by Q [Arthur Quiller-Couch], author of "Dead Man's Rock," "The Splendid Spur," etc.
As published in Strange Doings in Strange Places (Cassell & Company, Ltd.; 1890), originally published in Cassell's Saturday Journal.
I.
"Yes," said the asylum doctor, "it is one of our saddest cases; but the story is so old that one forgets to pity. He is an immense age—ninety-two or three, I believe—and lost his reason in 1815. Think of it: he has outlasted his mind by more than the psalmist's threescore years and ten."
We were seated in the sunniest corner of the asylum grounds, and the man of whom he spoke sat, not twenty yards away, in the shade of the elm avenue that veiled the asylum wall. His back was turned to us, but in the stillness of the warm afternoon we could hear distinctly the words he kept muttering over and over, and note the twitch of his shoulders that filled the interval between the repetitions. For the words were always the same—
"Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight—dead!" At the last word the hand which he raised to check off the numbers would drop heavily on to the seat beside him. There would be a pause, perhaps of half a minute, and then the dismal counting would begin again.
"That," said the doctor, nodding, "is his formula. Every day, and a thousand times a day at least, he has repeated it for more than seventy years now. Would you care to hear the story? It will interest you, I think; and the seat here is comfortable."
And this is the story that the doctor told me.
II.
One stifling evening early in June, 1815, a young man, David Burwell, apprentice to a harness maker in Cheapside, was putting up the shutters in front of his master's shop when he felt himself touched lightly on the shoulder from behind. The touch was so light and seemed to contain such hinted entreaty that David Burwell set down the shutter he was lifting, and turned in some astonishment.
"Clara!"
The girl laid a hand quickly on his arm. She was a well-favoured maid of nineteen or thereabouts, dressed in country fashion, and strongly made, as country girls should be. But just now her face was drawn with weariness; her clothes were powdered white with dust; and though no breath of air was abroad, she held her shawl about her tightly, as if shivering.
"Haven't you heard?" She hesitated.
"Of course I have heard nothing. I never get news from Alchester, nor wish to. What is it—father dead?"
"No; I left him at home."
"Who is with you, then?"
"Nobody."
The young man put his hands in his pockets, leaned back against the shutters, and regarded her with some sternness.
"I can't explain here, David; but it's terrible trouble, and I thought you would help me, perhaps. Her voice grew weaker, and she had to put out a hand against the shutters for support.
"Stop a moment," said David, observing this. He finished his task quickly, and turned again to her. "Now I'm free; you can take my arm, if you've no objection, and tell me as we walk towards—by the way, where are you stopping?"
"I don't know. I've just tramped all the way from Alchester. I thought you would find a lodging for me, perhaps."
"Walked!" David pulled up, and looked at her again. But she was clearly breaking down; so he put restraint on himself, and without further question hurried her along eastward. "Better come in here," he explained, as they came to the door of a small eating-house. "I know the people; and you look famished."
The place was deserted save for a faded waiter, who stood beguiling his leisure by flicking at the flies with a dingy napkin. David helped his companion into a box, and ordered tea and toast. The waiter suggested a chop as well, and went off with the order. The girl sat without speaking, but seemed to assent. David regarded her moodily.
"Look here," he said at last, "what's past is past. We parted with hard words. I called you a fool for being taken up with that fellow Jack Ralston; but I said that, if ever you were in trouble through him or anything else, I'd help you if you came to me. I'm a holdfast sort of man, and I take nothing back. You were a fool, and I will help you, if you'll speak."
She shivered slightly. "It's about him," she said.
"Oh, he's in trouble, is he? Small wonder!" To save his life he couldn't deny himself this thrust. "You're not married yet, eh?"
For answer she held out her left hand, which was bare of rings.
"What has he been doing?"
"David, he's innocent! Every one was against him except me—witnesses, and judge and jury."
"Judge and jury! Do you mean to say he's in prison?"
"Worse! Oh, David, David, how can I tell it? It is cruel that you don't know. They said that the mail had been robbed, and they fastened it on Jack; and though he's innocent, the judge summed up against him, and he was found guilty and condemned—"
"Hush! hush!" interrupted David, for her voice grew loud with her sobs. "Condemned, did you say?"
"To death, David—condemned to die!"
The girl's head sank down upon the table and rested on her outstretched arms.
For a minute or two there was no sound in the shop but that of her sobs. The waiter brought the tea, looked inquiringly at the picture of misery, but being schooled to apathy, said nothing, and, retiring to a discreet distance, killed a bluebottle.
