CHAPTER XIII.
AN UNFINISHED TASK.
Immediately after the sentence was pronounced 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 multitude. 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 passed 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 passed 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 passed 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.