With that answer he retraced his steps. I looked back at the cottage and saw the clerk coming out, with the lantern lighted once more. I took the old man's arm to help him on the more quickly. We hastened along the lane, and passed the person who had accosted me. As well as I could see by the light of the lantern, he was a servant out of livery.
‘Who's that?' whispered the clerk. ‘Does he know anything about the keys?'
‘We won't wait to ask him,' I replied. ‘We will go on to the vestry first.'
The church was not visible, even by daytime, until the end of the lane was reached. As we mounted the rising ground which led to the building from that point, one of the village children -- a boy -- came close up to us, attracted by the light we carried, and recognised the clerk.
‘I say, measter,' said the boy, pulling officiously at the clerk's coat, ‘there be summun up yander in the church. I heerd un lock the door on hisself -- I heerd un strike a loight wi' a match.'
The clerk trembled and leaned against me heavily.
‘Come! come!' I said encouragingly. ‘We are not too late. We will catch the man, whoever he is. Keep the lantern, and follow me as fast as you can.'
I mounted the hill rapidly. The dark mass of the church-tower was the first object I discerned dimly against the night sky. As I turned aside to get round to the vestry, I heard heavy footsteps close to me. The servant had ascended to the church after us. ‘I don't mean any harm,' he said, when I turned round on him, ‘I'm only looking for my master.' The tones in which he spoke betrayed unmistakable fear. I took no notice of him and went on.
The instant I turned the corner and came in view of the vestry, I saw the lantern-skylight on the roof brilliantly lit up from within. It shone out with dazzling brightness against the murky, starless sky.
I hurried through the churchyard to the door.
As I got near there was a strange smell stealing out on the damp night air. I heard a snapping noise inside -- I saw the light above grow brighter and brighter -- a pane of the glass cracked -- I ran to the door and put my hand on it. The vestry was on fire!
Before I could move, before I could draw my breath after that discovery, I was horror-struck by a heavy thump against the door from the inside.
I heard the key worked violently in the lock -- I heard a man's voice behind the door, raised to a dreadful shrillness, screaming for help.
The servant who had followed me staggered back shuddering, and dropped to his knees. ‘Oh, my God!' he said, ‘it's Sir Percival!'
As the words passed his lips the clerk joined us, and at the same moment there was another and a last grating turn of the key in the lock.
‘The Lord have mercy on his soul!' said the old man. ‘He is doomed and dead. He has hampered the lock.'22 I rushed to the door. The one absorbing purpose that had filled all my thoughts, that had controlled all my actions, for weeks and weeks past, vanished in an instant from my mind. All remembrance of the heartless injury the man's crimes had inflicted -- of the love, the innocence, the happiness he had pitilessly laid waste -- of the oath I had sworn in my own heart to summon him to the terrible reckoning that he deserved -- passed from my memory like a dream. I remembered nothing but the horror of his situation.
I felt nothing but the natural human impulse to save him from a frightful death.
‘Try the other door!' I shouted. ‘Try the door into the church! The lock's hampered. You're a dead man if you waste another moment on it.'
There had been no renewed cry for help when the key was turned for the last time. There was no sound now of any kind, to give token that he was still alive. I heard nothing but the quickening crackle of the flames, and the sharp snap of the glass in the skylight above.
I looked round at my two companions. The servant had risen to his feet -- he had taken the lantern, and was holding it up vacantly at the door.
Terror seemed to have struck him with downright idiocy -- he waited at my heels, he followed me about when I moved like a dog. The clerk sat crouched up on one of the tombstones, shivering, and moaning to himself. The one moment in which I looked at them was enough to show me that they were both helpless.
Hardly knowing what I did, acting desperately on the first impulse that occurred to me, I seized the servant and pushed him against the vestry wall. ‘Stoop!' I said, ‘and hold by the stones. I am going to climb over you to the roof -- I am going to break the skylight, and give him some air!'
The man trembled from head to foot, but he held firm. I got on his back, with my cudgel in my mouth, seized the parapet with both hands, and was instantly on the roof. In the frantic hurry and agitation of the moment, it never struck me that I might let out the flame instead of letting in the air. I struck at the skylight, and battered in the cracked, loosened glass at a blow. The fire leaped out like a wild beast from its lair. If the wind had not changed, in the position I occupied, to set it away from me, my exertions might have ended then and there. I crouched on the roof as the smoke poured out above me with the flame. The gleams and flashes of the light showed me the servant's face staring up vacantly under the wall -- the clerk risen to his feet on the tombstone, wringing his hands in despair -- and the scanty population of the village, haggard men and terrified women, clustered beyond in the churchyard -- all appearing and disappearing, in the red of the dreadful glare, in the black of the choking smoke. And the man beneath my feet! -- the man, suffocating, burning, dying so near us all, so utterly beyond our reach!
The thought half maddened me. I lowered myself from the roof, by my hands, and dropped to the ground.
‘The key of the church!' I shouted to the clerk. ‘We must try it that way -- we may save him yet if we can burst open the inner door.'
‘No, no, no!' cried the old man. ‘No hope! the church key and the vestry key are on the same ring -- both inside there! Oh, sir, he's past saving -- he's dust and ashes by this time!'