When the righteous man turneth away from his righteousness and doeth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doeth, shall he live?—Ezekiel.
The prison gates shut. Silence fell. The troubled waters settled into calm. Tom went back to Queenstown; Mr. Gardiner to Woodlands—and to bed, with a couple of nurses in attendance. Denis was presumably at Dent-de-lion, working for the Aero Show. Mrs. Trent had gone no one knew whither. And Lettice, her duty done, had escaped unmolested to her attic in Pimlico, where she settled back into her groove, with that sort of capillary attraction towards the inconspicuous and the ordinary, which marked her conduct always except when she was making one of her gravely calculated excursions into the extraordinary.
Why had she held her tongue? Her friends did not need to be told. "It's Lettice all over!" said Gardiner himself, half fond, half laughing. She had had two main motives (or rather springs of action; for "motive" implies conscious volition, whereas Lettice did simply without thinking what came natural)—the one a principle, the other a prejudice. First, she would never, if she could possibly avoid it, interfere in other people's affairs—that was the principle; and second, with every taste and instinct she hated to be made conspicuous—that was the prejudice, and a tough one.
With these reasons against speaking, moreover, she saw none for. It never entered her head that some people might say she had treated Gardiner unfairly, in letting him tell his tale while keeping her own knowledge in reserve. Whatdifference could it possibly make? Why should she have spoken? It would only have made him very uncomfortable, and Denis would simply have hated it. All this, of course, rested on the assumption of her own detachment, insulation, negligibility: in which Lettice was so rooted and grounded that she was quite surprised to find other people surprised by what to her came natural as breathing.
Her explanation, given in court, ran something as follows:—"I didn't speak before the inquest because I know there were two other witnesses, and I didn't see I was wanted; and after it, by the time I heard what had happened, it was too late. There would have been no sense in disturbing things again. It would have been bad for everybody all round, and worst for Mrs. Trent. But now—now things were different. I had to speak now. It was time for the truth to come out."
Full time. Best for Dorothea, as well as for her victim. She had been screened, and in the darkness evil things had grown up. Down with all screens now. In the light of truth, the whole jumble resolved itself into order. Honor to whom honor was due; judgment to whom judgment. Even Gardiner's sentence fell into place. It might be too heavy for the particular offense; but no one knew better than himself that it was the just penalty for his months of cowardice.
February passed into March, a sweet, mild March: blue skies, brown buds, thrushes singing, daisies on every lawn, violets round every bush, white and golden daffodils ruffling under the trees, flood-water glistening like frosted silver among tender blades of grass. Towards the end of the month the prisoner saw his first visitor. Mr. Gardiner, being still too weak to go himself, sent Tom. Tom's impressions were recorded in a duty letter to Miss Smith: "I saw my brother for a few minutes yesterday in the presence of a warder. He seems very fairly cheerful and fit. His work is in the printing room. He asked me to let you know he is going strong." Dry crumbs! Lettice's consolation was that Mr. Gardiner would be no better satisfied than herself, andthat next month he would send Denis. Denis had at least a tongue in his head. That is to say, he used to have—unless—
A few days later she received another letter, this time from her cousin. He inclosed tickets for the Aero Show. "I know these things aren't much in your line, but you can give them away to somebody or other. As a matter of fact, we've not much worth seeing on our stand this year. The seaplane didn't get done after all. Yes, I may be in town for the week-end, but I'm afraid I shan't be able to look you up. Better luck next time, perhaps." And overleaf, a hastily scribbled postscript: "I suppose you've heard nothing from Westby? I've just had a line from Mr. Gardiner: he says Harry's been in a row—insubordination and assaulting a warder—and all letters and visits are stopped off for the next two months. No particulars, only that. I was to have gone down there next month, you know, but of course that's off now. Bad job, isn't it?"
Lettice laid down the letter with an unaccustomed sinking of the heart. Of the postscript she utterly refused to let herself think; it was bad enough without that. It was not the first time she had felt uneasy about her cousin. How often had she seen him since Westby? Not once; yet formerly they had met, as a matter of course, whenever he came to town. Formerly, too, he had written to her regularly every week—by an unexpected trait, Denis was a graphic writer, just as with his friends he was a garrulous talker; in that came out his Irish blood. Now she might think herself lucky if she heard once a month; and what things his letters were, when they came! The last had been an essay on the uses of the deck or cable plane. This present one—well, this was the climax. Over and over again, whenever he mentioned the Show (and it had been his staple conversation for months), she had been given to understand that she was to be taken to Olympia, and dragged round the exhibits, and stuffed with information whether she liked it or not; and that her guide was to be no other than himself.
Lettice faced the conclusion that there was something wrong.
By this and by that, by what she had seen herself and by what Gardiner had said at Westby, she had gathered how things stood between Denis and Dorothea. What would be the effect of such a shock? Lettice found herself unable to guess. Up to a certain point, Denis was transparent; for years she had read him like a book, and had been able to predict not merely what he would do or say, but the very gesture and accent with which he would do or say it. Dear Denis, tried friend, good as good bread, in Gardiner's expressive idiom, pig-headed Ulsterman with those dark blue Southern Irish eyes, truculent fighter answering to the lightest touch of her silken rein!—Lettice was a good lover, and she had given him of her best. But now—now, like Gardiner, she found herself up against a door that had no key. What was going on inside? What was Denis doing there, to heal him of his deadly wound? She did not know—she could not guess. But one thing was certain: he would accept no help. Gardiner in his weakness had cried out to her and rested on her strength; but Denis was neither weak nor dependent. Whatever went on behind the closed door was between him and his God.
Lettice picked up the tickets again. "He's sent me these things because he felt he must, but he doesn't mean me to use them," ran her slow thoughts. "I expect that means he's going to be there himself. Up for the week-end; then he'll probably go on the Saturday—"
Lettice rarely framed a definite resolution, but after long brooding her thoughts would settle into a sediment of purpose. The outcome of that hiatus was that on Saturday she put on her best things and went to Olympia to see for herself.
