by Neil Munro
CHAPTER XXVI
A RIMEY NIGHT ON ROOF-TOPS, AND A NEW USE FOR AN OLD KIRK BELL
I fastened the rope about a chimney-head with some misgivings that bythe width and breadth of the same I was reducing our chance of evergetting down to the lower building, as the knotted sheets from theoutset had been dubious measure for the thirty feet of which mysous-officer had given the estimate. But I said never a word to thepriest of my fears on that score, and determined for once to let whatwas left of honesty go before well-fattened age and test the matterfirst myself. If the cord was too brief for its purpose, or (what wasjust as likely) on the frail side, I could pull myself back in the onecase as the priest was certainly unfit to do, and in the other my weightwould put less strain upon it than that of Father Hamilton.
I can hear him yet in my imagination after forty years, as he clungto the ridge of the roof like a seal on a rock, chittering in the coldnight wind, enviously eyeing some fires that blazed in another yard andgroaning melancholiously.
"A garden," said he, "and six beehives--no, 'faith! 'twas seven lastsummer, and a roomful of books. Oh, Paul, Paul! Now I know how God castout Satan. He took him from his warm fireside, and his books before theywere all read, and his pantoufles, and set him straddling upon a frozenhouse-top to ponder through eternal night upon the happy past. Alas,poor being! How could he know what joys were in the simplicity of a roomof books half-read and a pair of warm old slippers?"
He was fair rambling in his fears, my poor priest, and I declarescarcely knew the half of what he uttered, indeed he spoke out so loudlythat I had to check him lest he should attract attention from below.
"Father Hamilton," said I, when my cord was fastened, "with yourpermission I'll try it first. I want to make it sure that my seamanshipon the sloop _Sarah_, of Ayr, has not deserted me to the extent that Icannot come down a rope without a ratline or tie a bowling knot."
"Certainly, Paul, certainly," said he, quite eagerly, so that I wastempted for a second to think he gladly postponed his own descent fromsheer terror.
I threw over the free end of the cord and crouched upon the beak of thegable to lower myself.
"Well, Paul," said his reverence in a broken voice. "Let us say'good-bye' in case aught should happen ere we are on the same levelagain."
"Oh!" said I, impatient, "that's the true _croque-mort_ spirit indeed!Why, Father, it isn't--it isn't--" I was going to say it was not agallows I was venturing on, but the word stuck in my throat, for acertain thought that sprung to me of how nearly in my own case it hadbeen to the very gallows, and his reverence doubtless saw some delicacy,for he came promptly to my help.
"Not a priest's promise--made to be broken, you would say, good Paul,"said he. "I promised the merriest of jaunts over Europe in a coach,and here my scrivener is hanging in the reins! Pardon, dear Scotland,_milles pardons_ and good-bye and good luck." And at that he made toembrace me.
"Here's a French ceremony just about nothing at all," I thought, andbegan my descent. The priest lay on his stomach upon the ridge. As Isank, with my eyes turned upwards, I could see his hair blown by thewind against a little patch of stars, that was the only break in theEthiopia of the sky. He seemed to follow my progress breathlessly,and when I gained the other roof and shook the cord to tell him so heresponded by a faint clapping of his hands.
"Art all right, lad?" he whispered down to me, and I bade him follow.
"Good-night, Paul, good-bye, and God bless you!" he whispered. "Get outof this as quick as you can; 'tis more than behemoth could do in a monthof dark nights, and so I cut my share of the adventure. One will do'twhen two (and one of them a hogshead) will die in trying to do't."
Here was a pretty pickle! The man's ridiculous regard for my safetyoutweighed his natural inclinations, though his prospects in the prisonof Bicetre were blacker than my own, having nothing less dreadful thanan execution at the end of them. He had been merely humouring me sofar--and such a brave humouring in one whose flesh was in a quaking ofalarms all the time he slid along the roof!
"Are you not coming?" I whispered.
"On the contrary, I'm going, dear Paul," said he with a pretence atlevity. "Going back to my comfortable cell and my uniformed servant andM. Buhot, the charmingest of hostellers, and I declare my feet are likeice."
"Then," said I firmly, "I go back too. I'll be eternally cursed if Igive up my situation as scrivener at this point. I must e'en climb upagain." And with that I prepared to start the ascent.
"Stop! stop!" said he without a second's pause, "stop where you are andI'll go down. Though 'tis the most stupendous folly," he added with asigh, and in a moment later I saw his vast bulk laboriously heavingover the side of the roof. Fortunately the knots in the cord wherethe fragments of sheet and blanket were joined made his task not sodifficult as it had otherwise been, and almost as speedily as I had doneit myself he reached the roof of the lower building, though in such astate he quivered like a jelly, and was dumb with fear or with exertionwhen the thing was done.
"Ah!" he said at last, when he had recovered himself. "Art a fool to beso particular about an old carcase accursed of easy humours and accusedof regicide. Take another thought on't, Paul. What have you to do withthis wretch of a priest that brought about the whole trouble in yourignorance? And think of Galbanon!"
