The Battle Of The Strong: Chapter 33

Chapter 33

Mattingley's dungeon was infested with rats and other vermin, he had only
straw for his bed, and his food and drink were bread and water. The walls
were damp with moisture from the Fauxbie running beneath, and a mere
glimmer of light came through a small barred window. Superstition had
surrounded the Vier Prison with horrors. As carts passed under the great
archway, its depth multiplied the sounds so powerfully, the echoes were
so fantastic, that folk believed them the roarings of fiendish spirits.
If a mounted guard hurried through, the reverberation of the drum-beats
and the clatter of hoofs were so uncouth that children stopped their ears
and fled in terror. To the ignorant populace the Vier Prison was the home
of noisome serpents and the rendezvous of the devil and his witches of
Rocbert.

When therefore the seafaring merchant of the Vier Marchi, whose massive,
brass-studded bahue had been as a gay bazaar where the gentry of Jersey
refreshed their wardrobes, with one eye closed--when he was transferred
to the Vier Prison, little wonder he should become a dreadful being round
whom played the lightnings of dark fancy. Elie Mattingley the popular
sinner, with insolent gold rings in his ears, unchallenged as to how he
came by his merchandise, was one person; Elie Mattingley, a torch for the
burning, and housed amid the terrors of the Vier Prison, was another.

Few people in Jersey slept the night before his execution. Here and there
kind-hearted women or unimportant men lay awake through pity, and a few
through a vague sense of loss; for, henceforth, the Vier Marchi would
lack a familiar interest; but mostly the people of Mattingley's world
were wakeful through curiosity. Morbid expectation of the hanging had for
them a gruesome diversion. The thing itself would break the daily
monotony of life and provide hushed gossip for vraic gatherings and
veilles for a long time to come. Thus Elie Mattingley would not die in
vain!

Here was one sensation, but there was still another. Olivier Delagarde
had been unmasked, and the whole island had gone tracking him down. No
aged toothless tiger was ever sported through the jungle by an army of
shikarris with hungrier malice than was this broken traitor by the people
he had betrayed. Ensued, therefore, a commingling of patriotism with lust
of man-hunting and eager expectation of to-morrow's sacrifice.

Nothing of this excitement disturbed Mattingley. He did not sleep, but
that was because he was still watching for a means of escape. He felt his
chances diminish, however, when about midnight an extra guard was put
round the prison. Something had gone amiss in the matter of his rescue.

Three things had been planned.

Firstly, he was to try escape by the small window of the dungeon.

Secondly, Carterette was to bring Sebastian Alixandre to the prison
disguised as a sorrowing aunt of the condemned. Alixandre was suddenly to
overpower the jailer, Mattingley was to make a rush for freedom, and a
few bold spirits without would second his efforts and smuggle him to the
sea. The directing mind and hand in the business were Ranulph
Delagarde's. He was to have his boat waiting to respond to a signal from
the shore, and to make sail for France, where he and his father were to
be landed. There he was to give Mattingley, Alixandre, and Carterette his
craft to fare across the seas to the great fishing-ground of Gaspe in
Canada.

Lastly, if these plans failed, the executioner was to be drugged with
liquor, his besetting weakness, on the eve of the hanging.

The first plan had been found impossible, the window being too small for
even Mattingley's head to get through. The second had failed because the
righteous Royal Court forbade Carterette the prison, intent that she
should no longer be contaminated by so vile a wretch as her father. For
years this same Christian solicitude had looked down from the windows of
the Cohue Royale upon this same criminal in the Vier Marchi, with one
blind eye for himself the sinner and an open one for his merchandise.

Mattingley could hear the hollow sound of the sentinels' steps under the
archway of the Vier Prison. He was quite stoical. If he had to die, then
he had to die. Death could only be a little minute of agony; and for what
came after--well, he had not thought fearfully of that, and he had no
wish to think of it at all. The visiting chaplain had talked, and he had
not listened. He had his own ideas about life, and death, and the beyond,
and they were not ungenerous. The chaplain had found him patient but
impossible, kindly but unresponsive, sometimes even curious, but without
remorse.

"You should repent with sorrow and a contrite heart," said the clergyman.
"You have done many evil things in your life, Mattingley."

Mattingley had replied: "Ma fuifre, I can't remember them! I know I never
done them, for I never done anything but good all my life--so much for so
much." He had argued it out with himself and he believed he was a good
man. He had been open-handed, had stood by his friends, and, up to a few
days ago, was counted a good citizen; for many had come to profit through
him. His trade--a little smuggling, a little piracy? Was not the former
hallowed by distinguished patronage, and had it not existed from
immemorial time? It was fair fight for gain, an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth. If he hadn't robbed others on the high seas, they
would probably have robbed him--and sometimes they did. His spirit was
that of the Elizabethan admirals; he belonged to a century not his own.
As for the crime for which he was to suffer, it had been the work of
another hand, and very bad work it was, to try and steal Jean Touzel's
Hardi Biaou, and then bungle it. He had had nothing to do with it, for he
and Jean Touzel were the best of friends, as was proved by the fact that
while he lay in his dungeon, Jean wandered the shore sorrowing for his
fate.