The whole floor space of the exhibition hall was cut up into a chess-board of stands, each one carpeted with red felt and inclosed in a white railing. Within these crimson plots might be seen every variety of aëroplane. Pusher, tractor, hydroplane, bat-boat, super-marine, the namessounded very imposing, but to the uninstructed (videlicetto Lettice) they all looked as much alike as a crowd of Chinamen. Visitors might wander about at will, stooping under huge pale arching wings, or mounting steps to inspect the fittings of the pilot's cockpit. Lettice had expected to be bored, but she was not. At that time, before it became mechanically perfect and virtually fool-proof, while its imperfections had still to be pieced out with human skill and daring, the aeroplane was no machine but an individual. Denis and his fellows talked of particular planes as a man talks of particular hunters in his stable.
After wandering round the stands, and duly gazing at the Smith monoplane, Lettice retired to the tea-room where she established herself in a corner behind a group of palms. Be it understood that she had come strictly to see, not to speak to her cousin; she knew she could dodge his short-sighted eyes. This being the last day of the show, the hall was full. All the flying world seemed to be there. Celebrities were thick as blackberries in the woods above Frahan; here a young mechanic who had become famous in a day, there a hereditary legislator who had ended his last race (luckily the incident hadn't got into the papers) head downwards in a ditch. Many of the men belonged to a certain well-defined physical type, lean, wiry, and small-made. Other things being equal, the light-weight pilot has an advantage. The women, on the other hand,raræ nantes in gurgite vasto, were mostly hothouse flowers. Lettice, of course, knew no one; she would have been quite at a loss but for her neighbor at the next table, a big man rather like a mastiff, with an incongruous soft voice, who was obligingly giving thecarte du paysto his companion.
"See that old cock with the iron-gray hair? That's Arthur Sturt, the ironmaster; he's running the Derby Flying School, and making pots of money. Able chap; there aren't many men of sixty who have receptivity enough to believe in the aeroplane. What? Oh, certainly, sir, the compliment applies to you." He laughed, pausing to light a cigar. "The youngster eating strawberries with the flapper in apigtail—got him? That's Tommy Wyatt. Riviera cup, you know. A perfect young devil. You ought to have been at Hendon last Saturday; he was putting up some wonderful stunts—simply playing cup-and-ball with his bus. Oh, I'm quite a back number these days. Soon be sixty myself, what?"
"I dare say you'll find you're good for a year or so yet," said his companion dryly. He was a lean, elderly clergyman with an adventurous eye. "By the by, is your partner here?"
The younger man shook his head. "Not he! Hasn't been near the place. I don't know what's taken him—that's to say I do, and wish I didn't. He's not done a stroke of work this year. Let me down rather badly over the seaplane; I particularly wanted to show it. I told you about that nasty affair he was mixed up in, didn't I? For a straight-laced, fastidious fellow like him it must have been the deuce of a jolt, and of course one makes every allowance; but it's a nuisance, all the same. I'm personally sorry, too," he added. "It's a bad job when a chap of that type runs off the rails. What? Oh, no, no mistake about it, I'm afraid; she's making a perfect fool of herself. Byrne will get his divorce this time, as sure as eggs. Hullo! by George—"
"That's not he?"
"Yes, it is, though," said Wandesforde, craning forward. "Good Lord! fancy Evey Byrne letting herself be dragged to the Aero Show! She must have got it badly!"
Mrs. Byrne was a very pretty woman, and even more charming than she was pretty. She had a husband who was impossible to live with and whom she could not divorce because she was a Catholic. He had no such scruples, however; he had dragged her through the court on trumped-up evidence, and she had emerged, like Susannah, without a stain on her character. It was felt that she had been hardly used. In the circumstances, and as she knew how to give a good dinner and was popular with women as well as men, she was allowed a good deal of license. She needed it all.She was very sweet, and very innocent, and hopelessly indiscreet, with an Irish aptitude for tumbling into scrapes. She could no more help using her lovely eyes than a violet can help smelling; and men buzzed round her always like wasps round a peach. The latest of her captives, having led her to a seat, now stood beside her with bent head to receive her instructions, while she drew the gloves off her lovely hands and arms. What Denis felt it was impossible to say; his attitude bespoke admiration, but nothing more.
She finished her directions, he nodded assent, and threaded his way through the crowd towards the buffet. Turning to retrace his steps with a nicely balanced load of tea and strawberries, he came face to face with another pair who had just come in. The encounter might have been foreseen, and indeed Lettice had given the chance a thought; for Dorothea's eyes were not, like Denis's, easy to dodge. Here she was, then, she too with a cavalier in attendance, to judge from his expression a devoted cavalier. And no wonder; Dorothea, in a long cloak of violet velvet, and a big velvet hat with sweeping plume, made an enchanting figure. Her face, which had lost its childish softness, was less pretty, but far more alluring. April was unfolding to the bloom of May.
Seeing Denis, she stopped dead; then her face broke into sunshine, she colored like a damask rose, and moved forward impulsively with outstretched hands. Denis continued on his way. The violet velvet was actually brushing his sleeve. "I beg your pardon!" he said with unmoved politeness, drawing back from contact. He rejoined his companion and sat down at her table.
For the first time in her life Lettice found herself enjoying the sight of pain.
Were you thinking how we, sitting side by side,Might be dreaming miles and miles apart?Two out of the Crowd.
Were you thinking how we, sitting side by side,Might be dreaming miles and miles apart?Two out of the Crowd.
Were you thinking how we, sitting side by side,Might be dreaming miles and miles apart?Two out of the Crowd.
Were you thinking how we, sitting side by side,
Might be dreaming miles and miles apart?
Two out of the Crowd.
Lettice had had no tea, but she did not stay for it; she uprooted herself, setting back her chair without a sound, and flitted inconspicuously out of the exhibition. On her slow way home, in Tube and omnibus, she did some concentrated thinking. She was not surprised when Beatrice rushed up from the basement to inform her that a lady was waiting in her room, a dazzling lady who had arrived in a taxi-cab; she needed not Beatrice's ecstatic description to tell her who that lady was. She had caught Dorothea's eye across the hall. Well, what must be, must; screwing herself up to face a scene, she climbed the stairs.
