Come Rack! Come Rope! Part 68

The great realities were closing round her, as irresistible as wheels and bars. There was scarcely a period in her life, scarcely a voluntary action of hers for good or evil, that did not furnish some part of this vast machine in whose grip both she and her friend were held so fast. No calculation on her part could have contrived so complete a climax; yet hardly a calculation that had not gone astray from that end to which she had designed it. It was as if some monstrous and ironical power had been beneath and about her all her life long, using those thoughts and actions that she had intended in one way to the development of another.

First, it was she that had first turned her friend's mind to the life of a priest. Had she submitted to natural causes, she would have been his wife nine years ago; they would have been hara.s.sed no doubt and troubled, but no more. It was she again that had encouraged his return to Derbys.h.i.+re. If it had not been for that, and for the efforts she had made to do what she thought good work for G.o.d, he might have been sent elsewhere. It was in her house that he had been taken, and in the very place she had designed for his safety. If she had but sent him on, as he wished, back to the hills again, he might never have been taken at all.

These, and a score of other thoughts, had raced continually through her mind; she felt even as if she were responsible for the manner of his taking, and for the horror that it had been his father who had accomplished it; if she had said more, or less, in the hall of that dark morning; if she had not swooned; if she had said bravely: "It is your son, sir, who is here," all might have been saved. And now it was Topcliffe who was come--(and she knew all that this signified)--the very man at whose mere bodily presence she had sickened in the court of the Tower. And, last, it was she who had to tell Robin of this.

So tremendous, however, had been the weight of these thoughts upon her, crowned and clinched (so to say) by finding that the priest was even in the same cell as that in which she had visited the traitor, that there was no room any more for bitterness. Even as she waited, with Mr.

Biddell behind her, as the gaoler fumbled with the keys, she was aware that the last breath of resentment had been drawn.... It was, indeed, a monstrous Power that had so dealt with her.... It was none other than the Will of G.o.d, plain at last.

She knelt down for the priest's blessing, without speaking, as the door closed, and Mr. Biddell knelt behind her. Then she rose and went forward to the stool and sat upon it.

He was hardly changed at all. He looked a little white and drawn in the wavering light of the flambeau; but his clothes were orderly and clean, and his eyes as bright and resolute as ever.

"It is a great happiness to see you," he said, smiling, and then no more compliments.

"And what of my father?" he added instantly.

She told him. Mr. Audrey was in Derby, still sick from his fit. He was in Mr. Columbell's house. She had not seen him.

"Robin," she said (and she used the old name, utterly unknowing that she did so), "we must speak with Mr. Biddell presently about your case. But there is a word or two I have to say first. We can have two hours here, if you wish it."

Robin put his hands behind him on to the table and jumped lightly, so that he sat on it, facing her.

"If you will not sit on the table, Mr. Biddell, I fear there is only that block of wood."

He pointed to a, block of a tree set on end. It served him, laid flat, as a pillow. The lawyer went across to it.

"The judges, I hear, are come to-night," said the priest.

She bowed.

"Yes; but your case will not be up for three or four days yet."

"Why, then, I shall have time--"

She lifted her hand sharply a little to check him.

"You will not have much time," she said, and paused again. A sharp contraction came and went in the muscles of her throat. It was as if a band gripped her there, relaxed, and gripped again. She put up her own hand desperately to tear at her collar.

"Why, but--" began the priest.

She could bear it no more. His resolute cheerfulness, his frank astonishment, were like knives to her. She gave one cry.

"Topcliffe is come ... Topcliffe!..." she cried. Then she flung her arm across the table and dropped her face on it. No tears came from her eyes, but tearing sobs shook and tormented her.

It was quite quiet after she had spoken. Even in her anguish she knew that. The priest did not stir from where he sat a couple of feet away; only the swinging of his feet ceased. She drove down her convulsions; they rose again; she drove them down once more. Then the tears surged up, her whole being relaxed, and she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Marjorie," said the grave voice, as steady as it had ever been, "Marjorie. This is what we looked for, is it not?... Topcliffe is come, is he? Well, let him come. He or another. It is for this that we have all looked since the beginning. Christ His Grace is strong enough, is it not? It hath been strong enough for many, at least; and He will not surely take it from me who need it so much...." (He spoke in pauses, but his voice never faltered.) "I have prayed for that grace ever since I have been here.... He hath given me great peace in this place.... I think He will give it me to the end.... You must pray, my ... my child; you must not cry like that."