Thinking now of the whole business and of his past life, Mattingley
suddenly had a pang. Yes, remorse smote him at last. There was one thing
on his conscience--only one. He had respect for the feelings of others,
and where the Church was concerned this was mingled with a droll sort of
pity, as of the greater for the lesser, the wise for the helpless. For
clergymen he had a half-affectionate contempt. He remembered now that
when, five years ago, his confederate who had turned out so badly--he had
trusted him, too! had robbed the church of St. Michael's, carrying off
the great chest of communion plate, offertories, and rents, he had
piously left behind in Mattingley's house the vestry-books and
parish-register; a nice definition in rogues' ethics. Awaiting his end
now, it smote Mattingley's soul that these stolen records had not been
returned to St. Michael's. Next morning he must send word to Carterette
to restore the books. Then his conscience would be clear once more. With
this resolve quieting his mind, he turned over on his straw and went
peacefully to sleep.

Hours afterwards he waked with a yawn. There was no start, no terror, but
the appearance of the jailer with the chaplain roused in him disgust for
the coming function at the Mont es Pendus. Disgust was his chief feeling.
This was no way for a man to die! With a choice of evils he should have
preferred walking the plank, or even dying quietly in his bed, to being
stifled by a rope. To dangle from a cross-tree like a half-filled bag
offended all instincts of picturesqueness, and first and last he had been
picturesque.

He asked at once for pencil and paper. His wishes were obeyed with
deference. On the whole he realised by the attentions paid him--the
brandy and the food offered by the jailer, the fluttering kindness of the
chaplain--that in the life of a criminal there is one moment when he
commands the situation. He refused the brandy, for he was strongly
against spirits in the early morning, but asked for coffee. Eating seemed
superfluous--and a man might die more gaily on an empty stomach. He
assured the chaplain that he had come to terms with his conscience and
was now about to perform the last act of a well-intentioned life.

There and then he wrote to Carterette, telling her about the vestry-books
of St. Michael's, and begging that she should restore them secretly.
There were no affecting messages; they understood each other. He knew
that when it was possible she would never fail to come to the mark where
he was concerned, and she had equal faith in him. So the letter was
sealed, addressed with flourishes, he was proud of his handwriting, and
handed to the chaplain for Carterette.

He had scarcely drunk his coffee when there was a roll of drums outside.
Mattingley knew that his hour was come, and yet to his own surprise he
had no violent sensations. He had a shock presently, however, for on the
jailer announcing the executioner, who should be there before him but the
Undertaker's Apprentice! In politeness to the chaplain Mattingley forbore
profanity. This was the one Jerseyman for whom he had a profound hatred,
this youth with the slow, cold, watery blue eye, a face that never
wrinkled either with mirth or misery, the square-set teeth always showing
a little--an involuntary grimace of cruelty. Here was insult.

"Devil below us, so you're going to do it--you!" broke out Mattingley.

"The other man was drunk," said the Undertaker's Apprentice. "He's been
full as a jug three days. He got drunk too soon." The grimace seemed to
widen. "O my good!" said Mattingley, and he would say no more. To him
words were like nails--of no use unless they were to be driven home by
acts.

To Mattingley the procession of death was stupidly slow. As it issued
from the archway of the Vier Prison between mounted guards, and passed
through a long lane of moving spectators, he looked round coolly. One or
two bold spirits cried out: "Head up to the wind, Maitre Elie!"

"Oui-gia," he replied; "devil a top-sail in!" and turned a look of
contempt on those who hooted him. He realised now that there was no
chance of rescue. The militia and the town guard were in ominous force,
and although his respect for the island military was not devout, a bullet
from the musket of a fool might be as effective as one from
Bonapend's--as Napoleon Bonaparte was disdainfully called in Jersey. Yet
he could not but wonder why all the plans of Alixandre, Carterette, and
Ranulph had gone for nothing; even the hangman had been got drunk too
soon! He had a high opinion of Ranulph, and that he should fail him was a
blow to his judgment of humanity.

He was thoroughly disgusted. Also they had compelled him to put on a
white shirt, he who had never worn linen in his life. He was ill at ease
in it. It made him conspicuous; it looked as though he were aping the
gentleman at the last. He tried to resign himself, but resignation was
hard to learn so late in life. Somehow he could not feel that this was
really the day of his death. Yet how could it be otherwise? There was the
Vicomte in his red robe, there was the sinister Undertaker's Apprentice,
ready to do his hangman's duty. There, as they crossed the mielles, while
the sea droned its sing-song on his left, was the parson droning his
sing-song on the right "In the midst of life we are in death," etc. There
were the grumbling drums, and the crowd morbidly enjoying their Roman
holiday; and there, looming up before him, were the four stone pillars on
the Mont es Pendus from which he was to swing. His disgust deepened. He
was not dying like a seafarer who had fairly earned his reputation.