Her visitor had not sat down; a slight sumptuous figure, she stood posed against the mantelpiece, looking down into the fire. She started at the opening door, and raised her beautiful gazelle-brown eyes filled with tears.
"Oh, Lettice!"
Lettice made no reply. A wave of obstinacy rose to meet that appeal; she came to the table and stood slowly taking off and smoothing out her gloves. Lettice was sometimes possessed of a dumb devil. Dorothea's eyes opened piteously; her lip quivered, the tears tumbled down her cheeks, but in a flash she was across the room, had seized Lettice and turned her round by force.
"I don't care, you can be as angry with me as you like, but youshalllisten, youshallanswer, if I stay here all night. That woman—what was she doing with Denis?" Lettice was dumb. "Oh, don'tyoubegin about being justly angryand taking righteous vengeance—see what that sort of rubbish has done for me!" Dorothea cried with passion. "Imustknow about Denis. What has she done to him?"
"I should think you could see that for yourself," said Lettice, opening her lips with extreme and ungracious reluctance.
"Yes; but is she—has she—"
"Ask some of your friends; they'll know all the London gossip."
"I did ask Maurice, but he either couldn't or wouldn't tell; he said he'd been out of town. Lettice, oh, Lettice, you can't surely think—he hasn't really—"
"If you mean, do I think he's living with her, I don't know; I should think it very likely. But what does it matter to you? You've done all you wanted—you've had your revenge, and sent Mr. Gardiner to prison."
She freed her hands resolutely and turned away. Dorothea flung herself into the nearest chair. Beautiful graceful figure, with the long lines of velvet sweeping to her feet, the plumed hat, the rich hair, the ivory whiteness of cheek and throat above her dark luxurious furs! Lettice hardened her heart. Let her go back to her Maurices and her other friends—she would soon get over it. She turned away, turned her back on her visitor, and began to prepare her solitary meal as though Dorothea did not exist. There was ill will in the very curve of her shoulders.
Dorothea looked up.
"But I do love him so, Lettice!"
"Youlovehim?" exclaimed Lettice, pausing with her egg on its way to the saucepan.
"Why, of course—how could any one help it?
"You seem to have consoled yourself pretty easily," said Lettice, with a doubtful glance at the violet velvet. Dorothea's eyes followed hers.
"Consoled myself? Do you mean this?This?" She crushed up the velvet in her hand with scorn. "Oh, you are stupid. I didn't expect you to be stupid, Lettice, I thought you would understand. What would you have hadme do, after that—that frightful day at Westby? One can't die to order. One has to kill time somehow. I loved Denis—oh, I did, I did love him—right from the very first. You may say I led him on, but I didn't, I didn't, I never thought of such a thing, I never so much as dreamed of its being possible, till one day I woke up and just found it had happened, to us both. So then what could I do but tear it out, and deny it, andmakemyself be loyal to my husband? I—knew—yes, I suppose I did know that Guy wasn't—I'd seen things—but never anything really bad; and he was always good to me, truth he was, always. Because of my money, I suppose. But I didn't know that then. Ihadto believe in him, because he was all I had in the world. Oh! I can't talk of it; it sears me to think of those months. Lettice, Lettice, you haven't been married, you don't know how close that brings you. To find you have been mingled, made one with a nature like that—thinking, too, those hideous thoughts my husband had about me—Yes,lookat that idea, take it home to you, if you can; and then tell yourself that, however you may try, you havenotbeen married, and you don't andcan'tknow what that awful intimacy means. Oh! I've been thankful, since, that my baby died. I was glad to know the truth; but it tore me in two, Lettice, indeed, indeed it did. Console myself? Why, I've been at Hendon, learning to fly. That man you saw me with, I met him there. I believe he fancies I'm going to marry him. I don't care. I don't know what I've said to him. It's all a blank. I never woke till I saw Denis. Why, that alone might have told you; should I have gone to him as I did, as though I were sure of my welcome, there in the face of everybody, if I'd known what I was doing? I didn't know. I didn't know anything, except that to see him again was like coming home; and I went to him without another thought."
Lettice, who all this while had been standing stock-still, with her egg in her spoon, began slowly to get under way. She slid the egg into the water, noted the time, straightened her shoulders, and then said, in a definitely milder tone: "Well, I don't see what you expect me to do."
"Can't we save him?"
She shook her head. "Denis goes his own way. It's no use interfering."
"If you were to say something—"
Another slow shake. "He wouldn't listen. I've seen him like this once before, with a man he'd been good to, who cheated him. He was like a stone." She paused, and added, slowly, slowly, drop by drop distilling for Dorothea's comfort the essence of her meditations in the train: "I don't suppose it will go far. Denis isn't made that way. He will soon get tired of it." "If he wanted to go wrong, he wouldn't know the way!" She seemed to hear Gardiner's very accents. The acuteness of the pain took her by surprise—took away her breath and stopped her words. Dorothea gave a miserable little sob.
"'Soon get tired of it!' Oh, Lettice, Lettice, but when you think of what he was!"
To that Lettice made no reply; her face was grim. After a moment she exerted herself to finish her former speech, still half unwilling, for it took her heart long to forgive, though her head now acquitted Dorothea of the worst of her guilt, of a deliberate betrayal: "As a matter of fact, I don't believe there is anything wrong yet. I believe so far he is only playing with the idea. It may go no further. He has thirty years of habit to fight against." She did not say, "To-day will probably settle it, one way or the other," but the thought was in her mind.
Dorothea had sunk down on the rug in a miserable little heap, and was propping herself against the mantelpiece. "Oh, I have been bad, I have been bad," she said on a long quivering breath, twisting her hands together, while the tears came tumbling down her cheeks and into her lap. "Oh, it doesn't seem fair that a miserable little nobody like me should be allowed to do so much harm. Oh, if there is a God, why didn't he kill me when my baby died, and have done with it? To let me,mehurt a man like Denis—oh, I ought to have been squashed like a blackbeetle! And Mr. Gardiner too. Wherever I go I seem to bring nothing buttrouble! Do lend me a hanky, Lettice, mine's all soppy."