David was honestly distressed. He was a narrow and positive youth, and he had a very sincere hatred for Master Jack Ralston, as a person who, by a flashy presence and a glosing tongue, had robbed him of his sweetheart. He had none of Clara's illusions about his rival's innocence. Prejudice, as well as some little acquaintance with the man's antecedents, made him decide off hand that the judge and jury were probably right. But he had very proper notions, and had honestly loved Clara all his life, and the hideous scandal, as well as her misery, touched him sorely. Above all, what help could he give?
"Why have you come to London?" he asked at length.
"To have justice," she answered, lifting her head. "I have heard that King George is a just man and merciful, and his judges are neither. To-morrow I will go to him, and tell him how shamefully they have plotted away the life of an innocent subject. Others, I have read, have succeeded in that way, and why shouldn't I?"
The sublime absurdity of this staggered David. "Nonsense!" he could not help saying.
"What! Are you against him too? Oh!" she blazed out, lifting her head, and stamping passionately with her foot, "is all the world mean and cruel? Because he did you an unconscious wrong, must you call him guilty of this, and before you have heard a fact or an argument for or against him?"
There was enough truth in this to make David look rather small.
"That's unjust," he said. "What I was thinking of was your plan of seeing the King. Do you know that the King is more than half mad, to begin with? And do you know that the Regent and his ministers have other work to attend to—that a battle with Bonaparte may be going on at this very minute, and any hour may bring a messenger from Brussels with news of victory or defeat? Come, drink your tea, and don't be unfair to me. If he's guilty or innocent, I'll do what I can."
She sipped her tea, but pushed the food away.
"When is the—" David paused, not caring to speak the word, but she understood him.
"It is to - morrow week," she answered, and shuddered. Surely—surely something can be done in all that time!"
He did not dare to meet her eyes for fear that she should read the hopelessness in his own. To cover his awkwardness, he rose.
"Look here, drink up your tea, and see if you cannot eat the toast. Whatever happens, you must not allow yourself to fall ill. I will be back presently as soon as I have seen if I can get you a lodging here."
He spoke a word or two with the waiter, and went off with him to see the proprietor of the house. When he came back, after a quarter of an hour, Clara had finished her tea, and was even struggling with the chop.
"You see, I will do all that you tell me," she said, with the ghost of a smile. The hope in her face was pitiful, and he tried to disregard it.
"I have found you a bedroom here," he said, in a matter-of-fact voice. "You had better go up and sleep at once. Early to-morrow I will call and see you, and then we can consider what is to be done." He paused, conscious that she expected him to say something more.
"You will help me, then?" she asked; and she spoke as one hungry for a word of comfort.
"I will do my best. Good-night, Clara."
It was all he could honestly say. He dropped her hand and walked out into the street.
III.
Just a week had passed, and David's want of hope was justified. Yet, in the interval, he had done almost more than his best. His master had given him a holiday, and he used it well. A clear consciousness of the absurdity of his efforts had been with him all the time; yet in the teeth of it he had consulted lawyers, had forced his way with Clara into the presence of the Home Secretary and the judge who had tried the case. The latter had told them, as plainly as hints could convey it, that they were a couple of fools, and David could not help feeling he was right. Clara, on the other hand, burst into a fit of passionate reproaches before his lordship, accusing him roundly of prejudice, venality, and blood-guiltiness.
"I think," interposed the judge, mildly, addressing David, "you had better take this young person away and lock her in her room for the next few days. My dear young sir," he added, in a lower tone, and with an intelligent smile, "I need hardly tell you the case was as clear as daylight. Take her away, and marry her yourself."
"You see," said Clara, when they were outside the door, "all this is waste of time. We must see the King himself, or the Regent."
"No one can ever say to-day where the Prince will be to-morrow. He may be in London, or Brighton, or Tonbridge—anywhere. Let us try the King."
So to Windsor they had gone next day, and had learnt that his Majesty was unfit to see a single soul. Prayers, entreaties, and tears had failed to gain them admittance, and Clara came away heart-broken.
For it was absolute death to their hopes. Alchester Gaol was a hundred and thirty miles away, and to-morrow Jack Ralston would be hanged outside its walls. As they returned, hardly daring to speak, through the dismal streets towards Clara's lodgings, David became aware that some public commotion was on foot. The pavements were crowded; pedestrians were wildly running to and fro; shopmen and apprentices stood at their doors; flags were being hung out at the windows; ribbons and streamers decorated the barbers poles, the sign-boards, the passing vehicles; a screaming newsboy ran into them, stumbled, and was on again before David could collar him.
