and empty bottles, amid which a huge black jug, with a cornstalk cork, stood, like a grim, giant warrior, of old, in the centre of a troop of modern pigmies. A few square bits of wood, in each of which a hole had been bored to insert a candle, were scattered about the table; but the candles had long since guttered down, the melted tallow flowing over and adhering to the board. On one side of the table had been a row of split-bottomed chairs, but these were now either pushed back against the wall, or had been kicked over; while on the other side was a rude bench, made of the first plank that is cut from a log, the convex part, to which the bark still adhered, being downward. A broken clay pipe, black with smoke, lay on one end of this bench, and by it slept its owner, a brawny, unshaven savage. Two of his companions were stretched on the floor, on either side; another was directly under the table; a fourth filled a shadowy corner, looking an unsightly, mis-shapen mass in the obscurity; while a fifth, still sitting in his chair, slept with his head leaning on his hands crossed before him on the table. Across this central figure the moonlight poured in a flood of intense brilliancy, and shot onwards to where Arrison lay at the feet of Kate, leaving the rest of the room in comparative darkness, as in a painting by Rembrandt.

Kate saw that it would require the utmost caution to pass the sleepers without awakening them, for the room was so narrow, and they lay in such positions, that it was almost impossible to reach the door without treading upon more than one of them. Arrison himself lay close to the door of her room, as if his last thought, before he succumbed to the effects of his copious libations, had been to place himself there on purpose to keep guard. She could not advance a single step, indeed, without passing over his body; and if, in making the attempt, even her skirt should brush him, all would be over. Perhaps, she reflected, he would be aroused even by her shadow crossing him; she herself could easily be woke in that way. These suggestions of an active brain would have paralyzed many a female in Kate’s situation; but they only had the effect of quickening her pulses, and increasing her caution.

Holding her breath, and gathering up her skirts firmly, she stepped rapidly across Arrison’s body, and not pausing to look behind, advanced stealthily but swiftly towards the door, keeping as much as possible in the shadow. She was but a few seconds in crossing the apartment, but it seemed to her almost an age. Every instant she expected to hear Arrison spring to his feet, or to see one of the ruffians in front rise to intercept her. At every footstep she trembled with nervous apprehension. As she approached the door, she was compelled to almost brush one of the outlaws extended on the floor: he stirred at that crisis; and she thought that she was discovered. Instantaneously she stopped and shrank into the shadow. The man was only turning in his sleep, however, and the next moment was snoring as heavily as before. Inexpressibly relieved, Kate drew her garments close to her figure, and gliding lightly past him, gained the door in safety.

It was a magnificent night without; and what a contrast to the scene within! Not a cloud was in the sky, not even a speck of fleecy vapor; only the blue, starless heavens were seen above, and in their eastern depths the silver moon. A vague, awe-struck feeling came over Kate as she looked up, and saw the solemn pine-trees standing, dark and weird, against the silent sky, and above them the calm, cold planet, looking down on her as pitilessly as it had gazed on the suffering Job on the plains of Mesopotamia, ages before. Not a breath of air stirred even the topmost tassel of the tallest fir; not a sound broke the deep stillness: it seemed, indeed, as if to breathe was to break some potent spell and bring down ruin on her head.

The little clearing was everywhere as light as day, except where the shadows of the rude fences checkered the ground, or where the gloom, cast by the forest, fell like an ominous pall across the eastern edge. Before our heroine was the little, tumble-down barn, which we have once before described. One side of this, including the roof, was flooded with the moonlight, while the other was black and vague, the deep shadows effectually concealing its outline. Right opposite the glorious planet, and therefore dazzlingly lit up by her radiance, a road opened into the forest, which soon, however closed about it, sombre and awful, as some unfathomable cave swallows up the ray of sunlight that streams through a chink in the roof. It reminded Kate of a pathway into some land of enchantment, at first beautiful to the eye, and light almost as day, but soon darkening into the gloom of death, amid bogs, and torrents, and labyrinths without end. A shudder came over her as she gazed, as if a shadow of impending evil fell across her; but shaking off the feeling as childish, she advanced into the open space, and directed her steps to the road.