"It's hardly worth while to think of Mr. Gardiner, is it?" suggested Lettice with faint irony. Dorothea raised her wet eyes.
"Why, of course I think of him, only I think of Denis more. It's everything with Denis, it was just because he wasn't like other men you couldn't help loving him. And now—now, even if he gets over it, as you say, it will never, never be the same." She stopped to swallow a sob. "But Mr. Gardiner—I know prison is horrid, and I'm sorry, oh! dreadfully sorry and ashamed whenever I think of him, but he'll come out at the end none the worse. Why, it isn't even as if it were a disgrace! You feel the same, Lettice, you know you do."
Lettice said nothing; her face might have betrayed her, had Dorothea been on the alert; but she was already back with Denis. She did not like Gardiner, and she would never understand him. But Lettice—by that naïve assumption of her prime concern for her cousin Dorothea had shown her, rather more plainly than she liked, where she stood. Her center of interest had shifted. She was scarcely sorry for Denis; she was almost angry with him. "He shouldn't have done it," she said with a touch of sternness. "I am disappointed in him." Lettice expected a good deal from her friends. Her feelings had changed, adjusting themselves unconsciously to the change in Denis. The protective instinct was dead. "When I was a child, I spake as a child...." Denis had put away childish things, and as a man she judged him.
Gardiner had disappointed her too, yet with him she was not angry. His failure had been involuntary; and he had redeemed it, coming back of his own free will to put his manhood to the test. He was under the question now, this minute, every minute of the day. For the first time she let herself think of Denis's postscript: tacitly acknowledging that if she had not done so before, it was because she dared not. She could reason about Denis, she could not reason about this, though it lay in her heart like a stone all the time.For Denis the issue was decided; whether he went to Mrs. Byrne or not, his eyes had been opened, he had tasted the fruit of the tree, he could never regain that child-like quality of which Dorothea had robbed him. If he took the one step further—well—yes, it did matter, it mattered horribly, the constriction at her heart was only less than she felt in thinking of the other sufferer. Still, it was less, for Denis would retrieve himself; Gardiner would not. If he failed now, he would be a broken man; he would go under. "Insubordination, assaulting a warder"—the words seemed ominous as thunder on a sultry night.
And meanwhile here was the fount and origin of all this trouble, sitting on the rug, leaning her small head, stuffed with tears, against the wall, a dolorous little heap: poor child, she had punished herself worse than her victims. What to do with her? Lettice had never responded with enthusiasm to Dorothea's advances. Dorothea was intense; Lettice preferred the humdrum. Nor, as has been said, could she easily forgive. Still, if Dorothea really needed her, she supposed she would have to produce some sort of response. She moved about, laying the table, cutting the bread; presently she came to the fire to make toast. Dorothea roused herself. "Let me do that," she said, her voice still thick and languid with tears. "You go and sit down."
"You'll spoil your frock," said Lettice, with a last faintly disparaging glance at the violet velvet. Dorothea's eyes glinted; she set her teeth, stooped down, seized the hem of her skirt between her strong little hands, and tore it, r-r-rip, half-way up to the waist.
"Thatfor my frock!"
What a baby it was, after all! "Now I shall have to mend that before you can go home," Lettice admonished her, in a tone which, for Dorothea, she had never used before.
"Don't care," retorted Dorothea, defiant chin in air. And then, with a swift little snuggling movement, she nestled against Lettice. "Oh, Lettice, Lettice, I've been bad, and hateful, and I don't deserve to have any one like me, but—mayI come and see you sometimes? I do seem to get intosuch muddles when I'm all by myself—and I haven't any one in all the world to go to now but you!"
Lettice did not answer, because she was engaged in rescuing the toasting fork from her guest's heedless hand, and blowing out the flaming bread. She scraped off the cinders, and with a firmness that admitted no question put that piece on her own plate, and the other, which she had made herself, on Dorothea's.
"Now come and have your tea," was her sole reply.
Bread and salt—they ate it together.
I thought to promote thee unto great honor, but, lo, the Lord hath kept thee back from honor.—Numbers.
At the moment when Lettice and Dorothea were sitting down to bread and salt in Canning Street, Denis was leaning over a rustic bridge in the garden of Mrs. Byrne's week-end cottage.
By what difficult, obscure, and tortuous paths he had been wandering in those days he could not have told, nor could any one have followed. Dorothea had done him the worst injury; she had broken his faith. His love and his religion were so closely intertwined that they fell together, with a crash that numbed sensation. The world turned gray and all the lamps went out. If he could not believe in God, Denis could believe in nothing and love nothing. He did not know what was wrong with him; he was not actively and consciously unhappy, but he was bored—sick of himself, sick of his work, sick of all he had been and done in all his life before.
He stayed on at Bredon from force of habit, because it was too much trouble to make up his mind to go elsewhere. The trial at Westby broke this routine; and the heavy sentence on his friend, outraging his sense of justice, snapped another of the links that held him to his former life. What was the good of virtue, he asked himself (seriously, as a novel idea), if this was to be its reward? What had he ever got by it himself? Why shouldn't he try pleasure for a change? Why not, indeed? Conscience made no protest; that was one of the lamps which had gone out. When he left Westby he did not go back to Bredon; hestayed in town, with the deliberate intention of "seeing life."
In pursuit of this ambition he visited music halls, which he regarded as temples of gay vice, and tried to cultivate the more frivolous of his male acquaintance, and even went so far as to put in an appearance at a night club—and was more profoundly bored than ever. One evening he laid himself out conscientiously to get drunk. This was not a success; it ended in a bilious attack and a long distaste for whisky. Another time he sat down to play "chimmy" with the most inveterate gamblers he knew. Beginner's luck helped him at first to win five pounds, which didn't excite him; then he lost twenty, and was disproportionately annoyed. Nature had not cut out Denis for aroué. He did not amuse himself or any one else. Even Bredon and the seaplane were better than this. He would have given up and gone back to them in despair, if he had not happened to fall in with Mrs. Byrne.
