CHAPTER XII

HOW LOVERS ARE CONVINCED

Nothing is more impossible than to predict what one's emotions will be in any given crisis. If any one had told Christopher Neville that lying in a shed under accusation of murder, believed guilty by his lady love, cast off by his friend, his most acute sensation would be envy of the tobacco which the sentry was smoking outside the door, he would have laughed the prophet to scorn; yet so it was.

The nervous strain, added to the cold of the tobacco-house, was more than he could bear, and beyond any spiritual help he craved physical stimulant, something to make "a man of him" again, to give him back that courage and coolness which had never yet deserted him, but which he felt now slipping away fast.

At length he felt shame at such loss of manhood, and began to take himself to task.

"Come, now, Christopher Neville, thou sourfaced son of ill fortune!" he said aloud, as if talking to another person, "state thy woes, one by one, and I will combat them with what heart I may. Begin then!--What first?"

"I am in prison."

"Where many a better man has been before thee. In a palace thou mightst be in worse company."

"I am cold."

"Walk about!"

"I am hungry."

"Pull down yonder tobacco-leaf and chew it."

"My friends have forsaken me."

"So did Job's."

"My sweetheart has turned the cold shoulder to me."

"Then do thou turn thy back full to her. Use thy reason, man alive! Hast thou lived to nigh forty years, to be hurt like a boy by a woman's inconstancy? Laugh at her, revile her if thou wilt, rip out round oaths; but, an thou be not quite demented, put not thy courage beneath the foot of her scorn!"

"But I love her."

"Ah, poor fool! There thou hast me. Thou knowst well I have no balm in my box to medicine that hurt. Yet what can't be cured, may be forgot, for a while at least. Wine would do it. Perchance tobacco may--Curse that guard! How good his pipe smells!--I would I had one."

Neville had never yet failed of a benefit for lack of asking, so now he set up a tattoo with his fists on the wall.

"What's wanted within there?" came gruffly from the guard.

"What would you want if you'd been shut up in this cold hole for a night and a day?"

"I might _want_ ortolans and pheasants and a bottle of old Madeira; but if I was a murderer, and as good as a dead man myself, I shouldn't look to get them--not in _this_ world."

Neville kept his temper. It was all he had left.

"Maybe not; but if you saw a fellow outside, with a pipe in his mouth and a tobacco pouch in his pocket, and another pipe bulging out at the breast of his jerkin, it's likely you'd count on his taking pity on the poor devil locked up inside, and giving him a bit smoke."

The guard weakened visibly. Neville could see through the crack that he half turned and put his hand irresolutely to his pocket. Then he straightened himself more rigidly.

"How do I know but you want to set the tobacco-house afire? And then off you'd be, and 'tis I must answer for you to the Governor--a just man, but hard on one that fails in his duty."

"Come, then," called Neville more cheerfully, feeling his point half won; "why not come in and smoke with me? Then you can keep an eye on me and the tobacco together, and it will be a comfort to me to have speech of a fellow mortal instead of being tormented by my cursed unpleasant thoughts."

Truth to tell, the guard was nearly as weary of solitude as his prisoner. This walking up and down in the dusk from one pine-tree to another was not lively work, and besides, there was a compelling magnetism in Neville's voice that had charmed stronger men than the guard, Philpotts.

Slowly, and with a certain reluctance to yield characteristic of Englishmen, and quite independent of the value of the thing conceded, he drew the heavy bolt and entered.

The interior of the shed, for it was scarcely more, was dismal enough in the half light. The long tobacco leaves hanging from the beams suggested mourner's weeds, and waved ominously in the wind as the door was opened. Daylight still peeped in through the chinks. By its help Neville studied the heavy outlines of the guard's figure clad in a sad colored campaign coat lined with blue and surmounted by a montero cap which shaded a pock-marked face, a typical English face, square cut, obstinate, with persistence and loyalty writ large all over it.

"Pardon my not rising," said Neville, as if he were receiving a courtier. "The cold and dampness of this place have given me the rheum to such extent that each bone in my body hath its own particular pain. If I kneel my knees ache, if I sit my hips ache, if I bend my back aches."

"Marry," interrupted the jailer, with a coarse laugh; "'tis well you are to try hanging, which will rest them all."

"You have a very pretty wit, jailer, and so keen one would say it had been sharpened on an English whetstone. The French have no gift for such rapier thrusts."

"Oh, to Hell with the French!"

"Hell must be crammed full of foreigners. We English are always sending them there."

"No doubt you'll know soon."

"Very likely. If I do, I'll send you word--and by the way, so that I may not forget, what is your name?"

"Philpotts."

"Ah! Related to Robert Philpot of Kent?"

"No; no such fine folk in our line. Besides, my name is Philpotts."

"One _l_ and two _t's_?"

"That same," replied the guard laconically, having no mind to be drawn into too friendly intercourse.

"A droll name!"

"None too droll for many an honest man to bear it."

"Pardon me, I doubt not the honesty; but I question whether there be many Philpottses floating round the world. I never knew but one, and he lived in Somerset."

"Somerset?"

