Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  Looking, the Captain had wondered in what circumstances death would come to find such a man, and he had seen — with that extraordinary vision which is vouchsafed to men who stand upon the Threshold — an image dreadful beyond words, an image that had informed that profound compassion of his glance.

  They pushed on. Crowds everywhere along the cart’s way; every window held a little mob, assembled there to see a man pass to his death. To Harry Gaynor though ever dispassionate now and beyond resentment of such trifles, there seemed something foul and obscene in this curiosity.

  He turned his gaze from it at last and met the mild eyes of the ordinary They were full of tears. This he deemed very odd. He was almost touched by it, forgetting entirely the amount of Burgundy which the chaplain had consumed and in which his heart had been softened so that the death of a stray dog would have rendered him maudlin.

  “Sir,” he said very gently, “I beg that ye’ll not weep for me who do not weep for myself.”

  “That is the very reason of my weeping,” the parson answered him, and a tear detached itself at last, ran down his ample cheek and joined the snuff on his neckband, all of which the Captain observed with extraordinary interest.

  “This is very odd,” he said. “Do you, then, not believe in what you teach? Do you not believe in a joyous and glorious hereafter?”

  The ordinary stared at him, and in his surprise forgot his weeping. “Or is it that in your own experience this world has proved it so extraordinarily delectable a place that you will not barter it for any other?”

  “Nay, nay, sir. But you, so young—” the fellow mumbled inconclusively

  “Am I not fortunate therein, since I shall be spared the infirmities of age?”

  “But to be cut off in mid-life, thus! It is so monstrous pitiful. Oh, sir,” he implored, “turn your thoughts, I beg, to other things.”

  “They are so turned,” the Captain answered quietly. “’Tis yours, sir, that seem to be earth-bound, else why this grief in which I cannot share? Sir, I do think you lay too much store by this little moment we call life.” And lo! it was the doomed man who set himself to offer spiritual comfort to the parson.

  “Since go we must in the end, what shall it signify that we go today or tarry until tomorrow? Shall we bewail a day? Let me tell you a story I heard once in the East.”

  “God forbid!” ejaculated the ordinary “In such an hour!” he cried, all scandalised. “Would you still dwell upon your past when your thoughts should be all of the future?”

  The Captain smiled a little, and said no more. Still overlooking the Burgundy, he accounted this fellow unfit for the ordeal of bearing solace to the doomed. The task, it was evident, confused him. There fell a silence between them. The cart, at a snail’s pace, was crawling up Holborn Hill, and everywhere surged the same brutal, unfeeling crowd, staring, shouting, jesting, jeering.

  Do not suppose that in this was any political rancour. Few, indeed, had any notion of the offence for which the Captain was to suffer. He was just a man going to be hanged, and a man going to be hanged was ever an interesting and often a somewhat amusing spectacle, always sufficient to justify a holiday.

  The ordinary, watching his face, saw its almost contemptuous wonder, and misinterpreted it.

  “I marvel vastly, sir,” he said, “that you did not get leave to come in a coach.”

  “Could I have done so?” asked the Captain, with but indifferent interest.

  “At your own expense,” the parson assured him.

  “Ah, well, ’tis little matter.”

  But now another thought occurred to the ordinary. He had just observed that the cart contained no coffin.

  “Have you no friends?” he asked abruptly He was obliged to shout almost that he might be heard above the din.

  “Friends? I hope so.”

  “Where are they, then?”

  The Captain’s brows were knit in an instant. “Would you have them here to swell this dreadful throng?” he asked.

  “Nay, nay; but what provision have they made?”

  “Provision, sir?”

  “Ay, for your burial. Have they obtained leave to bury you?”

  The Captain looked at him, and smiled. “The thought has never engaged me. I had imagined, if I imagined anything, that all this was the concern of those that hang me.”

  “Then ye were mistaken, sir.”