She was sitting in her car in a lonely lane at ten o'clock at night when he saw her first, weeping tears of rage because her chauffeur had sunk down, snoring drunk, and she could not stir him. Such things did happen to Mrs. Byrne. Denis came to the rescue; he ejected the chauffeur by the wayside, and took the lady home himself. She was very grateful, and invited him to dinner. It was a pleasant house, and one met amusing people—literary, artistic, a little out of the usual set which had bored Denis so desperately. He liked his pretty, feather-witted hostess, too, and she liked him; indeed, before long it was plain that she more than liked him. It was not plain to Denis, who remained virtuously stiff as a ramrod long after the clubs were betting on Byrne's chance of bringing off his divorce this time. Mrs. Byrne had fallen headlong in love, and she was incapable of discretion.
When at last the truth dawned on Denis, his first impulse was to bolt. But he did not allow himself to do so. He stayed on, deliberately exposing himself to temptation in the hope that it would tempt him. He found it a hard struggle to be wicked. So far, then, Lettice was right; hehad not yet committed himself. She was right, too, in thinking that the scene at Olympia would decide things one way or another. Denis believed himself to be quite indifferent to Dorothea; yet her face (he could not have said how) had given him the slight deciding push, and he returned to Mrs. Byrne with his mind made up.
The brook by which he stood, patched with silver by the young March moon, found its way between bronze-stemmed alders, past willows cloudy in pollen-yellow, under banks where the kingcups spread their nosegays of burnished green and gold. Violets, invisible but sweet, clustered at the root of every rose. The scene was set for lovers, and Denis had been making love. Did he do it well? It might have been worse. There had been opposition to overcome, unexpected, stimulating: Evey Byrne with a conscience, forsooth! Denis had tasted the first-fruits of pleasure in crushing down her scruples and making her own she loved him. He had wrung out the confession without mercy. She tried to hold him off with her weak little hands against his breast.
"Ah, but ye don't truly love me, Denis!"
"Don't I?" said Denis, kissing her fawn-soft eyes and sweet, half-reluctant lips.
"Ah, but 'tis so wicked! God'll never forgive us!"
"There is no God that counts," Denis answered. He kissed her again. He had no idea that in his heart he was kissing Dorothea.
That was ten minutes ago. Was it time yet? Hardly, he decided; he might allow himself to finish his cigar. Alas! out of her presence the blaze had all too quickly died down. Mrs. Byrne was sweet, but she bored him like everything else. Still, he would go to her; yes, he would certainly go in a minute. It was his duty to see the thing through. (Naturam expellas furca—it seemed that Denis could not get away from that word!)
What a fool he was! Who would believe that he had reached his present age in his present state of innocence? He hoped Mrs. Byrne hadn't found it out, but he was rather afraid she had. If Denis had been honest with himself hewould have had to admit that one reason why he lingered here by the river, instead of seeking the welcome that awaited him, was that he was shy. Too ignominious, that; he shuffled away from the thought. He was dissatisfied with himself all round. Why couldn't he behave like other men? In the old days at Bredon how gloriously happy he had been, with the delicate engine of his brain working at full pressure, solving problems faster than his pencil could write them down! Now, it seemed, he could neither play nor work. What was it he had been sticking over, that last evening before he went to Westby? The everlasting difficulty, speedversussafety. There had been one or two rather clever things in the show to-day. The Sturt bus, that used I-struts, as he had meant to do; but the chord of the wings was too large, the stresses would be impossibly high. Why on earth couldn't Sturt see—
Who can tell whence ideas come? Inter-stellar drift? Some beam from the eternal verities shone suddenly in Denis's brain. He pulled out an old envelope and began covering it with rapid calculations. Ten minutes later, when he next looked up, there was scarcely room for another figure. He had come to a halt; he could go no further without referring to his old work. What time was it? He peered at his watch in the moonlight. Half-past ten: if he got up to town to-night, and slept at the Grosvenor, he could catch the five-forty down and be at Bredon in time for breakfast. He thrust the sheet of calculations into his pocket, and, with about one-twentieth of his mind upon the scene, started for the house. Coming in sight of its lighted windows, however, he slackened and stopped. Mrs. Byrne. There was not much sense left in his head, but it had occurred to him that his errand might be awkward to explain in person.
Denis never had been, or would be, afflicted with self-consciousness. He turned back from the lawn, skulked like a burglar through shrubberies and behind trees, and climbed in at the window of the room where they had dined. Still without a thought of false shame, he sat down at Mrs.Byrne's own writing-table, and wrote with Mrs. Byrne's own pen, on her own paper. Another man might have found some difficulty in putting into words what he had to say; to Denis it seemed quite simple.
"My dearest Evey,—I was standing on your bridge just now, thinking of nothing else likely, when suddenly an idea flashed into my head which settles a problem that has worried me for years. If it works out as it should, it will make a revolution in aircraft design. There's been nothing like it since the Wrights. So I shall have to get straight back into harness. You'll forgive me, I know." Here he paused, and debated whether to quote, "I could not love thee, dear, so much," but decided against it. Mrs. Byrne was not literary. "One has to put the big things first, hasn't one? And after all, this hits me even harder than it hits you." Denis was pleased with this phrase. "If all goes well, I will come back and make my apologies in person. I am not waiting now, because I am afraid if I saw you I might not go." He was even better pleased with this. A satisfied smile overspread his face as he signed himself, "Devotedly yours," a form which he had never used before, and which took him some time to excogitate. Then he rang the bell, gave the note to a servant, and took himself off—again by the window."Make my apologies in person." Denis, it will be seen, was not repentant. He returned, as he had promised, a week later, prepared to pick up the thread of his adventure and do his duty to its boring end. He was surprised—surprised and aggrieved—to learn that Mrs. Byrne was not at home. "But she was expectin' me!" he said, quite indignant, to the model of decorum who stood guardian at the gate."Yes, sir. She asked me to give you this note," said the model without moving an eyelid. But he scanned Denis's face very inquisitively as he tore open the paper and read:"Denis darling, this is God. I tried to steal you away from Him, but He won't let me have you. I knew all thetime how wrong it was. It has all been my fault. I am going where I can pray for you and pray to be forgiven. Oh! don't be angry with me, and don't letherbe angry with me. I have been very wicked, but I did love you so."Evey."
