The crimson banners in the west were paling to pink. The kine had ceased their lowing, and had been gathered into the rick yards.
All nature had sounded her curfew, but old Jasper was silent!
The bell-ringer, with his gray head yet bared, had traversed half the distance between his cottage and the ivy-covered tower when a form went flitting past him, with pale, shadowy robes floating round it, and hair that the low western lights touched and tinted as with a halo.
“Ah, Huldah, Huldah!” the old man muttered; “how swift she flies? I will come soon dear. My work is almost done.”
Huldah was the good wife who had gone from him in her early womanhood, and for whom he had mourned all his long life. But the fleeting form was not Huldah’s. It was Lily De Vere, hurried by a sudden and desperate purpose toward the cathedral.
“So help me God, curfew shall not ring to-night! Cromwell and his dragoons come this way. Once more I will kneel at his feet and plead.”
She entered the ruined arch. She wrenched from its fastening the carved and worm-eaten door that barred the way to the tower. She ascended with flying and frenzied feet the steps; her heart lifted up to God for Richard’s deliverance from peril. The bats flew out and shook the dust of centuries from the black carving. As she went up she caught glimpses of the interior of the great building, with its groined roof, its chevrons and clustered columns; its pictured saint and carved image of the virgin, which the pillages of ages had been spared to be dealt with by time, the most relentless vandal of all.
Up—still—up—beyond the rainbow tints thrown by the stained glass across her death-white brow; up—still—up—past open arch, with griffin and gargoyles staring at her from under bracket and cornice, with all the hideousness and mediæval carving; the stairs, flight by flight, growing frailer beneath her young feet; now but a slender network between her and the outer world; but still up.
Her breath was coming short and gasping. She saw through an open space old Jasper cross the road at the foot of the tower. Oh, how far! The seconds were treasures which Cromwell, with all his blood-bought commonwealth, could not purchase from her. Up—ah—there, just above her with its great brazen mouth and wicked tongue, the bell hung. A worm eaten block for a step, and one small white had clasped itself above the clapper—the other prepared, at the tremble, to rise and clasp its mate, and the feet to swing off—and thus she waited. Jasper was old and slow, but he was sure and it came at last. A faint quiver, and the young feet swung from their rest, and the tender hands clasped for more than their precious life the writhing thing. There was groaning and creaking of the rude pulleys above, and then the strokes came heavy and strong. Jasper’s hand had not forgot its cunning, nor his arm its strength. The tender, soft form was swung and dashed to and fro. But she clung to and caressed the cold, cruel thing. Let one stroke come and a thousand might follow—for its fatal work would be done. She wreathed her white arms about it, so that with every pull of the great rope it crushed into the flesh. It tore her, and wounded and bruised; but there in the solemn twilight the brave woman swung and fought with the curfew, and God gave her victory.
The old bell-ringer said to himself: “Aye, Huldah, my work is done. The pulleys are getting too heavy for my old arms; my ears, too, have failed me. I dinna hear one stroke of the curfew. Dear old bell! it is my ears that have gone false, and not thou. Farewell old friend.”