Читать книгу The Man who was Two - Fred M. White - Страница 9

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Mallison woke up one morning early in May with his usual feeling of despair, and the dreariness of life, to find a slanting ray of sunshine penetrating into his cell, and the consciousness that the melancholy fogs had cleared away. He could hear the larks singing overhead, and catch the note of a blackbird somewhere in the distance, so that even he was uplifted and strangely moved by the beauty of the morning. There was, of course, the dreary routine of cell-cleaning, followed by breakfast, after which the various gangs were gathered together, presumedly with a view to the weary monotony of the quarries. But presently Baillie sidled along beside Mallison and whispered in his ear.

"It's all right," he said. "No quarry today; we are going to start work on the new cliff road, and what's more, we are going to stick to it until it is finished."

Mallison said nothing, though he was moved by the news to an extent which rather surprised him. He was going to see the sea again, from the top of Hangman's Rock, and gaze once more at the village of Merston, climbing up the side of the cliff like some gleaming white snake in the sunshine. He was going to see the place where he was born, and away on the far side, that big rambling bungalow of Sir Marston Manley's where the great painter spent his summer and completed some of his finest pictures. It was too early yet for Manley to be down there, as he rarely put in an appearance in these parts until the end of July, therefore, the bungalow, with all its wonderful art treasures, would be closed as it invariably was this time of year, being aired and cleaned up occasionally by the aged fisherman and his wife who were imported for the occasion.

It was here, in this bungalow, that Mallison had spent some of his happiest days. He could see the big hall in his mind's eye, with its ancient armour and fine Eastern rugs; he remembered vividly now how interested he had been when Sir Marston had first installed his telephone. It was almost a phenomenon in those days, and it had been one of Mallison's keenest delights to call up distant towns, like Plymouth for instance, and transact certain minor details of the great man's business.

And all this he was going to look at once more. He was dimly conscious of certain orders which were being given by half a dozen warders who were in charge of the party, and presently they moved off, across the moor in the direction of the little station on the light railway that was going to carry them to their destination. It was a hateful and humiliating business presently, to stand on the platform and wait till the little light engine came along in the distance. There were certain carriages set apart for the convicts, but this did not prevent passengers craning their heads out of the carriages to gaze with eager curious eyes upon the outcasts in the blue overalls, who stood there, half ashamed, and half defiant, until the train moved on.

They were safe from the public gaze now, at any rate, and, unchecked by the presence of the warders, began to talk eagerly amongst themselves. It was a new experience for them, and one which for the most part, they appreciated. A young convict with a wistful face and an almost tender expression in his eyes, lifted up his head presently and sniffed.

"I can smell the sea," he said almost joyously. "Can't you chaps feel the breath of it on your lips?"

"You are fond of the sea?" Mallison asked.

"I was born at sea," the other man said. "My father was captain of a tramp steamer, and for the first 20 years of my life I was hardly ever off the water. Seen pretty well every place in the world, I have. Fairly gets into my blood, it does, and when I'm out of all this I shall go back to it again. There is always a place waiting for me."

There was a story behind all this, Mallison thought, and would have liked to be alone with the speaker, and hear something of it. For the man who sat opposite had nothing about him to suggest the average criminal. But then, there were scores of such cases at Slagmoor, and it seemed to Mallison that any novelist who knew his work might pick up a hundred stories at Slagmoor that would be something more than fascinating in the way of romance.

And then presently the train stopped, and the long stream of men in blue overalls found themselves creeping through a vast expanse of woodland, at the foot of which a trout stream went straight to the sea. Mallison could see a fisherman or two at work, and presently one of these, in his workmanlike suit of Harris tweeds, strolled casually by with a pipe in his mouth. On the fresh morning air the incense from his tobacco lay breast high, like some burning scent.

"Ah, lucky devil," Baillie murmured in Mallison's ear. "I don't wish that chap any harm, but if I were alone, I think I could murder him for a pipeful of tobacco. A man ought to have six months for puffing his Cavendish in the face of a chap like myself. But, there, I suppose it will come all right in time."