"My dearest Evey,—I was standing on your bridge just now, thinking of nothing else likely, when suddenly an idea flashed into my head which settles a problem that has worried me for years. If it works out as it should, it will make a revolution in aircraft design. There's been nothing like it since the Wrights. So I shall have to get straight back into harness. You'll forgive me, I know." Here he paused, and debated whether to quote, "I could not love thee, dear, so much," but decided against it. Mrs. Byrne was not literary. "One has to put the big things first, hasn't one? And after all, this hits me even harder than it hits you." Denis was pleased with this phrase. "If all goes well, I will come back and make my apologies in person. I am not waiting now, because I am afraid if I saw you I might not go." He was even better pleased with this. A satisfied smile overspread his face as he signed himself, "Devotedly yours," a form which he had never used before, and which took him some time to excogitate. Then he rang the bell, gave the note to a servant, and took himself off—again by the window.
"Make my apologies in person." Denis, it will be seen, was not repentant. He returned, as he had promised, a week later, prepared to pick up the thread of his adventure and do his duty to its boring end. He was surprised—surprised and aggrieved—to learn that Mrs. Byrne was not at home. "But she was expectin' me!" he said, quite indignant, to the model of decorum who stood guardian at the gate.
"Yes, sir. She asked me to give you this note," said the model without moving an eyelid. But he scanned Denis's face very inquisitively as he tore open the paper and read:
"Denis darling, this is God. I tried to steal you away from Him, but He won't let me have you. I knew all thetime how wrong it was. It has all been my fault. I am going where I can pray for you and pray to be forgiven. Oh! don't be angry with me, and don't letherbe angry with me. I have been very wicked, but I did love you so."Evey."
"Denis darling, this is God. I tried to steal you away from Him, but He won't let me have you. I knew all thetime how wrong it was. It has all been my fault. I am going where I can pray for you and pray to be forgiven. Oh! don't be angry with me, and don't letherbe angry with me. I have been very wicked, but I did love you so.
"Evey."
The decorous Morris, who read this note (for of course Mrs. Byrne had omitted to seal it), got little by his scrutiny. The visitor did not stamp, nor swear, nor turn red, nor pale; he read through his dismissal with a very singular expression of gravity, turned away, came back absently to slip a tip into the man's hand, and finally strode off down the drive, carrying his handsome head, as poor Camille said of his enemy, like thesaint sacrament, his dark blue Irish eyes fixed on far distant horizons.
Better is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.—Proverbs.
Seven years of prison doctoring had not blunted the first fine temper of Leonard Scott's sympathy. Doctors in general, even in ordinary practice, have to harden themselves or break down; Scott stuck to his work year after year, and yet contrived to remain as tender-hearted as a novice at his first death-bed. He was steeped in that fount of love and strength, romance and poetry, known as the Catholic faith. Not the Roman Catholic faith, be it observed. Nothing annoyed him more than to be called a papist—except to be called a Protestant.
He was a dreamer, a saint, a mystic, this dapper little man with the snappy manner and the aggressively white linen; a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem, whose ports of pearl and streets of shining gold were more real to him than the walls of Westby Jail. Saints and martyrs crowded heaven to applaud his progress; warrior angels fought at his right hand; Christ himself stooped to him in the mystery of the Eucharist. In this faith he was able to go on working hopefully at his hopeless task—for what, after all, was the use of patching up these wretched bodies which in a few weeks must go back to the dirt and the vices that had bred their disease? Leonard Scott thought it was a great deal of use; he loved his criminals. The sociologist would have seen Westby Jail as a garbage heap meet for the furnace; the Christian idealist went about joyfully picking up pearls.
But a faith which removes mountains may fail to console the man who has to appear in knickerbockers at a dinner-party; and this child of heaven was made very uncomfortableby the addition of Gardiner to his happy family of jail-birds. He hated attending as prison doctor on the man whom his evidence had helped to convict, and he did not like Gardiner himself. He thought him flippant, a quality which arises punctually to answer expectation. Since he did not like him, he felt he ought to cultivate him; your man of conscience always feels his duty to be the thing he doesn't want to do. In this case, however, Scott fell short of his duty. He carefully avoided Gardiner, and was rather annoyed to find that Gardiner seemed equally anxious to avoid him. Never did he bother his doctor for pills and potions. Yet Scott, who kept an uneasy eye upon his embarrassing patient, could see that prison life was not agreeing with his health.
One day he overheard two warders comparing notes about B14. He had been getting into hot water; he had smashed everything in his cell, and finished up by smashing a warder. "My word! he did give us ginger. You never see anything like it!" said Warder Barnes, with a touch of surprised admiration. "It's what I always'avesaid—them quiet, eddicated ones gives twice as much trouble as the others when they do give trouble," assented Warder Mason. B14 was now in the punishment cells on a chastening diet of bread and water. Scott felt more than ever that he ought to find some pretext for seeing him, but he didn't do so.
Going back to prison after his trial seemed to Gardiner like entering the black mouth of a tunnel. There were the unescapable walls on either side, and the weight of a mountain overhead, the horror of panic pressing up behind, and the interminable stretch of black blank darkness through which he must grope before he could hope to see, far off, the first faint whiteness of deliverance. Yet the first days were not so bad as he had expected. Some of the outer light lingered on for a time; Lettice's face—she had not looked at him while giving her evidence, but at the end, just as she was leaving the box, she had turned deliberately and smiled at him across the court. That look went with him far into the darkness. It was the nights that were the worst.There were moments, then, when he had to hold off panic by the throat. But he was carefully prudent; he worked with all his might during the eight hours he was at work, and studied with all his might during the sixteen he spent in his cell. That was his last charge to his brother: "You send along some books to the prison library. Grammars and texts—I want to learn Flemish and Dutch, and I could do with some Portugoosh as well. I'm getting a bit rusty, and they all come in handy." On these terms he found himself actually better off as a convicted criminal than he had been as a prisoner on remand. Regular work and exercise were by no means a bad exchange, even for the high privileges of wearing his own clothes and paying for his own dinner.
