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In Honour's Cause: A Tale of the Days of George the First, a novel by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 21. For Dear Life |
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_ CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. FOR DEAR LIFE.
"Shall I light the candle again, father?" "No, it will take too long, and I can do what I want in the dark. I've a rope here." Frank heard his father unlock a cabinet, and his heart beat hopefully, when the next minute his father bade him "take hold," and he felt a thin, soft coil of rope passed into his hands. He needed no telling what was to follow, for he grasped the idea at once, and followed his father out of the room without a word. They paused on the staircase for a few moments, and heard the shivering of the glass and the stern summons for the door to be opened; and then Sir Robert laid his hand upon his son's shoulder. "Seems cowardly, Frank, to try to escape, and leave a woman to bear the brunt of the encounter; but I must play the fugitive now. I can't afford to surrender; the risks are too great. Come on. Your mother must not be disappointed after what she has done, and have to see me marched off." Frank was astounded at his father's coolness, but he said nothing, and followed him quickly to the top of the house to where there was a trap-door in the ceiling over the passage leading to one of the attics. Without telling, Frank bent down and raised the light steps which were on one side of the passage, passed his arm through the coil of rope, went up the steps, and pushed open the trap-door, which fell back, leaving an opening for him to pass through into the false roof. Sir Robert followed, and a door formed like a dormer window in the slope of the roof was unbolted ready for him to step out on to the narrow leads. "Now, Frank lad, give me the rope," said Sir Robert in a low voice. "Then follow me along by the parapet. We need not crawl, for it will hide us from the soldiers if we lean inward and keep one hand on the sloping slates." "Yes, I understand," said Frank; "you mean to go along the roofs right to the end." "Yes: right." "And fasten the rope round a chimney stack?" "That's quite right too; and now listen. I shall not be able to talk to you out there. As soon as I am down, don't stop to untie the rope; it will be too tight from my weight. Cut it, and draw it up again quickly, then get back as you came, shut the door after you, and take down the steps before you join your mother. But you must do something with the rope." "Hide it?" said Frank. "It would be found, and I don't want you or your mother to have the credit of helping me to escape." "Burn it in the kitchen fire?" "There will not be time. They will search the house. I cannot propose a way, only do something with it. Now good-bye." "Good-bye?" faltered Frank. "Yes, while I can speak to you. Quick! a soldier's good-bye. That will do; now out after me." Sir Robert's "good-bye" was a firm grip of his son's hand, and then he crept out on to the roof; Frank followed him, his heart throbbing with excitement; and as he stepped out he could hear voices down below in the garden beneath the drawing-room windows. Frank shivered a little, for he felt sure that they would be seen against the sky, in spite of their precaution of leaning toward the sloping roof, and he fully expected to hear the report of muskets; but the shiver was more due to excitement than fear. "They would not be able to hit us on a night like this, while we are moving," he said to himself; and with a strange feeling of wild exhilaration, he followed the dark figure before him, climbing across the low walls which separated house from house, and finding it easy enough to walk along in the narrow path-like space of leaded roof, which extended from the bottom of the slate slope to the low parapet with its stone coping, beyond which nothing was visible but the tops of the trees in the Park. They must have passed over the roofs of twenty houses before Sir Robert stopped; and, as Frank crept up close to him, he put his lips to the boy's ear. "It's a drop of ten feet to the next house," he said. "Must go down from here." A sensation of dread did now attack Frank, as he thought of the descent of a heavy man by the frail rope. If it had been he who was to go down, it would have been different, and he would have felt no hesitation. Catching at his father's arm, he whispered: "Are you sure that it will bear you?" "Certain." "But the chimney stack?" whispered Frank, as he could dimly make out that his father was uncoiling the rope, and he could see no place that would be suitable. "Hist! This is better." Sir Robert was now kneeling down, and after being puzzled for a few moments, Frank then made out that his father was passing one end of the rope through an opening at the corner of the parapet where the rain-water ran through a leaded shoot into the upright leaden stack-pipe which ran down the house and carried it into the drain. Frank dimly made out that he knotted the rope carefully, and tried it by pulling hard twice