They passed through the woods, all green with the glory of new fern fronds, and blue with the carpet of bluebells at their foot. And every step they went brought Mallison nearer and nearer to the familiar ground, until at length he could see the summit of Hangman's Rock, that towered nine hundred feet over their heads. He turned away for a moment to fight the eagerness that had overcome him, for every step he took now brought back some recollection to his mind, and filled him with mingled joy and sadness.

"I feel like a man in a dream," he said to Baillie. "I shall wake up presently and find myself in my cell. There isn't an inch here that doesn't appeal to me."

"Yes, I think I can understand the feeling," Baillie, replied. "It's a lovely spot, isn't it?"

They were climbing the rising road now, until they came presently to the summit of the great cliff. Here a large portion of the road for some half-mile or more had given way, so that the path remaining was too narrow to allow more than perhaps a couple of foot-passengers abreast. It was necessary, therefore, to cut through the inside portion of the cliff, and make practically a fresh road over the shoulder of the hill to the village of Merston beyond. There were wooden huts here and there filled with the necessary tools, which had been left over from the last winter, and presently the gang, under the orders of the warders, fetched these out, and the work on the road began. Behind the pathway the cliff rose sheer for another fifty feet or so; therefore it was only necessary to have an armed jailor at either end of the cutting to render every means of escape impossible. Once these were posted the warders somewhat relaxed their vigilance; thus it was possible for a fair amount of conversation to proceed as the work progressed. Mallison found himself presently with a pick and barrow, prising out broken rocks and fragments of stone which had been strewn about there since the previous summer, when certain blasting operations had been made.

From where he stood he could see sheer down to the sea from the top of Hangman's Rock, a great rampart-like precipice, broken here and there by huge jutting boulders, and clad from head to foot with vegetation, gorse bushes, and the like, which had grown there in the course of time, and now formed a living screen of green. He could see about some twenty feet down a mass of rock sticking out some eight feet, and, almost hidden by the flaming gold on the gorse bushes. One false step on the edge of that path and there would be no stop until the sea was reached, and anyone meeting with an accident there would in all probability be dead before he reached the water.

"A nice place to get into trouble," Baillie laughed. "One slip, and it would be all over. I don't like it much; I always feel nervous when I'm standing on high ground."

"Yes, I have heard other people say so," Mallison said. "It's all a matter of what you are accustomed to. Do you see that white house yonder in the trees? I mean that house about a couple of miles away just off the beach at Merston."

"Oh, I see it right enough," Baillie said. "Just the sort of place I used to dream about when I was going to make my fortune as a black-and-white artist. I was always going to have a white cottage somewhere in Devonshire."

"I was born there," Mallison said quietly. "And there I lived until my mother died. Things might have been different if my father had lived, but I hardly remember him; he broke his neck in the hunting-field when I was quite small."

"It's a lovely village," Baillie observed, between the strokes of his pick. "It looks as if it had been there since the beginning of time. One can't imagine anything wrong or wicked in connection with an ideal place like that."

Mallison said nothing. He was gazing down at the White house in the distance with a mist in his eyes and a softness at his heart that he had not felt for years. It all seemed so near and yet at the same time so far off. It seemed almost impossible that he should be able to live through the years to come as if escape were impossible. He could see the white line of foam breaking on the sands to the left of Hangman's Rock, and pictured in his mind every inch of the three miles or so that lay between the base of the great rock and the peaceful village where he was born. He could see a boat or two on the sea, and visualised the occupants. For every man in the village was known to him, he could even see what bait they were using. Then he put all these pictures sternly from his mind, and for the next hour or more bent resolutely to his work. There came an interval presently when they could sit down and rest, and partake of their midday meal, which every man had brought in his pocket. With the safeguards at either end, discipline was rather more lax than usual, so that it was possible for the convicts to talk when they had finished their portions of food.

Baillie lay on his back, basking in the sunshine, with a whimsical expression on his face.

"I call this uncommonly jolly," he said. "A sort of picnic, if you like to regard it in that way. For half an hour we are our own masters, more or less. Mallison, hand me my cigar case, I would smoke."