March came in with balmy days of relaxing sweetness. The sun at dawn stole into his cell through the ground glass of his window; and by standing on his stool, with his nose pressed as close to the ventilator as it would go, he could even at times smell violets. Persistent little friendly flowers, they had found their way into the prison yard and niched themselves between the stones of the wall; and in March every tiny seedling was a knot of blue.
"When the moon their hollows lights,And they are filled with balms of spring,And in the glens, on starry nights,The nightingales divinely sing—Ah! then a longing like despairIs to their inmost caverns sent."
"When the moon their hollows lights,And they are filled with balms of spring,And in the glens, on starry nights,The nightingales divinely sing—Ah! then a longing like despairIs to their inmost caverns sent."
"When the moon their hollows lights,And they are filled with balms of spring,And in the glens, on starry nights,The nightingales divinely sing—Ah! then a longing like despairIs to their inmost caverns sent."
"When the moon their hollows lights,
And they are filled with balms of spring,
And in the glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing—
Ah! then a longing like despair
Is to their inmost caverns sent."
Gardiner had lived all his life too close to nature to escape the call of the spring. If his work had been out of doors, in the garden or the farm, he might have come through better; but he was in the printing room; always hot and stuffy with glue, and his exercise was limited to the five minutes' walk to and fro. He lost his sleep, and in the long vigils he was tormented by visions of Rochehaut. He saw the great solemn autumnal hills, sallow in the moonlight, the leafless woods, the white crags matted with ivy and with the rusty growth of ferns, the Semois in flood, chrome-yellow, surging from side to side of her naked valley. Heremembered the large cool rooms of his home, the green light filtering through the jalousies, the white cloth blowing round the legs of the little table under the pines where he took his meals, the sound and smell of the coffee machine, the summer apples which he gathered in the orchard, "faintly red even beneath the crimson skin." Like many southerners, Gardiner lived very largely on fruit; and one of the minor trials of his prison life was the prison diet, where fruit and vegetables are not. Most prisoners suffer from this; he suffered more than most, and could less afford the steady lowering of his health.
It happened one day, owing to some alterations, that Gardiner had to change his cell, and was put into the older part of the prison. His new quarters were so dark that the occupant was regularly allowed a light in the daytime. The warder in charge was too busy to see to it at the moment; next day he promised to do so, but forgot, the prisoner meanwhile being left to twiddle his thumbs during the sixteen empty hours he spent each day in his cell. When, for the third time, he put forward his submissive request, Warder Thomson, a surly fellow, happened to be out of temper, and told him curtly not to bother. To his amazement the well-conducted B14 flew at him like a fury. He slipped out just in time, and blew his whistle for help. B14 meanwhile amused himself by smashing everything smashable in his cell; he kicked his tins into cocked hats, he rent his bed-clothes to ribbons, he tore his books out of their bindings and strewed them about the floor. It was a glorious smash, and it was followed by an even more glorious fight; for directly the door opened he flew again upon the offending Warder Thomson with the leg of his dismembered stool, and succeeded in breaking his head and knocking out two of his teeth, before he in his turn was "coshed" by an assistant, and finally brought to earth. For the space of ten exciting minutes Gardiner enjoyed himself.
But afterwards, when he came to himself in the dismal "solitary" cell, and still more when he heard his punishment, and knew that he had cut himself off for two endlessmonths from his friends—then the cold reaction set in, and he went down into the depths. The first night was terrible. Panic was again at his throat; it did not succeed in pulling him down, but when the dawn came, and at the cheerful sounds of human life the furies shrank back into their shades, he knew that he had been very near—something. What he feared he did not know, but he did know that if his fear got the mastery, if he lost his self-command, he would not be fit to go to Lettice at the end of his term.
He lay thinking very earnestly, open-eyed. It was perfectly plain what he ought to do: he ought to put down his name to see the doctor, who would give him bromide or something to settle his nerves. And there was more in it than that; he ought to see Scott about another small trouble which had nothing to do with nerves, and which, if he had chosen to put it forward, would have been a mitigating circumstance in the mind of the Governor when he pronounced sentence. Oh, he was a fool—he really was a fool! Why, if he had even chosen to state his grievance about the light he might have got off with quarter penalty, perhaps with none at all. Captain Harding wasn't half a bad old chap, he made allowances for human nature, even in a criminal. But would Gardiner do that? Not he! He had stood sullenly dumb, refusing to defend himself, refusing to answer a single question. It went against the grain with him to explain, to make excuses, even to admit that he was ill. Yet could he stand another night like the last? He would have preferred to; he would have butted his obstinate head into death or even madness, sooner than bend his pride. But there was Lettice to be considered, and all her little fads about standing up to things and not running away.
When Warder Barnes came in the evening to bring his supper of bread and water and collect the mail-bags which he should have sewn (prisoners in the punishment cells do not go out to work), he found the pile untouched. Gardiner had not done one. Barnes pursed up his lips to a whistle.
"Hullo, hullo! now this ain't sense, B14. Why ain't you done your work to-day?"
"Because I haven't," said the prisoner. He was sitting on his stool with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands; he reached out for the water Barnes had brought and drank it at a draught, but otherwise he did not stir.
"That's silly talk," said the warder reprovingly. It was the same little Cockney who had admired what he called B14's ginger; a kindly little soul, as many of the prison attendants are. "You're only makin' trouble for yourself. Ain't you had enough already?" The prisoner made no sign. "Come now! You give me your word as you'll do your job to-morrow, and I'll pass you light this time. Don't want another week of it in 'ere, do you?" Still no answer. "Oh, well, I can't wait all night, if you choose to be refractory you must," said Barnes, rather short, because his kindness had met with no response. He gathered up the untouched bags. "I shall 'ave to report you, that's all."