"Ay, in a little village on the coast between the Mendip hills and the river Axe."

A look of recollection stole into the dull gray eyes, but still the shrewd self-restraint lingered.

"How did the village lie, and what is its name?"

"Its name is Regis, and it lies like a baby in a cradle, snugly tucked away in the dip of the hills; and there is a brook close beside it that comes tumbling over the rocks to lose itself in the Axe."

Philpotts nodded unconscious assent.

"Oh," continued Neville, "but I would like to see that river Axe once more! I do remember a famous pool where the fish leaped to the hook in the spring in a fashion to make a man's blood sing."

"Did ye know Philpotts, then?"

"Ay."

"What mought his first name ha' been?"

"James--James Philpotts. He had a farm of my father, and he and I were wont to go a-fishing together in the Axe, and one cold day he fell in. He couldn't swim, if I remember; and how like a drowned rat he did look when he got out!"

At the memory, in spite of all his troubles, Neville laughed aloud. Philpotts slowly laid down his pipe, and propped it against a board, determined, before yielding to emotion, to attend to the safety of the tobacco-house. Then striding over to Neville he seized his hand in his own two brawny ones with a grip that made the other man wince.

"Swim? no, that he couldn't, and it's his life and all he owes to you, sir, and he bade me look out for you in the New World and pay back the service an ever I got the chance; but 'twas the name misled me,--'Jack Neville,' says my brother; 'Christopher Neville,' says the Governor in the manor-house yesterday."

"Ay, my name is Christopher; but as I had a cousin who bore the same, and who was often at Frome for months at a time, the family were wont to call me 'Jack,' after my father."

"So--thou--art--the son of Master John Neville of Frome House?"

The words came hard, as if forced out.

Philpotts stood looking at the prisoner till slowly the mouth began to work, two tears slipped out from his eyelids and slid down his nose. He put up the sleeve of his jerkin to wipe them off, and then, fairly overcome, leaned against his arm on the post in the corner and fell to sobbing aloud.

"Forgive me blubbering, sir; but, oh, to see you in this sorry case, and me a-guarding you that should be helping you to escape. Shame on them that shut up an innocent man and planned his ruin!"

"An innocent man?" queried Neville; "why, 'tis not five minutes since that I was a murderer unfit to share an honest man's pipe."

"God ha' mercy on my blind stupidity! I see not how I could ha' looked in your face and not seen that 'twas na' in those eyes to look on a man to murder him nor in that mouth to swear falsely."

"Not so fast, Philpotts! Many a saint has had the ill luck to look like a pirate, and I was thrown in with a man in Algiers that I would have shared my last crust with, and he stole my wallet and made off with it in the night."

"Well, mebbe it's because I'm not of the quality and have no book learning, but when I feel things in my bones I don't question of them; and now my eyes are open and I see you're innocent, I'm going to help you out of this hole."

"But the danger--"

"To Hell with the danger! There never was a Philpotts yet was a coward."

"But your farm is well started here."

"Let it go to seed, then. It's little good there is for a Protestant in this Papist province, anyhow, and I'd not be sorry to be off to Virginia. I've a boat on the river below. So you see there's nothing between you and freedom."

"Yes, there is one thing."

"An' what's that, pray?"

As if in answer to the question came a rapid knock at the door outside. The guard grasped his musket and marched once or twice up and down the barn to recover his severe military bearing before he drew the door a crack open.

"Who goes there?"

"It is I, Mistress Calvert, cousin to Governor Brent."

Neville's heart felt as if it were an anvil, and some unseen power were laying on the hammer-strokes thick and fast. The blood surged to his face, and then fell back again leaving it white. She had come. Was he glad or sorry? Pride said, "You are sorry." Love whispered, "You are glad--do not deny it." Pride answered, "Yes, glad of the chance to make her sorry."

"I know not how to deny you, Mistress Calvert," came from without in Philpotts' voice, "but my commands are that none should enter save by the Governor's orders."

"Uncivil fellow!" Neville instinctively felt for his sword, and would have made a trial of his strength without it, but that on the instant he heard that voice, the voice that could make little shivers run from head to foot.

"You are in the right, as usual, good Master Philpotts, and foreseeing that you could not be swayed without the Governor's order, the Governor's order I have brought for a half-hour's talk with the prisoner, you meanwhile to be within call, but not within hearing. See! is't not writ as I have said?" she asked, holding the paper toward him.

"I am not such a churl as to dispute a lady's word," said Philpotts, glad in this chivalrous manner to evade a too severe strain on his powers of reading a written document. "The Governor's order shall be obeyed," and swinging back the door he closed it again behind him and resumed his march from the green pine-tree to the brown one, and from the brown tree back again to the green, watching the yellow sun set behind the distant hills. His taciturnity yielded at last to the extent of one exclamation, "By the Lord Harry, what a coil!"

As Elinor Calvert entered she threw back her sable hood, and her pale, beautiful face, surrounded by its golden hair, shone like the moon against the dark setting of the tobacco-hung rafters. Her only ornament was the diamond crescent at her throat, which glistened as a ray of the setting sun struck upon it. Her eyes were full of unshed tears, and her lips trembled so that she could scarcely control them enough to utter the words she had come to speak. Her hands were clenched tightly, as if by that force alone she held to her resolution.