"What is it all?" he asked a bystander. The man stared. "Why, don't you know? Great victory—French in full rout—Bonaparte running for Paris. Waterloo, I think they call the place."
David thanked him and went on, with Clara still hanging heavily on his arm.
They were in Covent Garden by this time. Already the evening was drawing in, and everywhere David could see preparations going forward for illuminations and fireworks. The populace was beside itself with joy; and at any other time his heart would have leaped too at the news which was shaking Europe. But to contrast the wild rejoicing all around with the misery beside him was horrible. Clara noticed nothing, but tottered unsteadily forward, absorbed in her own grief; and her face was as white as death.
Suddenly, before them, David heard the sound of loud cheering, and saw a carriage moving slowly forward, packed in a dense mass of human beings—a medley of struggling forms, waving hats, and frantic hurrahs. A gleam of scarlet on the box of the carriage caught his eye. As it did so he clutched Clara's arm tightly, and started forward at a run.
She looked up, as if to question him, but he made no reply: only kept his eyes fixed on the speck of scarlet uniform in front, and ran. Soon they were in the thick of the crowd, pushing, fighting, and striving. David shifted to the other side of Clara; he managed to fling his left arm around her waist, and with his right worked his way forward like a madman. His face now was as pale as hers; blood was trickling from a cut on his forehead, dealt by a chance stick, and the sweat stood on his face in great drops. She could feel his heart beating wildly as he held her pressed to his left side, and, half carrying, half dragging her, bore her on. Slowly they drew near the carriage, as the throng swept them almost off their feet and down into Drury Lane. And then the heat and noise overwhelmed her, and she fainted.
When she grew conscious again, the crowd was still about them; but now they seemed to be inside some building. David was carrying her, and she lay in his arms weak and helpless as a child. There was a blaze of light around, and they seemed to be mounting a flight of stairs.
"Where are we?" she asked, faintly.
David looked down, and as he did so a drop of blood fell from his forehead on to the bosom of her dress.
"In the theatre," he answered, panting.
"The theatre—and to-night! Oh, David!"
He paid no attention to the reproach, but presently, working his way to the side of the crowd, stepped quickly into a side corridor that was almost deserted, ran a step or two, and then set Clara down gently upon her feet, supporting her still with his arm.
"Can you walk?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Then come."
He hurried her down the corridor. A servant of the theatre came up as if to stop them, but David pulled out a guinea and the man drew aside. At length they stopped by a door, before which a tall attendant in uniform was standing. David whispered a few words.
"Impossible!" said the man. A muffled roar of cheering behind the closed door drowned David's reply. The man still shook his head; at length he said—
"I will take your message."
He opened the door gently. At the same moment David caught Clara by the shoulder. "The Regent," he whispered, and pushed her forward into the royal box.
As the word buzzed in her ears, a roar of voices, tenfold louder than before, burst out and drowned it. A blaze of light flashed in her eyes. She saw half a dozen tall forms glittering with stars and orders; beyond these, the brilliant house where the crowded faces swam as a sea. The people were standing on their feet and cheering madly. In the front of the box a high-shouldered man, with his back towards her, was bowing repeatedly to the audience. Hearing the commotion within the box, he turned.
"Hey! What's all this?"
In the midst of the astounded courtiers, Clara dropped on her knees.
IV.
"Yes," said the asylum doctor, breaking off; "the story rests now upon tradition only. But tradition is perfectly clear that Ralston's reprieve was won in this manner, and signed in Drury Lane Theatre, on the night when the news of Waterloo was brought to London. All this does not explain the figure you see before you, over there; but wait a bit, and you shall hear."
And the doctor went on with his tale.
The mail coaches had started from Lombard Street before Clara and David left the theatre with their precious scrap of writing. In the post-chaise which the latter hired with almost the last guinea of his small savings, they left London at about ten o'clock that night. Throughout their drive they followed in the wake of the laurelled mail coach. Everywhere the news of the great victory was spreading. In every village—every small hamlet—the people were in the streets that summer night, cheering, illuminating, carousing. Lights burned in every roadside cottage, and long before dawn flags were hung across the streets, and fife-and-drum bands marshalling to celebrate the downfall of the plague of Europe.
