CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
FOR DEAR LIFE.
"Now, Frank, my boy," said Sir Robert, as the door closed on Lady Gowan,"they have us in front, and they have us in the rear. A fox, they say,always has two holes to the earth. A man is obliged to have a third wayof escape if his enemies are too many for him, and I don't want to fightwith the King's men for other reasons than that they belong to my oldregiment."
"Shall I light the candle again, father?"
"No, it will take too long, and I can do what I want in the dark. I'vea 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 athin, soft coil of rope passed into his hands.
He needed no telling what was to follow, for he grasped the idea atonce, and followed his father out of the room without a word.
They paused on the staircase for a few moments, and heard the shiveringof the glass and the stern summons for the door to be opened; and thenSir Robert laid his hand upon his son's shoulder.
"Seems cowardly, Frank, to try to escape, and leave a woman to bear thebrunt of the encounter; but I must play the fugitive now. I can'tafford to surrender; the risks are too great. Come on. Your mothermust not be disappointed after what she has done, and have to see memarched off."
Frank was astounded at his father's coolness, but he said nothing, andfollowed him quickly to the top of the house to where there was atrap-door in the ceiling over the passage leading to one of the attics.
Without telling, Frank bent down and raised the light steps which wereon 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 slopeof the roof was unbolted ready for him to step out on to the narrowleads.
"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 willhide us from the soldiers if we lean inward and keep one hand on thesloping slates."
"Yes, I understand," said Frank; "you mean to go along the roofs rightto 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 toyou out there. As soon as I am down, don't stop to untie the rope; itwill 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 thesteps before you join your mother. But you must do something with therope."
"Hide it?" said Frank.
"It would be found, and I don't want you or your mother to have thecredit of helping me to escape."
"Burn it in the kitchen fire?"
"There will not be time. They will search the house. I cannot proposea 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 willdo; now out after me."
Sir Robert's "good-bye" was a firm grip of his son's hand, and then hecrept out on to the roof; Frank followed him, his heart throbbing withexcitement; and as he stepped out he could hear voices down below in thegarden beneath the drawing-room windows.
Frank shivered a little, for he felt sure that they would be seenagainst the sky, in spite of their precaution of leaning toward thesloping roof, and he fully expected to hear the report of muskets; butthe shiver was more due to excitement than fear.
"They would not be able to hit us on a night like this, while we aremoving," he said to himself; and with a strange feeling of wildexhilaration, he followed the dark figure before him, climbing acrossthe low walls which separated house from house, and finding it easyenough to walk along in the narrow path-like space of leaded roof, whichextended from the bottom of the slate slope to the low parapet with itsstone coping, beyond which nothing was visible but the tops of the treesin the Park.
They must have passed over the roofs of twenty houses before Sir Robertstopped; and, as Frank crept up close to him, he put his lips to theboy's ear.
"It's a drop of ten feet to the next house," he said. "Must go downfrom here."
A sensation of dread did now attack Frank, as he thought of the descentof 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 outthat his father was uncoiling the rope, and he could see no place thatwould be suitable.
"Hist! This is better."
Sir Robert was now kneeling down, and after being puzzled for a fewmoments, Frank then made out that his father was passing one end of therope through an opening at the corner of the parapet where therain-water ran through a leaded shoot into the upright leaden stack-pipewhich ran down the house and carried it into the drain.
Frank dimly made out that he knotted the rope carefully, and tried it bypulling hard twice over, before throwing a few yards over the parapetand letting the rest run through his hands till it was all down.
His next movement puzzled the boy, but he grasped the meaning directlyafter.
They were at an angle now, and Sir Robert was carefully testing thestone coping, to see if it were tight in its place and the pieces heldtogether by the iron clamps kept in their places by the running in ofmolten lead.
Apparently satisfied, he turned quickly to where Frank stood, nowtrembling, 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 listenwhether I elude the men."
"No, father."
Sir Robert stood holding his son's hand for a few moments, and listeningto the murmur of voices at the back of his house, where the soldierswere talking rather excitedly.
"For liberty and life, Frank!" whispered Sir Robert then; and with theperspiration standing in great drops on the boy's face, he saw hisfather grasp the rope knotted so tightly from the hole by the lead onwhich he stood over the stone coping, throw back his cloak, and then layhimself flat on the parapet, and carefully lower his feet as he held onby the stone. From that he lowered himself, and, partly supported bythe top of the leaden stack-pipe, he slowly changed his right hand tothe loop of the rope; then softly gliding by the wide-open head of thepipe, 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 bootsole.
"If the rope should break or come undone!" thought the boy, as he turnedcold and dropped upon his knees to reach over and grip the knot withboth hands, while his lips moved as he muttered a prayer, feeling thethin cord quiver and jerk as if it were a strange nerve which connectedhim with his father, who was below there somewhere in the darkness--jar,thrill, and make a humming noise like the string of some huge bassinstrument, but so faint that it would have been inaudible at any othertime. But he could hear plainly enough, without any exaltation of hissenses, that the soldiers were talking earnestly not a hundred yardsaway, their voices rising clearly to where the boy knelt.