He was just going out of the door when the prisoner moved.
"I say."
"Well?"
"I couldn't do those bags," said Gardiner. "My hand's bad."
"Your hand bad! What's the matter with it?"
Barnes snatched roughly at the half-extended fingers. They were torn out of his grasp. "Damn you," said Gardiner very quietly. Even in the darkness Barnes could see his face, scarlet with sudden pain.
"I didn't mean to 'urt you," he said gruffly. "I thought you was malingering. What have you done to your 'and?"
"I don't malinger, and I haven't done anything to my hand," the prisoner retorted. His tone was short; he was still nursing his wrist and biting his lip. "But the fact remains, I can't sew. If you wouldn't mind putting me down to see the doctor, I should be much obliged. There's my ticket."
"Let's 'ave a look." Gardiner would rather have put his fist, pain and all, into the man's face; he silently extended his palm. "My word! that gives you pen and ink, I lay,"said Barnes with critical interest. "I say, I'm sorry I hurt you, B14; I might 'a' known you wasn't one of the 'umbuggin' sort. I'll put you down to see the doctor, never fear."
The door banged with the complacent decision of prison doors, and Gardiner was alone. He paid for his susceptibility to pleasure by a corresponding susceptibility to pain; Barnes had actually made him feel faint. He tumbled off his stool on to the floor and leaned against the wall, closing his eyes. Well! he was in for it now. Would he be able to keep up the same virtuous docility in his interview with Scott? Lord only knew! And, thinking of Lettice, he smiled. It was she who had dictated every word.
Barnes, good little soul, was pricked with compunction for his roughness. Partly on this account, and partly because, even to his unprofessional eye, B14's hand appeared to be in a bad way, he made it his business to go to Dr. Scott as soon as he could; and Scott was equally prompt in responding. The rule for the casual sick is that they are collected in a batch from the gangs after the "cease work" bell in the morning, and shepherded to the doctor's office, where he disposes of them in turn: summary jurisdiction, a "tot" of No. Dash medicine, to be swallowed on the spot. B14, however, being in punishment, could not go to Mahomet, so Mahomet had to go to him. Half-an-hour after it had closed, Gardiner's door reopened to admit the doctor, with Barnes in attendance. A doctor never, in any circumstances, sees a prisoner alone.
Gardiner, nodding off into an uneasy doze, scrambled to his feet in a hurry.
"You wanted to see me?" said Scott in his curtest tone, because he was mortally sorry for his patient. "Got a bad hand, have you? Let's have a look."
"There wasn't any hurry, sir. I didn't want to bother you—"
"It's my business to come when I'm called, isn't it? I'm here to doctor the lot of you, aren't I? You do as you're told."
With that Scott plumped down on the stool, and tookthe hand in his own. His touch was exquisitely gentle. Gardiner rather wished he had grabbed at him like Warder Barnes; but he stood submissive, and submissively answered questions. "Yes, sir, I got it rather badly crushed last summer. Yes, it did take a time to heal. No, I don't know that I felt anything particular until this began—that was about ten days ago."
"Hurt, eh?" asked Scott, with a swift glance up from his dressing.
"A little," Gardiner admitted.
"Suppuration of the palm is the very—" said Scott. "Don't you try to humbug me. I know. Damaged the bone, that's what you've done, and you aren't by any means out of the wood yet. That'll do for to-night. Now let's have a look at you. Your general health can't be up to much, or you wouldn't have a mess-up like this. Any special symptoms to complain of?"
"I've been rather off my sleep lately."
"You'd need cast-iron nerves to be on it, with your hand in that state. How long has it been going on—the insomnia, I mean?"
"Oh, three weeks or so. Since the warm weather set in."
"Before your hand was bad, eh?"
"I suppose so."
"And the hand itself went wrong before you indulged in the pretty little scrap that's landed you in this pestilential hole?" said Scott. It was not a speech he ought to have made to a prisoner; but Scott was far from always saying what he ought. Besides, he had had a long battle with the authorities about the condition of the old part of the prison in general and of the punishment cells in particular, a battle in which he had been worsted, and which had left a rankling grudge. The Governor had called him a meddlesome sentimentalist, which was true; and he had called the Governor a pig-headed martinet, which was about equally true.
Gardiner assented with a nod. It was all against the grain, every word that he said, and every drop of the suppressed sympathy which he detected lurking under the little doctor'sextra aggressive manner. Nevertheless with another heroic effort, backed by another thought of Lettice, he constrained himself to add: "I think perhaps it's the indoor life, sir. I've been used to be out all day and all night. Here I'm in the printing shop; it's an interesting job, and I like it, but I think perhaps I might get on better on the farm."
"You do, do you? What do you suppose you know about it?"
"Nothing," said Gardiner, "only you asked me."
"H'm!" said the little doctor. "Well, I can't do anything more now. I'll see to you properly to-morrow." He picked himself up with his usual fierce alacrity. Going out of the door, he turned to add: "I'll send you round a dose in half-an-hour. Warder, you see he takes it. Young fool, going on for a month till he gets into this state—he'll throw it into the slops, if you give him half a chance!"
With that, exit Dr. Scott, still grumbling.
Gardiner threw himself down on his bare plank bed. "O Lord!" he said with half a chuckle and half a groan. "Oh, Lettice, it's a pity you weren't the fly on the wall, I think you'd have enjoyed the scene. Lord, how I do hate that little chap! and yet I don't, you know, I rather like him. I wish he'd prescribe me a cigarette, I bet that would put me to by-by better than all his boluses. I'm glad I said what I did about the farm. If he can only work that, I think, with luck, I may pull through. He's gone away breathing out mercies and indulgences. What an ass I am to dislike saying these things, but I certainly do. Oh, Lettice,mi prenda, alma de mi vida, luz de mis ojos—won't I make love to you in Spanish when my time comes, and won't you be not ductile!—if I do stick it out you ought to feel uncommonly proud of yourself, but you won't. Never, never in my life shall I succeed in persuading you that it's all your doing, but it is."