The postillion hired by David drank to the honour and welfare of his country whenever they stopped to bait or change horses. As a consequence, by the time they reached Stillwater—fifty good miles from Alchester—he was completely drunk.
David and Clara were unfortunately too deeply absorbed in their own thoughts to notice this, and the warning and disaster came upon them together. In crossing Stillwater Thicket, as you know, the high road runs for about two hundred yards between an avenue of dark pines. Between the colour of the road itself and that of the carpet of pine needles beneath the trees it is somewhat hard to distinguish. This may have accounted for the accident. At any rate, as they passed this avenue, there was a rough jolt, a crash, and a scream from Clara. The fore wheel of the chaise, which had locked with one of the pine trunks, broke off at the axle, and the chaise itself tottered over and lay helplessly on its side.
David, as soon as he had extricated Clara and set her against a pine trunk for support, turned on the post-boy. The fellow had climbed off his horse and stood stupidly staring.
"How far behind is Stillwater?" The only answer was a hiccough and a dazed grin. David, without troubling to repeat the question, made up his mind, and bent over Clara.
"Clara, you must give me the paper." She was very near swooning, but managed to make a gesture of dissent, and question him with her eyes.
"It is necessary, if Jack is to be saved. I must ride on alone."
She covered her face with her hands.
"Clara, I tell you straight: I hate the man. But I am to be trusted, and will save him for all that."
"Swear it to me," she said; "it is a hard thing to say, after your goodness; but you must swear it to me before I give up the paper."
He took her hand and swore it solemnly. Ten minutes later he had cut the traces from the post-boy's horse, and was racing, with Ralston's reprieve in his pocket, towards Alchester. Clara heard the thud of his horse's gallop on the high road until it was lost in the night.
V.
Alchester Gaol stands almost at the bottom of a steep valley, its eastern wall facing the opposite hill—a hill so steep that, standing on the summit, one can almost see the courts inside the prison building. About thirty feet from the northern extremity to the prison there is to-day a patch in the masonry. A doorway has been bricked up. This doorway stands above twenty feet from the ground. To step over its sill in those days was to step into eternity.
On this bright June morning, an ugly beam projected from the door. Below the prison wall it seemed as if a fair were in progress. Men were pushing and drinking; girls laughing and boys fighting; a murmur of shouts and curses filled the air. Further back, booths and sweet stalls lined the road, and the fields on the opposite hill were dotted with more timid spectators. The hands of the prison clock were drawing towards eight; the crowd was growing quieter minute by minute; every now and then a hush as still as death would hold it. The buyers at the drink stalls put down their mugs one by one, and sauntered nearer to join the throng.
Back on the London road, David Burwell was drawing nearer and nearer as the hand of the prison clock moved forward. The freshness of daybreak had passed, and now the sun was hot on his back, the dust thick on his lips and on the nostrils of his horse, that now lagged desperately, and hung its head till the strain on David's hand was intolerable.
He had overtaken and passed the mail coach. For half an hour he had caught short glimpses of it, a speck on the road in front; had watched it growing larger; had seen the red coats of the guard and driver, the laurel wreaths, the ribbons, the placards of victory flying; and had passed it without even answering the guard's hail.
He And now he was on the hill above Alchester. He would soon see the prison below. He rose in his stirrups to look—
Boom!
It was the first note of the prison bell. He flogged his horse and counted—eight strokes. Half a minute and the prison broke into view. He saw the crowd, the booths, in the valley below. He saw a cluster of figures at the doorway in the prison wall. He saw the beam. He stood up in his stirrups again shouted and flogged and looked. He saw—
A minute after a white-faced man galloped down into the throng, scattering the people to right and left. As he drew rein he swayed in his saddle and looked among the crowd vacantly. One man—a tall, grimy, factory hand—recognised him, and asked a question.
"Yes," answered the rider, dully—"yes, there has been a great victory at Waterloo. All's up with Bonaparte, they say."
He was mad.
VI.
"One! two! three! four!"
I was watching the madman as the story ended, and did not notice for a minute that the doctor's hand was laid on my knee.
"You haven't heard all the tale," he said.
"Not heard it?"
"No. There were two men condemned at the Alchester assize—Jack Ralston for highway robbery, and another man for horse stealing. The horse stealer was hanged first that morning. Five minutes later, David Burwell stood, with the reprieve in his pocket, and saw Ralston die! It's a grim story, eh?"