(She lifted her agonized face for a moment, then she let it fall again.

It seemed as if he knew the very thoughts of her.)

"This all seems very perfect to me," he went on. "It was yourself who first turned me to this life, and you knew surely what you did. I knew, at least, all the while, I think; and I have never ceased to thank G.o.d.

And it was through your hands that the letter came to me to go to Fotheringay. And it was in your house that I was taken.... And it was Mr. Maine's beads that they found on me when they searched me here--the pair of beads you gave me."

Again she stared at him, blind and bewildered.

He went on steadily:

"And now it is you again who bring me the first news of my pa.s.sion. It is yourself, first and last, under G.o.d, that have brought me all these graces and crosses. And I thank you with all my heart.... But you must pray for me to the end, and after it, too."

CHAPTER VIII

I

"Water," said a sharp voice, p.r.i.c.king through the enormous thickness of the bloodshot dark that had come down on him. There followed a sound of floods; then a sense of sudden coolness, and he opened his eyes once more, and became aware of unbearable pain in arms and feet. Again the whirling dark, striped with blood colour, fell on him like a blanket; again the sound of waters falling and the sense of coolness, and again he opened his eyes.

For a minute or two it was all that he could do to hold himself in consciousness. It appeared to him a necessity to do so. He could see a smoke-stained roof of beams and rafters, and on these he fixed his eyes, thinking that he could hold himself so, as by thin, wiry threads of sight, from falling again into the pit where all was black or blood-colour. The pain was appalling, but he thought he had gripped it at last, and could hold it so, like a wrestler.

As the pain began to resolve itself into throbs and stabs, from the continuous strain in which at first it had shown itself--a strain that was like a shrill horn blowing, or a blaze of bluish light--he began to see more, and to understand a little. There were four or five faces looking down on him: one was the face of a man he had seen somewhere in an inn ... it was at Fotheringay; it was my lord Shrewsbury's man.

Another was a lean face; a black hat came and went behind it; the lips were drawn in a sort of smile, so that he could see the teeth.... Then he perceived next that he himself was lying in a kind of shallow trough of wood upon the floor. He could see his bare feet raised a little and tied with cords.

Then, one by one, these sights fitted themselves into one another and made sense. He remembered that he was in Derby gaol--not in his own cell; that the lean face was of a man called Topcliffe; that a physician was there as well as the others; that they had been questioning him on various points, and that some of these points he had answered, while others he had not, and must not. Some of them concerned her Grace of the Scots.... These he had answered. Then, again, a.s.sociation came back....

"As Thy arms, O Christ ..." he whispered.

"Now then," came the sharp voice in his ear, so close and harsh as to distress him. "These questions again.... Were there any other places besides at Padley and Booth's Edge, in the parish of Hathersage, where you said ma.s.s?"

"... O Christ, were extended on the Cross--" began the tortured man dreamily. "Ah-h-h!"....

It was a scream, whispered rather than shrieked, that was torn from him by the sharpness of the agony. His body had lifted from the floor without will of his own, twisting a little; and what seemed as strings of fiery pain had shot upwards from his feet and downwards from his wrists as the roller was suddenly jerked again. He hung there perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, conscious only of the blinding pain--questions, questioners, roof and faces all gone and drowned again in a whirling tumult of darkness and red streaks. The sweat poured again suddenly from his whole body.... Then again he sank relaxed upon the floor, and the pulses beat in his head, and he thought that Marjorie and her mother and his own father were all looking at him....

He heard presently the same voice talking:

"--and answer the questions that are put to you.... Now then, we will begin the others, if it please you better.... In what month was it that you first became privy to the plot against her Grace?"

"Wait!" whispered the priest. "Wait, and I will answer that." (He understood that there was a trap here. The question had been framed differently last time. But his mind was all a-whirl; and he feared he might answer wrongly if he could not collect himself. He still wondered why so many friends of his were in the room--even Father Campion....)

He drew a breath again presently, and tried to speak; but his voice broke like a shattered trumpet, and he could not command it.... He must whisper.

"It was in August, I think.... I think it was August, two years ago."...