"Apparently I have forgotten it," Mallison said, falling into his companion's mood. "Very careless of me, no doubt, but I promise you it shan't happen again."

With that he rose to his feet and stood on the very edge of the cliff, looking down to the sea below. He called to Baillie, who reluctantly followed.

"I wish you wouldn't stand as near as that," he said. "It makes me so infernally nervous."

"Does it?" Mallison asked. "Now, look here, if anybody offered you your liberty provided that you found your way from here down to the beach without breaking your neck would you accept the challenge?"

"No, I wouldn't," Baillie said promptly. "Life isn't worth much to chaps like us, but somehow we cling to it all the same. I do, for one. You see, I tell myself that when this is over there is still a future for me outside England, because I really can draw, though I say it myself as shouldn't. And that's that. But you are joking, of course."

"Indeed I am not," Mallison murmured. "You may refuse to believe me, but once I climbed up from the foot of the cliff by a path that skirts the sea, and I managed to get up here to the very place where we are standing. And, what's more, I got down again. It hasn't been done for fifty years. An old fisherman showed me the way, and warned me not to attempt it, but I was always out for adventures in those days, and I managed it all right. Do you see that rock sticking out about twenty feet below? I mean the one covered with gorse bushes."

"Well, what about it?" Baillie asked.

"Oh, nothing, except that it happens to be a solid platform. If I jumped from here now I should land on a flat surface, and my fall would be broken by those bushes. Then, by crawling round the edge of the bluff, I should find a sort of path, and, with great care working backwards and facing the way I came, I should find myself presently at the foot of the cliff. Then there is a sheep track to the left, which will bring me to the sands. Suppose I were to jump now? What do you think our friends with the rifles yonder would say about it?"

"Well, there is only one thing to say about it," Baillie replied. "They would come to the conclusion that you had either committed suicide, or that you had met with a fatal accident."

"Precisely," Mallison went on. "They would argue that I had fallen nine hundred feet into the sea, and they wouldn't worry about me any more, because the tide here has a rise of over forty feet, and if my body was ever found it would be at least fifty or sixty miles away. As a matter of fact people down on this coast are rarely if ever found; but, at any rate, whatever happens, no sane person would ever suggest that I had made good my escape without injury."

"Well, suppose you did?" Baillie asked. "What would be the good? You would have to go through Merston in the broad daylight with the Government mark on you under those blue dungarees, and you would be back in the prison again before night. It's a fool's game for a man to attempt who has no friends and no plans for the future. And, besides, you'd lose all your good conduct marks, to say nothing of having to serve your full time and be deprived of all your privileges."

"Yes, I suppose that's true enough," Mallison said. "And yet, standing here, in plain sight of the place where I was so happy, I am having great difficulty in restraining myself. You see, I know lots of people in the village, and it is just possible that somebody might be ready to help me. And don't you forget that there will be no search made for me. It will be reported to the Governor that I have fallen nine hundred feet into the sea there will be an inquiry into the circumstances, and that will be the end of it. It couldn't possibly occur to any of the authorities that I had made good my escape."

"Yes, that's right enough," Baillie agreed. "But there is one important fact you overlook, my friend."

"And what might that be?" Mallison asked. "Village gossip, my boy, village gossip. I don't care if everybody in the place is ready to shield you, the more people who were in the secret the worse it would be for you. Everybody would be talking about it, and before long the story would spread further afield to people who didn't know you, and who would be quite ready to give you away. Why, it's any odds that within 48 hours the story would have reached Slagmoor, and you would have half the police in Devonshire on your track, and before you could get 50 miles away they'd have you again."

"Yes, I dare say there is a great deal of truth in that," Mallison said. "It would be a mad adventure in any case, but a fine change from the monotonous existence up yonder, and I know that I should be amongst friends, even if it were only for a few hours. I've a precious good mind to try it."

"Better not, better not," Baillie said.

Mallison crept nearer to the edge of the cliff, then looked cautiously round him.

"I'm going." he said. "Good-bye."

With that he seemed to fall over the edge of the cliff, and, lighting on the mass of gorse below, was lost to view. Then Baillie jumped to his feet and yelled for help.