Frances fled to her room and threw herself on the bed in an agony of tears. This storm subsided into a gentle rain of subdued weeping, and finally ceased as she heard the heavy tramp of riding-boots in the adjoining room. She sat up in the darkness, listening intently. He closed the wooden shutters of the window, shaking them to be sure that their fastenings were secure. Then the bolts of the outer door were thrust in their places, but, this apparently failing to satisfy the doubts of the inmate, there was a sound of some heavy article of furniture being dragged across the room; then the tramping ceased and all was still. She sat there thinking of nothing; her mind seemed to be dulled by the ordeal awaiting her and the fear of it, but there was no thought of turning back or trying to avoid it. Dimly she was sorry for herself and for him, sleeping in his fancied security, yet in a set trap; but on her action this night depended her brother’s life, and that outweighed all other considerations, even if her brain were alert enough to cast them in the opposite scales. Unheeding she had heard the clock in a neighbouring tower toll the hour; now it struck again and she counted the notes. Eleven! It was still too early. People slept heavier as the night wore on. She thought of their journey; of the halt at York; of their talk in the niche in the hotel of the Templars; of various incidents along the road; the march past of Cromwell’s troopers, four and four, all looking straight ahead, and as she remembered them they seemed to be passing her now; passing, passing, passing; then Cromwell stopped and smote his steel breastplate with resounding clang. She lifted her head with a start, and the clang of the breastplate changed to the toll of the bell in the tower. Heavens, she had been asleep; her brother’s life hanging on her drooping eyelids! One, two, three four, five, six, seven! It must be midnight, and the first five strokes had been on Cromwell’s breastplate. She roused herself and attempted to take off her shoes, but her hands were trembling so she was forced to desist. She sat up again, telling herself it was better to wait until all effect of the long chiming had ceased, for the striking of twelve sometimes disturbed or awakened the soundest sleeper. The clock tower seemed dangerously near, as if it were approaching her hour by hour. At last the shoes came off, and in stockinged feet she stood by the secret door, waiting till the frightfully rapid beating of her heart should moderate. It threatened to choke her. Then she slid back the bar and drew open the door, all so smoothly oiled that there was not the whisper of a creak. She tiptoed into the cavern of blackness and silence, holding her spread hands in front of her, moving slowly with the utmost caution, step by step. In her mind she had estimated, from her earlier survey of the room, that nine steps would take her to the bed; now she realized she had taken a dozen and yet had not come to it. She stood bewildered and listened. The helplessness of a person in the pitch dark thrilled her with a new fear, upsetting all her calculations. The panic of pulsation in her throat and in her ears at first rendered any attempt at listening futile; but at last she heard his regular breathing, as peaceful as that of an infant, and it came from the other side of the room. For a moment this terrified her, and she wondered if she were really awake, or in the mazes of some baffling nightmare; but the solution came to her mind and quieted the growing agitation. It had been his bed that he dragged across the floor, and he was now sleeping against the outside door. And all his preparations were as naught, because of this midnight spectre, moving upon him! She changed her direction and, with her former stealth, came ghost-like to the edge of the couch.
His doublet was open at the throat; that was so much to the good. Like a snowflake in its coldness and its lightness, her hand stole down underneath his vest, fluttered by the slow, steady, subdued beating of his heart, running no such wild race as her own at that moment. It seemed incredible that at last her fingers closed on the parchment; but there it lay, and gently she drew it forth. Was the robbery to be so easily accomplished after all? Ah, she had congratulated herself too soon. It stuck fast; either the silken cord that bound it was caught, or the document was secured to the vest,—a contingency she had never thought of, and yet what more natural? Twice she tugged it gently, then a third time more strenuously, when it came unexpectedly away and her knuckles struck the sleeper under the chin. Instantly, like the snap of a steel trap, his fingers closed upon her wrist, and his voice rang out as wideawake and clear as ever he had spoken to her: “Frances!”
Now the racing heart stopped dead. Lucky for her that at this supreme moment all action was impossible, and that she was stricken into frozen marble. She imagined he was awake and knew her, and then the cold horror of her situation numbed thought at its source.
“Frances!” The voice came more sleepily this time, and he repeated thrice very rapidly, “Frances, Frances, Frances!” Feebly her heart had taken up its work again. She was not to die as she had feared. Sodden with drowsiness, his voice rambled on, and came to an indefinite conclusion.
“My darling, you are in danger. We must get out of Oxford. Everything, every——your safety, my dear. The King——” Then the words became indistinct and died away; but alas! the grip of iron remained on her wrist. For a long time she stood there motionless; then tried to disengage his fingers gently; but at the first movement the grasp tightened again. One o’clock struck. He slept so silently that it began to appear to her agitated brain that she was a prisoner of the dead. She came near to sinking from very weariness. Two o’clock tolled from the tower. Sometimes she fancied she slept standing there, but her five jailors did not sleep. She kept wondering in which direction lay the open door, for at times the room seemed to swim around her, thus disturbing all sense of locality. She almost laughed aloud when she thought of herself free, but groping helplessly for the open door, failing to find it, and she shuddered that even the remembrance of laughter should come to her at such a time; surely a sign of approaching frenzy. Then it seemed the fingers loosened; but hand and wrist had lost all feeling, and she could not be sure. She tottered and nearly fell; when she stood upright again she was free; he muttering to himself, and his hand slashing undirected on the mattress, as if it missed something it sought drunkenly to recover. The girl could scarce repress a cry of joy at her release. She moved eagerly in the path that should lead her to the door, but, hurrying too much, came upon his jack-boots on the floor, and fell helplessly, so overwrought that even when her feet touched them she could not draw back.
“Who’s there? Who’s in this room?” cried Armstrong. She was standing again, fully expecting to hear his feet on the floor; but the bell struck three, and he counted dreamily, and all was still again. When she reached her room, she closed and barred the door as silently as she had opened it. The tension relaxed, she felt she was going to swoon. Blindly she groped for her shoes, murmuring, “O God! not yet,—not yet. Give me a moment more.” Finding her foot-gear at last, she dared not wait to put them on, but stole softly down the stair, steadying herself against the wall. The cool air outside struck her like the blessing of God, and soothed her whirling head. She heard a horse champing his bit, then a whisper came out of the darkness: “Is that you at last, madam?”
“Yes,” she said, sinking on the doorstep, and leaning her head against the lintel, the cold stone grateful to her hot forehead.
“You are not hurt, madam?” inquired the man anxiously.
“No, no,” she gasped; then, with an eldritch little laugh, “I want to put on my shoes, that’s all.”