  “Does it signify so much?” he asked. And before the extraordinary calm of the soldier’s eyes, the ordinary became suddenly aware that he was very far astray from the path of his duty, that his thoughts were all for this wretched, perishable body instead of for the imperishable soul.

  He uttered some commonplaces of religion, some of the minor currency that it was his trade to circulate. The soldier sat silent, his thoughts far away, thankful for this respite from the man’s more trivial chatter of trivial things. He turned his head to look forward, and he heard the ordinary’s sudden, alarmed “Don’t look!”

  But it did not deter him. They were trundling downhill now, the mob growing more and more dense, the houses thinning. Below there, at the hill’s foot, the ground was black with swarming humanity, and from the midst of it, a dark triangular object reared itself — the sinister triple beam.

  Captain Gaynor eyed it steadily, then turned him to the ordinary once more.

  “We approach the journey’s end,” he said, and smiled. “It is very well, for the journey itself is none so pleasant.”

  Chapter 15. EXECUTION

  Often has it been written that death is life’s greatest adventure. A paradox lurks subtly in the statement, which may be the reason why the phrase has been esteemed of so many writers. But of the death Captain Gaynor was to die that day at Tyburn, the statement can be made in its literal meaning, and without paradox, that it was the greatest adventure of his life.

  I am tempted at this stage of my history to interpolate here a memoir from the pen of the somewhat famous Dr Emanuel Blizzard. And if upon due consideration I have resolved not to quote this document verbatim, it is because, despite its wealth of detail, this record is, after all, an incomplete one; for there was, of course, much concerning Captain Gaynor’s history with which the famous professor was never made acquainted.

  I write, however, with the doctor’s memoir before me — indeed, in its absence, it would be impossible for me to fill in the details of this most extraordinary part of the history I am relating. Much of that memoir — and my reader will be quick to discern the passages — I transcribe almost literally, save that here and there I have been able to elaborate from other records at my disposal certain points which to the doctor remained perforce obscure. Moreover, it will better contribute to the lucidity of my own narrative if I marshal the events in the order of their happening — an order by no means observed by the professor.

  As the cart bearing Captain Gaynor came under the fatal beam, the vociferations of the crowd abated. They sank to a mere murmur, to a subdued hissing whisper, as of a breeze stirring through a forest, and lastly into an absolute and deathly silence — the impressive expectant hush of nature when a storm impends.

  The ordinary was reading aloud the Office for the Dead. Jack Ketch, the ruffianly driver of the cart, was on his feet. He took the end of the rope that hung from the noose round Captain Gaynor’s neck, swung it a moment to gather the required momentum, then threw it over the beam and deftly caught it again as it came round and down. In an instant he had knotted it. In another he had resumed his seat, taken up his whip, and with a stinging cut sent his horse at a half-gallop down the lane which the military had opened out for him in the mob.

  Captain Gaynor found himself alone now in the cart. The parson had vanished, though he could not remember at what precise stage of the journey the fellow had left him. All round the vehicle seethed the crowd, yelling, shouting, cursing, laughing once more, but they seemed no longer to heed him.

  Onward the cart rolled, with a thundering rumble now, which increased in volume
as they went, and the Captain observed with faint curiosity that those who were not quick to avoid it went down under its wheels. Theirs were the curses and foul oaths with which his ears were being deafened.

  Soon, however, these and all other sounds began to fade. They had left the crowd behind, about that triangular structure which he knew stood some way in the rear. They were coming into the open country. The wheels of the cart still rumbled, but less noisily now, and as they rolled presently over a soft spread of emerald turf this sound faded almost entirely.

  The Captain discovered that his hands were no longer pinioned, and this was as mystifying as that sudden disappearance of the parson, for he could not recall at what particular stage of his progress the bonds had been removed.

  He turned, and saw before him, sitting upright upon his plank, the immobile figure of the driver in his ragged three-cornered hat and coat of rusty black. The fellow still puffed his short clay pipe, for the smoke of it hung in wreaths about his head. He marvelled at his unconcern and apparent disregard of his prisoner.

