The Inner House/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
THE REBELS.
It is useless to regret a thing that is done and over; otherwise one might very bitterly regret two or three steps in these proceedings. At the same time, it may be argued that what happened was the exact opposite of what we had every reason to expect, and therefore we could not blame ourselves with the event. After uncounted years of blind obedience, respect for authority, and unquestioning submission, had we not a full right to expect a continuance of the same spirit? What we did not know or suspect was the violence of the reaction that had set in. Not only had these revolutionaries gone back to the Past, but to the very worst traditions of the Past. They had not only become anxious to restore these old traditions; they had actually become men of violence, and were ready to back up their new convictions by an appeal to arms. We ought to have arrested the conspirators as soon as they assembled; we ought to have locked them up in the Museum and starved them into submission; we ought to have executed our criminals in private; in short, we ought to have done just exactly what we did not do.
While the Trial was proceeding, the new Party of Disorder were, as John Lax reported, gathered together in the Museum, considering what was best to be done.
They now knew all. When John Lax, in the morning, arrested the girl Christine, by my orders, he told her in plain language what had already happened.
"The Arch Physician is a Prisoner," he said. "He has been locked up all night in my room, over the South Porch. I watched below. Ha! If he had tried to escape, my instructions were to knock him on the head. Arch Physician or not. The woman Mildred is a Prisoner, as well. She was locked up with him. They may hold each other's hands and look into each other's eyes, in my room, as much as they please. And now, young woman, it is your turn."
"Mine?"
"Yours, my gal. So march along o' me."
"Why, what have I done that I should be arrested?"
"That you shall hear. March, I say. You are my Prisoner. You will stand your Trial—ah!" He smacked his lips to show his satisfaction, and wagged his head. He was a true Child of the People, and could not conceal his gratification at the discomfiture of traitors. "You will hear what the Court has to say—ah!" Again he repeated this sign of satisfaction. "You will be tried, and you will hear the Sentence of the Court—ah, ah! Do you know what it will be? Death!" he whispered. "Death for all! I see the sentence in the Suffragan's face. Oh! he means it."
The girl heard without reply; but her cheeks turned pale.
"You won't mind much," he went on. "You hardly know what it is to live. You haven't been alive long enough to feel what it means. You're only a chit of a girl. If it wasn't for the example, I dare say they would let you off. But they won't—they won't. Don't try it on. Don't think of going on your knees, or anything else. Don't go weeping or crying. The Court is as hard as nails."
The honest fellow said this in his zeal for justice, and in the hope that nothing should be said or done which might avert just punishment. Otherwise, had this girl, who was, after all, young and ignorant, thrown herself fully and frankly upon our mercy, perhaps—I do not say—some of us might have been disposed to spare her. As it was—but you have seen.
"We waste time," he said. "March!"
She was dressed, as I have already related, in a masquerade white dress of the old time, with I know not what of ribbon round her waist, and wore her hair floating down her back.
The old man—her grandfather, as she called him—sat in his arm-chair, looking on and coughing. John Lax paid no attention to him at all.
"Good-by, grandad," she said, kissing him. "You will not see me any more, because they are going to kill me. You will find your inhaler in its place; but I am afraid you will have to manage for the future without any help. No one helps anybody in this beautiful Present. They are going to kill me. Do you understand? Poor old man! Good-by!"
She kissed him again and walked away with John Lax through the Picture Gallery, and so into the College Gardens, and by the north postern into the House of Life.
"When she was gone the old man looked about him feebly. Then he began to understand what had happened. His grandchild, the nurse and stay of his feebleness, was gone from him. She was going to be killed.
He was reckoned a very stupid old man always. To keep the cases in the Museum free from dust was all that he could do. But the revival of the Past acted upon him as it had acted upon the others: it took him out of his torpor and quickened his perceptions.
"Killed?" he cried. "My grandchild to be killed?"
He was not so stupid as not to know that there were possible protectors for her, if he could find them in time. Then he seized his stick and hurried as fast as his tottering limbs would carry him to the nearest field, where he knew the sailor, named John, or Jack, Carera, was employed for the time among the peas and beans.
"Jack Carera!" he cried, looking wildly about him and flourishing with his stick. "Jack! they are going to kill her! Jack—Jack Carera!—I say," he repeated. "Where is Jack Carera? Call him, somebody. They are going to kill her! They have taken my child a prisoner to the House of Life. I say Jack—Jack! "Where is he? Where is he?"
The men were working in gangs. Nobody paid the least heed to the old man. They looked up, saw an old man—his hat blown off, his long white hair waving in the wind—brandishing wildly his stick, and shrieking for Jack. Then they went on with their work; it was no business of theirs. Docile, meek, and unquestioning are the People.
By accident, however. Jack was within hearing, and presently ran across the field.
"What is it?" he cried. "What has happened?"
"They have taken prisoner," the old man gasped, "the—the—Arch Physician—and—Lady Mildred—They are going to try them to-day before the College of Physicians. And now they have taken my girl—my Christine—and they will try her too. They will try them all, and they will kill them all."
"That shall be seen," said Jack, a fierce look in his eyes. "Go back to the Museum, old man, and wait for me. Keep quiet, if you can: wait for me."
In half an hour he had collected together the whole of the company, men and women, which formed their Party. They were thirty in number, and they came in from work in the Regulation Dress.
The sailor briefly related what had happened.
"Now," he said, "before we do anything more, let us put on the dress of the nineteenth century. That will help us to remember that our future depends upon ourselves, and will put heart in us."
This done, he made them a speech.