over, before throwing a few yards over the parapet and letting the rest run through his hands till it was all down. His next movement puzzled the boy, but he grasped the meaning directly after. They were at an angle now, and Sir Robert was carefully testing the stone coping, to see if it were tight in its place and the pieces held together by the iron clamps kept in their places by the running in of molten lead. Apparently satisfied, he turned quickly to where Frank stood, now trembling, grasped his hand, and whispered: "Have you a knife?" "Yes, father." "Cut the rope, and get back as soon as you can. Don't wait to listen whether I elude the men." "No, father." Sir Robert stood holding his son's hand for a few moments, and listening to the murmur of voices at the back of his house, where the soldiers were talking rather excitedly. "For liberty and life, Frank!" whispered Sir Robert then; and with the perspiration standing in great drops on the boy's face, he saw his father grasp the rope knotted so tightly from the hole by the lead on which he stood over the stone coping, throw back his cloak, and then lay himself flat on the parapet, and carefully lower his feet as he held on by the stone. From that he lowered himself, and, partly supported by the top of the leaden stack-pipe, he slowly changed his right hand to the loop of the rope; then softly gliding by the wide-open head of the pipe, he began to descend with the rope well twined round his right leg, and held to the calf of his heavy boot by the edge of his left boot sole. "If the rope should break or come undone!" thought the boy, as he turned cold and dropped upon his knees to reach over and grip the knot with both hands, while his lips moved as he muttered a prayer, feeling the thin cord quiver and jerk as if it were a strange nerve which connected him with his father, who was below there somewhere in the darkness--jar, thrill, and make a humming noise like the string of some huge bass instrument, but so faint that it would have been inaudible at any other time. But he could hear plainly enough, without any exaltation of his senses, that the soldiers were talking earnestly not a hundred yards away, their voices rising clearly to where the boy knelt. How long was it that he could feel that vibration of the cord which thrilled through him right to his toes, and made his hair feel as if it were being lifted from his scalp? Ten minutes--five minutes--a quarter of an hour? Not many seconds, and then it stopped; and the horror of feeling it suddenly slacken and hearing a heavy crashing fall did not assail the anxious boy, though he had fully expected it. The vibration ceased, and there was a quick, warning shake, which Frank interpreted to mean a signal for him to remember his orders, and hasten back to the house. He would have liked to lean over, listening and straining his sight to follow the further movements of his father; but Sir Robert had, unconsciously to both, gradually disciplined his son into a prompt, soldierly way of instantly obeying orders, and directly that wave had passed up to him, Frank's knife was out, and the rope, after a good deal of sawing, was cut through, the knife replaced, and the cord was rapidly drawn up, and laid down on the leads in a loose coil. He bent over then for a moment or two and listened, but all was still just below. There was no alarm such as he had dreaded, no shouting and firing of shots; and gathering up the rope, he hurried back along the narrow leads, using the same precaution of leaning inward, passed from house to house quickly, and kept on asking himself what he should do to hide the rope. No idea came, and he had nearly reached home before it flashed across his brain, and he drew a breath of relief. There was a hiding-place just before him, at the top of the low ridge of the house two doors away from his own. A low chimney was smoking steadily, and without pausing to think whether it was wise or no he crept up the slates, reached the ridge, grasped the side of the chimney stack, and stood upright, finding that he could just reach the top of the smoking pot. That was enough. The next minute he had the end of the rope passed in; and resting his wrists on the top of the pot, he drew and drew, rather slowly at first, but more and more rapidly as the descending end gained weight, and at last sufficed to run it down, and then it was gone. He slid down the slates, and, feeling relieved of an incubus, he reached their own house, glided in at the dormer, shut and bolted the door, descended through the trap, drawing it over him, went down the steps, laid them in their place, and, lastly, wondering whether he had soiled his hands with the black on the top of the house, he ran rapidly downstairs. As he ran he could hear the heavy tramp of the soldiers in the street at the front, and when he reached the lower flights dimly made out the figure of his mother standing at the bottom step, and stretched out his hand and caught her arm. Lady Gowan uttered a cry of horror, and sprang forward into the hall, facing round to meet her invisible enemy; but she uttered a faint sigh of relief as her arm was caught again, and she heard the familiar voice whisper: "Hush! hush! mother." "Ah!" she whispered back. "Your father?" Frank's answer was drowned by a thunderous blow delivered with a sledge-hammer upon the door close to the lock, and this was followed by another and another, which raised echoes up the staircase, and brought a series of hysterical shrieks from the housekeeper's room. But Lady Gowan paid no heed to either. She caught her son by the arms, and drew him farther from the door, placed her lips to his ear, and whispered in an agonised tone: "Your father?