  They were ambling gently now down a lane between hedgerows that were aflame with extraordinarily rich blossoms. The sunlight was dazzling. It shone upon the waters of a pond, which he perceived through a gap in the hedge, so brilliantly that his eyes were hurt and dazzled.

  It occurred to him then that since Jack Ketch was so unobservant and unconcerned, and since there was none other by to hinder him, he need not continue in the cart. He threw a leg over the rail at the back, and leapt lightly to the ground.

  The vehicle rolled on. He stood watching it as with incredible swiftness it diminished in size down that interminable avenue. When it was no more than a speck in the far distance, he turned and went through the gap in the hedge with that unbearable reflection of sunlight on water beating upon his eyes; and turn which way he would he could not avoid it. There was water all about him now, and it all shone fiercely, like a mirror in the very eye of the sun. At last he perceived a bridge. He advanced towards it, and crossed it, shutting his eyes to exclude that fierce glare, yet still conscious of it even through closed lids. He opened them again to make the discovery that this bridge which he had crossed was the rustic structure leading into the garden of Priory Close. Strange, he thought, that he should never before have observed what a deal of water flowed down the little ravine it spanned. And then he ceased to wonder about anything, for before him stood a radiant Damaris with arms held out in welcome.

  He plunged forward with a cry, and sank into her embrace.

  “My dear,” she said, “why have you left me so long to my bitter thoughts of you?”

  He sought to answer her, but could not; her arms were laced so tightly about his neck that he could not speak. She was strangling him. Had he been able to speak he would have told her so. But he could not. Yet although the choking was hurting him, he did not attempt to struggle. It was so good to lie there. He was very, very weary. He nestled his head more closely upon her breast. A great drowsiness overcame him, and he fell asleep.

  Between two of the three uprights of that triangular structure, the body of Captain Gaynor swung gently to and fro, as if the warm summer breeze made sport with it.

  About the foot of the gibbet there was an open square, maintained by a hedge of men in scarlet coats and mitre-shaped hats. The drums had long since ceased to beat.

  Came a sharp word of command, and a line of muskets flashed up and rattled to rest, each upon the shoulder of its owner; another word of command, and the redcoats manoeuvred into marching order, four abreast. Then the drums rolled out again, and the scarlet phalanx swung briskly away through the tumultuous crowd.

  The show was at an end.

  Into the open square which the military had maintained at the gallows’ foot sprang now some half-dozen resolute and bustling ruffians. The crowd surged after them, like waters suddenly released, and a cart pressed forward with the foremost.

  The tallest of these ruffians, with a knife between his teeth, shinned up one of the vertical timbers and threw a leg over the cross-beam from which the Captain’s body was swinging. With his knife he slashed through the rope, and the body tumbled into the arms of his companions below. Two of them bore it away. The others plied elbows and tongues to force a passage through the rabble with their prize. They gained the cart, flung in their limp burden, and as one of them vaulted after it, the driver cracked his whip and cursed the people volubly and obscenely. A way was reluctantly opened, and into this the little cart pressed, driven forward like a wedge. Slowly it won through.

  Some little distance from the gallows a chaise had been drawn up. In this sat an elderly gentleman, who, with a grey face and dull, pain-laden eyes, had watched the execution. His aspect was so profoundly grief-stricken that the crowd about his carriage had felt the influence of it, and had preserved an almost utter silence. They resented being constrained to this despite themselves, for they felt that their enjoyment of the show had been marred; but for all their resentment they had not been able to shake off the spell of that anguished old countenance.

  Suddenly, as the body was being borne away, Sir John Kynaston — for he it was — seemed to rouse himself from his trance. He uttered a cry and carried a trembling hand to the carriage door. He fumbled at it for some moments, opened it at last, and sprang down, shouting. But his voice was lost in the terrific uproar. He attempted to struggle through the crowd. But, spent as was his strength by grief, he was unequal to the effort, and after a quarter of an hour’s striving he had got no farther than the foot of the gallows, whilst the cart was vanishing into the Edgware Road.