How long was it that he could feel that vibration of the cord whichthrilled through him right to his toes, and made his hair feel as if itwere being lifted from his scalp? Ten minutes--five minutes--a quarterof an hour? Not many seconds, and then it stopped; and the horror offeeling it suddenly slacken and hearing a heavy crashing fall did notassail the anxious boy, though he had fully expected it. The vibrationceased, and there was a quick, warning shake, which Frank interpreted tomean a signal for him to remember his orders, and hasten back to thehouse.
He would have liked to lean over, listening and straining his sight tofollow 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 hadpassed up to him, Frank's knife was out, and the rope, after a good dealof sawing, was cut through, the knife replaced, and the cord was rapidlydrawn 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 stilljust below. There was no alarm such as he had dreaded, no shouting andfiring of shots; and gathering up the rope, he hurried back along thenarrow leads, using the same precaution of leaning inward, passed fromhouse to house quickly, and kept on asking himself what he should do tohide the rope.
No idea came, and he had nearly reached home before it flashed acrosshis brain, and he drew a breath of relief.
There was a hiding-place just before him, at the top of the low ridge ofthe house two doors away from his own. A low chimney was smokingsteadily, and without pausing to think whether it was wise or no hecrept up the slates, reached the ridge, grasped the side of the chimneystack, and stood upright, finding that he could just reach the top ofthe 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, ratherslowly at first, but more and more rapidly as the descending end gainedweight, 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 reachedtheir 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 soiledhis hands with the black on the top of the house, he ran rapidlydownstairs.
As he ran he could hear the heavy tramp of the soldiers in the street atthe front, and when he reached the lower flights dimly made out thefigure of his mother standing at the bottom step, and stretched out hishand 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 sighof relief as her arm was caught again, and she heard the familiar voicewhisper:
"Hush! hush! mother."
"Ah!" she whispered back. "Your father?"
Frank's answer was drowned by a thunderous blow delivered with asledge-hammer upon the door close to the lock, and this was followed byanother and another, which raised echoes up the staircase, and brought aseries 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, andwhispered in an agonised tone:
"Your father?--speak!"
"Got down safe, and gone," whispered back Frank; and as his mother clungto him a strange thrill of elation ran through his nerves, making himfeel that he was engaged in an adventure full of delirious joy. He feltthat he must shout and cheer to get rid of the intense excitement whichmade his blood bubble in his veins, and he was ready for any mad displayin what was like playing some wonderful game, in which, after adesperate struggle, his side was winning.
"Let them hammer and bang down the door, mother. The idiots! they aregiving him time to get safe away. Oh the fools, the fools! Shall I goand speak to them?"
"No, no," whispered Lady Gowan, speaking with her lips once more to herboy's ear, for the noise made was deafening. "Let them take time tobreak in, and then we must parley with them, and let them suspect us andmake 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 youinsulted by these people breaking into the house. I shall show fight."
"No, no, don't do anything imprudent, Frank. We must assume that wetook 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 toincite you to prevaricate and dally with the truth, but it is to saveyour father's life. Be silent. On my head be the sin, and I will speakand bear it."
The crashing of the woodwork went on beneath the blows, and the murmurthat rose like a low, deep accompaniment outside told that a crowd hadcollected, and were being kept back by the soldiery.
"This way, Frank," cried Lady Gowan; and she drew her son after her tothe head of the basement steps, where she called aloud to thehousekeeper, who came hurrying up, candle in hand, to where mother andson stood.
The old woman looked ghastly, and Frank could hear a strange sobbingfrom below, in spite of the noise at the front, which was partlydeadened 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 exultationrising 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 theymust not know that he has been here."
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the woman wildly; "they won't get anything out ofme. What! me tell 'em that my dear young master, whom I nursed when hewasn't half the size of Master Frank--tell 'em he has been here! I'dsooner have my tongue cut out."
"But the girl--the girl?"
"What her, my lady?" said the housekeeper contemptuously. "Oh, they'llget nothing out of her to-night but shrieks, and nothing now, for she'sshruck 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 heavysledge-hammer; but each chain and bolt still held, and there was no wayin yet but for light and noise, so that, before they gave way, Frank hadtime to get a light and ignite the candles in two sets of branches inthe drawing-room which they had entered and then fastened the door.
This done, he turned in surprise to see that his mother had thrown backher hood, rearranged her hair, and was standing there before himflushed, but proud and perfectly calm.
"Oh, mother!" he cried, stepping up to her and kissing her. "I can'thelp it. Drew is right. I am so proud of you."
"Are you?" she said, smiling, as she returned his kiss, and her looksaid that the pride was reciprocal.
They gazed in each other's eyes for a few moments, as if deaf to thesounds below-stairs, which told that the soldiers had at last gained anentrance.
Then a change came over Lady Gowan's face, her upper lip curled, and alook 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 itsthree candles from the table, and took a couple of strides in front ofhis 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 commandrushed in.