"Think of the devil! Father Hamilton," I snapped at him, "every minutewe waste havering away here adds to the chances against any of usgetting free, and I am sure that is not your desire. The long and theshort of it is that I'll not stir a step out of Bicetre--no, not if thedoors themselves were open--unless you consent to come with me."
"_Ventre Dieu!_" said he, "'tis just such a mulish folly as I might havelooked for from the nephew of Andrew Greig. But lead on, good imbecile,lead on, and blame not poor Father Hamilton if the thing ends in afiasco!"
We now crawled along a roof no whit more easily traversed than thatwe had already commanded. Again and again I had to stop to permit mycompanion to come up on me, for the pitch of the tiles was steep, andhe in a peril from his own lubricity, and it was necessary even to puta hand under his arm at times when he suffered a vertigo through seeingthe lights in the yard deep down as points of flame.
"Egad! boy," he said, and his perspiring hand clutching mine at one ofour pauses, "I thrill at the very entrails. I'd liefer have my nose inthe sawdust any day than thrash through thin air on to a paving-stone."
"A minute or two more and we are there," I answered him.
"Where?" said he, starting; "in purgatory?"
"Look up, man!" I told him. "There's a window beaming ten yards off."And again I pushed on.
In very truth there was no window, though I prayed as fervently for oneas it had been a glimpse of paradise, but I was bound to cozen theold man into effort for his own life and for mine. What I had from thehigher building taken for the glow of skylights had been really thelight of windows on the top flat of the other prison block, and itsroof was wholly unbroken. At least I had made up my mind to that witha despair benumbing when I touched wood. My fingers went over it in thedark with frantic eagerness. It was a trap such as we had come out of atthe other block, but it was shut. Before the priest could come up to meand suffer the fresh horror of disappointment I put my weight upon it,and had the good fortune to throw it in. The flap fell with a shriek ofhinges and showed gaping darkness. We stretched upon the tiles as closeas limpets and as silent. Nothing stirred within.
"A garden," said he in a little, "as sweet as ever bean grew in, withthe rarest plum-tree; and now I am so cold."
"I could be doing with some of your complaint," said I; "as for me, I'mon fire. Please heaven, you'll be back in the garden again."
I lowered myself within, followed by the priest, and found we wereupon the rafters. A good bit off there was a beam of light that led us,groping, and in an imminent danger of going through the plaster, toan air-hole over a little gallery whose floor was within stretch as Ilowered myself again.
Father Hamilton s
queezed after me; we both looked over the edge of thegallery, and found it was a chapel we were in!
"_Sacre nom!_" said the priest and crossed himself, with a genuflexionto the side of the altar.
"Oh, Lord! Paul," he said, whispering, "if 'twere the Middle Ages, andthis were indeed a sanctuary, how happy was a poor undeserving son ofMother Church! Even Dagobert's hounds drew back from the stag in St.Denys."
It was a mean interior, as befitted the worship of the _miserables_ whoat times would meet there. A solemn quiet held the place, that seemedwholly deserted; the dim light that had shown through the air-hole andguided us came from some candles dripping before a shrine.
"Heaven help us!" said the priest. "I know just such another."
There was nobody in the church so far as we could observe from thelittle gallery in which we found ourselves, but when we had gone down aflight of steps into the body of the same, and made to cross towards thedoor, we were suddenly confronted by a priest in a white cope. My heartjumped to my mouth; I felt a prinkling in the roots of my hair, andstopped dumb, with all my faculties basely deserted from me. LuckilyFather Hamilton kept his presence of mind. As he told me later, heremembered of a sudden the Latin proverb that in battles the eye isfirst overcome, and he fixed the man in the stole with a glance that wasbold and disconcerting. As it happened, however, the other priest wasalmost as blind as a bat, and saw but two civil worshippers in hischapel. He did not even notice that it was a _soutane_; he passedpeeringly, with a bow to our inclinations, and it was almostincredulous of our good fortune I darted out of the chapel into thedarkness of a courtyard of equal extent with that I had crossed on thenight of my first arrival at Bicetre. At its distant end there were thesame flaming braziers with figures around them, and the same glitter ofarms.
Now this Bicetre is set upon a hill and commands a prospect of the cityof Paris, of the Seine and its environs. For that reason we could seeto our right the innumerable lights of a great plain twinkling in thedarkness, and it seemed as if we had only to proceed in that directionto secure freedom by the mere effort of walking. As we stood in theshadow of the chapel, Father Hamilton eyed the distant prospect of thelighted town with a singular rapture.
"Paris!" said he. "Oh, Dieu! and I thought never to clap an eye on'tagain. Paris, my Paul! Behold the lights of it--_la ville lumiere_ thatis so fine I could spend eternity in it. Hearts are there, lad, kind andjocund-"
"And meditating a descent on unhappy Britain," said I.