  He implored those about him to pass the word along that he would pay the snatchers handsomely for their booty. An attempt was made to do his will, and the message travelled some little way, but it was scattered and lost at last.

  In the end he was forced to give up the attempt. Blaming himself for not having thought of the matter sooner, he made his way with feeble, unsteady steps — his vigour all sapped — back to his carriage. The crowd was growing thinner now He regained his chaise, and so returned in sorrow to Chertsey, deriving, if possible, an added grief from the reflection that he had neglected to perform the last rites by the body of his old friend’s boy.

  Priory Lodge in those days was haunted by an atmosphere of gloom. Evelyn and Damaris remained both invisible even to Sir John, both pleading indisposition.

  Evelyn was overcome with terror at the ruin she had wrought, for she accounted that Captain Gaynor’s arrest and execution had all resulted from the disclosure of his identity when Lord Pauncefort spied upon the lovers in the garden. She it was who had fetched his lordship to Chertsey by her letter, and she, herself, had conducted him to the garden that he might surprise his betrothed in the arms of another.

  It had been with her no more than an act of petty vengeance, she could scarce have said for what. But she had intended that it should remain petty; she had never dreamt of such tragic consequences as these. She was prostrated by them and by her consciousness of guilt; and it went as near to making a woman of her and arousing her dormant intelligence as anything could do. She had not seen Damaris since the happening — now some ten days old — in that garden. She had been afraid to face her, and now her fear had increased to terror since Sir John had brought word three days ago of the sentence of death that had been passed upon their whilom guest. That had been terrible enough. But now came the still more terrible news — again brought by Sir John — that Captain Gaynor had been hanged.

  In her anguish, in her overwhelming panic, Evelyn wanted to die. She could never again meet the eyes of Damaris. She was — she told herself that night, as she lay wide-eyed upon her bed — a murderess. Once, in the grey hour of dawn she rose from her bed, fell on her knees beside it, and prayed — not to heaven, but to the spirit of Captain Gaynor — for forgiveness. Conceiving that this spirit being disembodied must be now all knowing, she cried out to it that she had not meant to work this havoc, that her deed had been li
ght and heedless, that never would she have performed it could she have dreamed of such consequences to himself as these.

  Some comfort she took in the reflection that he must know, and that knowing all he must forgive, as all must who know all.

  It was on the morrow that Sir John brought himself to question his wife on the subject of the Captain’s sojourn at Priory Close. His wife, with habitual irrelevance and her passion for the unimportant, related to him the deception that had been practised by the girls. He gathered from this and from what else she added that Harry Gaynor had wooed Damaris under the impression that he was wooing Evelyn; he learnt that Pauncefort had been at Priory Close on the very morning of the day upon which the Captain had been arrested; and he was able for himself to piece together the event, save that he knew nothing of the revelations that had driven Damaris away in a loathing of Harry Gaynor as great almost as had been that which earlier had turned her from Pauncefort.

  He sat in the library pondering it all, and thinking of the elder Gaynor who had been his friend, his more than brother, and thanking God that he had not lived to see this day of sorrow. He pondered the hope he had nourished of wedding his only child to Harry. That hope must, he saw, in any case have been frustrated. It mattered little now. For Evelyn, indeed, it was better as it was; better that she had not loved him. And then he sat up sharply with a sudden, a terrible thought. It moved him to rise and go in quest of his wife again.

  “What ails Evelyn?” he inquired.

  “I do not know, my dear. The child is very odd always, and very headstrong.” Lady Kynaston sighed. “I never had her confidence.”

  “How long has she been ailing? How long has she kept her chamber?”

  Her ladyship considered a moment. “Why, ever since Captain Gaynor left us,” said she.

  He was answered, he thought. His daughter, too, was stricken by the same blow. She had conceived for the Captain an unrequited passion. His heart bled for her, and in his compassion he went at once to seek her.