Inside the door she waited for some word of welcome or greeting. She put up her hand to her throat as if to ease the sorrow which was rising and swelling within. By accident her fingers grasped the crescent, and she clung to it as to a talisman. Neville made no step toward her. He stood leaning against the wall, his arms folded before him. It was as if she were the criminal and he the judge. The silence was intolerable to Elinor.

"Speak to me!" she cried at last, stretching out her hands toward him. Her voice betrayed a dry anguish in the throat, and her breath came in quick, short gasps.

"Are you come as Governor Brent's messenger?"

Elinor shivered as though his tone had more chill in it than the January air, but her own was equally haughty as she answered,--

"I come by permission of my kinsman, who never deserts a friend."

"No, faith! since when the friend needs help he ceases to be one."

"Your words are brutal."

"Perchance. I have not been trained by your Fathers to mean one thing and say another."

Elinor felt for her hood as though she would have drawn it over her head again and left without another word; then changing her mind, she advanced nearer.

"This is not a kind greeting," she said, "for one who comes to help you."

"If I were not past help I might have spoke more kindly."

"Oh, but you are not past help. And that is what the Governor bade me say, that it is not too late; that he knows Father Mohl pricked you past endurance, and that he will move heaven and earth to get you off if you will but confess, so that no innocent man may suffer."

Neville bowed with ironical courtesy.

"You will give me an answer to take to him?"

"I have given Governor Brent my answer once."

"Oh, think! Do not send me away hastily. Think what is before you,--the chains, the prison, the--the _scaffold_."

Neville smiled.

"Have you no feeling? How _can_ you smile?"

"Was I smiling? I suppose I was following your words and picturing the scenes you called up, especially the last. I was thinking about the fellows who would make the noose fast and swing me off, fancying, poor fools, that they had killed me. How little they would know that the death came off weeks before, and was dealt by one glance from a pair of purple-gray eyes that said in yonder court-room, 'I count you guilty.'"

"Stay not to bandy phrases!" interrupted Elinor, swaying a little unsteadily on her feet. "Talk no more of guilt or innocence; but let us look about for another plan of escape since you will not trust Giles Brent. Look, I am near as tall as you. I measured height the evening you stood by me at the fire. You have fair hair, too, like mine. Let us change attire, and you in my cloak shall slip out yonder door."

"And you?"

"What matter what befalls me? As you say yourself, I have got my death wound already."

"But your boy--Cecil."

"There are others who will care for him. Mary Brent loves him as her own, and Giles will look to him for my sake."

Neville started; he had never thought before of that possibility of Brent's having once loved Elinor, yet why not, when none could be near her and not feel the magic of that charm before which even now his pride was ebbing fast; but this thought stung him to new haughtiness.

"You and your cousin have been equally at fault in your judgment of me," he said, dryly. "I am as capable of murdering a priest as of taking shelter behind a woman and leaving her to bear my punishment. If I wished to escape I am not dependent upon your help. There are others, tried and true and firm believers in my innocence, who have offered me freedom, but my honor would not be clear. There is just one way out of the present coil, and that road leads up the scaffold--and down again."

"No! No! No! I say it shall not be!" cried Elinor, carried beyond herself in a burst of passion. "You must--you _shall_ get away from this horrible place. Come!" she added with a smile, changing suddenly from anger to sweetness--"come! you have oft said there was naught on earth you would not do for my sake. Now what I ask is such a little thing."

"I have heard of Jesuit methods," said Neville, as if speaking to himself. "'Twas a shrewd trick when other shifts failed to tempt a man through the woman he loved, the woman who had once loved him."

"_Had_ loved thee! Would to God the taunt were true! Have not faith and reason grappled with each other through the long midnight hours, one saying, 'He is innocent, you feel it;' and the other, 'He is guilty, you know it'? And at the end, when both fell down conquered by the combat, Love rose up greater than either and took me by the throat and brought me here. Listen, Christopher! If you have done this thing _I_ have done it, for you and I are one. If you are put to death I will end my life by my own hand, and then we shall be together to all eternity; and what matter if the priests call it Hell!"

Neville took a step forward. Falling on his knees at her feet he raised the hem of her dress to his lips and kissed it once, twice, thrice.

"Oh, Elinor! Oh, my darling!" he murmured, "this is love indeed, perfect love which passeth understanding; but oh, how, how,"--with this he rose and strode impatiently up and down the floor--"how can you love me like this and still doubt me? You have known me these many years, you have seen me go in and out among my fellows, surely not like a cutthroat and assassin. You have seen me raise my hand to Heaven and swear in that high presence to my innocence, and still you condemn me. What in God's name can I do or say more?"

He fixed his eyes upon Elinor, whose whole frame shook with the force of the feeling that swayed her. The blood rushed up and overflowed her face and neck, and her voice sank to a whisper as she leaned toward him and murmured,--

"I think--I think if you were to take me in your arms and whisper it in my ear, I--even I--should believe--and be at peace."