First, he reminded them how, by the help of one girl alone, the memory of the Past had been restored to them; next, he bade them keep in their minds the whole of that Past—every portion of it—and to brace up their courage with the thought of it—how delightful and desirable it was. And then he exhorted them to think of the Present, which he called loathsome, shameful, vile, and other bad names.
"We are in the gravest crisis of our fortunes," he concluded. "On our action this day depends our whole future. Either we emerge from this crisis free men and women, or we sink back into the Present, dull and dismal, without hope and without thought. Nay, there is more. If we do not rescue ourselves, we shall be very speedily finished off by the College. Do you think they will ever forgive us? Not so. As they deal with the Arch Physician and these two ladies, so they will deal with us. Better so. Better a thousand times to suffer Death at once, than to fall back into that wretched condition to which we were reduced. What! You, who have learned once more what is meant by Love, will you give that up? Will you give up these secret assemblies where we revive the glorious Past, and feel again the old thoughts and the old ambitions? Never—swear with me—never! never! never!"
They shouted together; they waved their hands; they were resolved. The men's eyes were alive again; in short, they were back again to the Past of their young days.
"First," said Jack, "let us arm."
He led them to a part of the Museum where certain old weapons stood stacked. Thanks to the Curator and to Christine, they had been kept bright and clear from rust by the application of oil.
"Here are swords, lances, rifles—but we have no ammunition—bayonets. Let us take the rifles and bayonets. So. To every man one. Now, the time presses. The Trial is going on. It may be too late in a few minutes to save the prisoners. Let us resolve."
Two plans suggested themselves at once. The first of these was to rush before the House of Life, break open the gates, and tear the prisoners from the hands of the Judges. The next was to ascertain, somehow, what was being done. The former counsel prevailed, and the men were already making ready for the attack when the great Bell of the House began to toll solemnly.
"What is that?" cried the women, shuddering.
It went on tolling, at regular intervals of a quarter of a minute. It was the knell for three persons about to die.
Then the doors of the South Porch flew open, and one of the Bedells came forth.
"What does that mean?" they asked.
The Bedell walked across the great Garden and began to ring the Bell of the Public Hall—the Dinner Bell.
Instantly the People began to flock in from the workshops and the fields, from all quarters, in obedience to a summons rarely issued. They flocked in slowly, and out the least animation, showing not the faintest interest in the proceedings. No doubt there was something or other—it mattered not what—ordered by the College.
"Go, somebody," cried Jack—"go, Hilda," he turned to one of the girls; "slip on your working dress; run and find out what is being done. Oh! if we are too late, they shall pay—they shall pay! Courage, men! Here are fifteen of us, well-armed and stout. We are equal to the whole of that coward mob. Run, Hilda, run!"
Hilda pushed her way through the crowd.
"What is it?" she asked the Bedell, eagerly. "What has happened?"
"You shall hear," he replied. "The most dreadful thing that can happen—a thing that has not happened since— . . . But you will hear."
He waited a little longer, until all seemed to be assembled. Then he stood upon a garden-bench and lifted up his voice:
"Listen! listen! listen!" he cried. "By order of the Holy College, listen! Know ye all that, for his crimes and treacheries, the Arch Physician has been deposed from his sacred office. Know ye all that he is condemned to die." There was here a slight movement—a shiver—as of a wood, on a still autumn day, at the first breath of the wind. "He is condemned to die. He will be brought out without delay, and will be executed in the sight of the whole People." Here they trembled. "There are also condemned with him, as accomplices in his guilt, two women—named respectively Mildred, or Mildred Carera in the old style, and the girl Christine. Listen! listen! listen! It is forbidden to any either to leave the place during the time of punishment, or to interfere in order to stay punishment, or in any way to move or meddle in the matter. Listen! Listen! Long live the Holy College!"
With that he descended and made his way back to the House. But Hilda ran to the Museum with the news.
"Why," said Jack, "what could happen better? In the House, no one knows what devilry of electricity and stuff they may have ready to hand. Here, in the open, we can defy them. Nothing remains but to wait until the prisoners are brought out, and then—then," he gasped, "remember what we were. Geoffrey, you wear the old uniform. Let the spirit of your old regiment fire your heart again. Ay, ay, you will do. Now, let us a drill a little and practice fighting together, shoulder to shoulder. Why, we are invincible."
Said I not that we might, if we ever regretted anything, regret that we did not lock these conspirators in the Museum before we brought out our prisoners to their death?
The great Bell of the House tolled; the People stood about in their quiet way, looking on, apparently unmoved, while the carpenters quickly hammered together a scaffold some six feet high.
Well. I confess it. The whole business was a mistake: the People were gone lower down than I had ever hoped: save for the shudder which naturally seized them on mention of the word Death, they showed no sign of concern. If, even then, I had gone forth to see how they took it, I might have reversed the order, and carried out the execution within. They wanted no lesson. Their Past, if it were once revived, would for the most part be a past of such struggling for life, and so much misery, that it was not likely they would care to revive it. Better the daily course, unchanged, unchangeable. Yet we know not. As my colleague in the House said, the memory is perhaps a thing indestructible. At a touch, at a flash of light, the whole of their minds might be lit up again; and the emotions, remembered and restored, might again seem what once they seemed, worth living for.
Still the great Bell tolled, and the carpenters hammered, and the scaffold, strong and high, stood waiting for the criminals; and on the scaffold a block, brought from the butcher's shop. But the People said not a single word to each other, waiting, like sheep—only, unlike sheep, they did not huddle together. In the chamber over the Porch the prisoners awaited the completion of the preparations; and in the Museum the fifteen conspirators stood waiting, armed and ready for their Deed of Violence.