"Good neighbourly hearts, or I'm a gourd else," he went on, unheeding myinterruption. "The stars in heaven are not so good, are no more notablythe expression of a glowing and fraternal spirit. There is laughter inthe streets of her."
"Not at this hour, Father Hamilton," said I, and the both of us alwayswhispering. "I've never seen the place by day nor put a foot in it,but it will be droll indeed if there is laughter in its streets at twoo'clock in the morning."
"Ah, Paul, shall we ever get there?" said he longingly. "We can but try,anyway. I certainly did not come all this way, Father Hamilton, just tolook on the lowe of Paris."
What had kept us shrinking in the shadow of the chapel wall had beenthe sound of footsteps between us and the palisades that were to bedistinguished a great deal higher than I had expected, on our right.On the other side of the rails was freedom, as well as Paris that sogreatly interested my companion, but the getting clear of them seemedlike to be a more difficult task than any we had yet overcome, and allthe more hazardous because the footsteps obviously suggested asentinel. Whether it was the rawness of the night that tempted him toa relaxation, or whether he was not strictly on duty, I know not, but,while we stood in the most wretched of quandaries, the man who was inour path very soon ceased his perambulation along the palisades, andwent over to one of the distant fires, passing within a few yards of usas we crouched in the darkness. When he had gone sufficiently out of theway we ran for it. So plain were the lights of the valley, so flimsy athing had seemed to part us from the high-road there, that never a doubtintruded on my mind that now we were as good as free, and when I cameto the rails I beat my head with my hands when the nature of our follydawned upon me.
"We may just go back," I said to the priest in a stricken voice.
"_Comment?_" said he, wiping his brow and gloating on the spectacle ofthe lighted town.
"Look," I said, indicating the railings that were nearly three times myown height, "there are no convenient trap-doors here."
"But the cord--" said he simply.
"Exactly," I said; "the cord's where we left it snugly tied with abowling knot to the chimney of our block, and I'm an ass."
"Oh, poor Paul!" said the priest in a prostration at this divulgence ofour error. "I'm the millstone on your neck, for had I not parleyed atthe other end of the cord when you had descended, the necessity for itwould never have escaped your mind. I gave you fair warning, lad, 'twasa quixotic imbecility to burden yourself with me. And are we really ata stand? God! look at Paris. Had I not seen these lights I had notcared for myself a straw, but, oh lord! lad, they are so pleasant and soclose! Why will the world sleep when two unhappy wretches die for wantof a little bit of hemp?"
"You are not to blame," said I, "one rope was little use to us in anycase. But anyhow I do not desire to die of a little bit of hemp if I canarrange it better." And I began hurriedly to scour up and down thepalisade like a trapped mouse. It extended for about a hundred yards,ending at one side against the walls of a gate-house or lodge; on theother side it concluded at the wall of the chapel. It had no break inall its expanse, and so there was nothing left for us to do but to goback the way we had come, obliterate the signs of our attempt and findour cells again. We went, be sure, with heavy hearts, again venturedinto the chapel, climbed the stairs, went through the ceiling, andstopped a little among the rafters to rest his reverence who was findingthese manoeuvres too much for his weighty body. While he sat regainingsufficient strength to resume his crawling on rimey tiles I made asearch of the loft we were in and found it extended to the gable end ofthe chapel, but nothing more for my trouble beyond part of a hangingchain that came through the roof and passed through the ceiling. I hadalmost missed it in the darkness, and even when I touched it my firstthought was to leave it alone. But I took a second thought and tried thelower end, which came up as I hauled, yard upon yard, until I had theend of it, finished with a bell-ringer's hempen grip, in my hands. Herewas a discovery if bell-pulls had been made of rope throughout inBicetre prison! But a chain with an end to a bell was not a thing to beeasily borrowed.
I went back to where Father Hamilton was seated on the rafters, and toldhim my discovery.
"A bell," said he. "Faith! I never liked them. Pestilent inventions ofthe enemy, that suggested duties to be done and the fleeting hours. Buta bell-rope implies a belfry on the roof and a bell in it, and thechain that may reach the ground within the building may reach the samedesirable place without the same."
"That's very true," said I, struck with the thing. And straight gotthrough the trap and out upon the roof again. Father Hamilton puffedafter me and in a little we came upon a structure like a dovecot at thevery gable-end. "The right time to harry a nest is at night," said I,"for then you get all that's in it." And I started to pull up the chainthat was fastened to the bell.
I lowered behemoth with infinite exertion till he reached the groundoutside the prison grounds in safety, wrapped the clapper of the bell inmy waistcoat, and descended hand over hand after him.
We were on the side of a broad road that dipped down the hill into alittle village. Between us and the village street, across which hung aswinging lamp, there mounted slowly a carriage with a pair of horses.
"Bernard!" I cried, running up to it, and found it was the Swiss in thevery article of waiting for us, and he speedily drove us into Paris.