--speak!" "Got down safe, and gone," whispered back Frank; and as his mother clung to him a strange thrill of elation ran through his nerves, making him feel that he was engaged in an adventure full of delirious joy. He felt that he must shout and cheer to get rid of the intense excitement which made his blood bubble in his veins, and he was ready for any mad display in what was like playing some wonderful game, in which, after a desperate struggle, his side was winning. "Let them hammer and bang down the door, mother. The idiots! they are giving him time to get safe away. Oh the fools, the fools! Shall I go and speak to them?" "No, no," whispered Lady Gowan, speaking with her lips once more to her boy's ear, for the noise made was deafening. "Let them take time to break in, and then we must parley with them, and let them suspect us and make a regular search. They will waste nearly an hour, Frank." "Of course they will," cried the boy joyously; "but, I say, mother, we're not going to put up with this, you know; I'm not going to have you insulted by these people breaking into the house. I shall show fight." "No, no, don't do anything imprudent, Frank. We must assume that we took them for a ruffianly mob who tried to break in." "But they said, 'in the King's name,' mother," said the boy dubiously. "And we would not believe them, my boy. Frank, Frank, it is horrible to incite you to prevaricate and dally with the truth, but it is to save your father's life. Be silent. On my head be the sin, and I will speak and bear it." The crashing of the woodwork went on beneath the blows, and the murmur that rose like a low, deep accompaniment outside told that a crowd had collected, and were being kept back by the soldiery. "This way, Frank," cried Lady Gowan; and she drew her son after her to the head of the basement steps, where she called aloud to the housekeeper, who came hurrying up, candle in hand, to where mother and son stood. The old woman looked ghastly, and Frank could hear a strange sobbing from below, in spite of the noise at the front, which was partly deadened from where they stood. "Master, my lady?" cried the woman wildly. "Safe--escaped, Berry," said Lady Gowan, in a voice full of exultation. "Safe--escaped, my lady!" cried the woman, with the light of exultation rising now in her countenance. "Then let them batter the house down, the wretches. I don't care now." "But, Berry, listen. Sir Robert is out of their reach by now; but they must not know that he has been here." "Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the woman wildly; "they won't get anything out of me. What! me tell 'em that my dear young master, whom I nursed when he wasn't half the size of Master Frank--tell 'em he has been here! I'd sooner have my tongue cut out." "But the girl--the girl?" "What her, my lady?" said the housekeeper contemptuously. "Oh, they'll get nothing out of her to-night but shrieks, and nothing now, for she's shruck herself hoarse and speechless." "Ah!" sighed Lady Gowan, "then now I can feel at rest. Come up, Frank." She led the way to the staircase, and hurried on to the drawing-room, with the massive front door being broken piecemeal by the heavy sledge-hammer; but each chain and bolt still held, and there was no way in yet but for light and noise, so that, before they gave way, Frank had time to get a light and ignite the candles in two sets of branches in the drawing-room which they had entered and then fastened the door. This done, he turned in surprise to see that his mother had thrown back her hood, rearranged her hair, and was standing there before him flushed, but proud and perfectly calm. "Oh, mother!" he cried, stepping up to her and kissing her. "I can't help it. Drew is right. I am so proud of you." "Are you?" she said, smiling, as she returned his kiss, and her look said that the pride was reciprocal. They gazed in each other's eyes for a few moments, as if deaf to the sounds below-stairs, which told that the soldiers had at last gained an entrance. Then a change came over Lady Gowan's face, her upper lip curled, and a look of haughty scorn shone from her eyes. "They are coming up, my boy," she cried. "Leave me to speak." For answer Frank drew his sword, caught up the silver branch with its three candles from the table, and took a couple of strides in front of his mother toward the door, as it was dashed open, when, sword in hand, followed by half a dozen men with fixed bayonets, the officer in command rushed in. _ |
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