His feelings found vent even as he came to the foot of the platform where
he was to make his last stand, and the guards formed a square about the
great pillars, glooming like Druidic altars. He burst forth in one phrase
expressive of his feelings.

"Sacre matin--so damned paltry!" he said, in equal tribute to two races.

The Undertaker's Apprentice, thinking this a reflection upon his
arrangements, said, with a wave of the hand to the rope:

"Nannin, ch'est tres ship-shape, Maitre!"

The Undertaker's Apprentice was wrong. He had made everything ship-shape,
as he thought, but a gin had been set for him. The rope to be used at the
hanging had been measured and approved by the Vicomte, and the
Undertaker's Apprentice had carried it to his room at the top of the
Cohue Royale. In the dead of night, however, Dormy Jamais drew it from
under the mattress whereon the deathman slept, and substituted one a foot
longer. This had been Ranulph's idea as a last resort, for he had a grim
wish to foil the law even at the twelfth hour.

The great moment had come. The shouts and hootings ceased. Out of the
silence there arose only the champing of a horse's bit or the hysterical
giggle of a woman. The high painful drone of the chaplain's voice was
heard.

Then came the fatal "Maintenant!" from the Vicomte, the platform fell,
and Elie Mattingley dropped the length of the rope.

What was the consternation of the Vicomte and the hangman, and the horror
of the crowd, to see that Mattingley's toes just touched the ground! The
body shook and twisted. The man was being slowly strangled, not hanged.

The Undertaker's Apprentice was the only person who kept a cool head. The
solution of the problem of the rope for afterwards, but he had been sent
there to hang a man, and a man he would hang somehow. Without more ado he
jumped upon Mattingley's shoulders and began to drag him down.

That instant Ranulph Delagarde burst through the mounted guard and the
militia. Rushing to the Vicomte, he exclaimed:

"Shame! The man was to be hung, not strangled. This is murder. Stop it,
or I'll cut the rope." He looked round on the crowd. "Cowards--cowards,"
he cried, "will you see him murdered?"

He started forward to drag away the deathmann, but the Vicomte,
thoroughly terrified at Ranulph's onset, himself seized the Undertaker's
Apprentice, who, drawing off with unruffled malice, watched what followed
with steely eyes.

Dragged down by the weight of the Apprentice, Mattingley's feet were now
firmly on the ground. While the excited crowd tried to break through the
cordon of mounted guards, Mattingley, by a twist and a jerk, freed his
corded hands. Loosing the rope at his neck he opened his eyes and looked
around him, dazed and dumb.

The Apprentice came forward. "I'll shorten the rope oui-gia! Then you
shall see him swing," he grumbled viciously to the Vicomte.

The gaunt Vicomte was trembling with excitement. He looked helplessly
around him.

The Apprentice caught hold of the rope to tie knots in it and so shorten
it, but Ranulph again appealed to the Vicomte.

"You've hung the man," said he; "you've strangled him and you didn't kill
him. You've got no right to put that rope round his neck again."

Two jurats who had waited on the outskirts of the crowd, furtively
watching the effect of their sentence, burst in, as distracted as the
Vicomte.

"Hang the man again and the whole world will laugh at you," Ranulph said.
"If you're not worse than fools or Turks you'll let him go. He has had
death already. Take him back to the prison then, if you're afraid to free
him." He turned on the crowd fiercely. "Have you nothing to say to this
butchery?" he cried. "For the love of God, haven't you anything to say?"

Half the crowd shouted "Let him go free!" and the other half,
disappointed in the working out of the gruesome melodrama, groaned and
hooted.

Meanwhile Mattingley stood as still as ever he had stood by his bahue in
the Vier Marchi, watching--waiting.

The Vicomte conferred nervously with the jurats for a moment, and then
turned to the guard.

"Take the prisoner to the Vier Prison," he said. Mattingley had been
slowly solving the problem of his salvation. His eye, like a gimlet, had
screwed its way through Ranulph's words into what lay behind, and at last
he understood the whole beautiful scheme. It pleased him: Carterette had
been worthy of herself, and of him. Ranulph had played his game well too.
He only failed to do justice to the poor beganne, Dormy Jamais. But then
the virtue of fools is its own reward. As the procession started back
with the Undertaker's Apprentice now following after Mattingley, not
going before, Mattingley turned to him, and with a smile of malice said:

"Ch'est tres ship-shape, Maitre-eh!" and he jerked his head back towards
the inadequate rope.

He was not greatly troubled about the rest of this grisly farce. He was
now ready for breakfast, and his appetite grew as he heard how the crowd
hooted and snarled yah! at the Undertaker's Apprentice. He was quite easy
about the future. What had been so well done thus far could not fail in
the end.

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