Читать книгу The Lie Circumspect - Rita - Страница 4

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The waning daylight struggled with an autumn mist that crept coldly up from the damp ground, and covered the wide expanse of moorland stretching right and left of a huge stone building shut in by high walls and iron gates—but something stronger, too, than either wall or gates, the strength of that great power which the criminal and the offender have defied, only to fall crushed and broken beneath its iron-handed justice.

While yet the daylight struggled with the gathering shadows, a side gate within the dreary building was unlocked and thrown open. Behind it the light showed a stone-paved square, dreary, and desolate and deserted. Before and beyond, the moor lay wide and dark, stretching into phantom space that the brooding autumn sky shut in on every side. In that gateway a man stood and looked out to freedom, and back to bondage. Stood for one brief moment, and then with drooped head stepped forth to freedom and liberty, unknown for four long, awful years.

The warder who accompanied him spoke a few cheery words, but received no answer. He shrugged his shoulders. "Sullen and silent still," he said. "Well, good-bye, and better luck. You say you can find your way—are you sure?"

"Yes, yes," came the hurried answer. "I know. I need no guide." He almost stumbled in his eagerness.

He lifted his head to the misty sky and drank in the damp, moist air with thirsting lips. He was free at last—free, he told himself, and yet again murmured and echoed the word as if its joy and new-given liberty were something his lips could never tire of repeating. Free to tread God's earth; to breathe God's air; to see the blessed sunshine blurred by no prison bars; to taste the sweets of liberty; to walk unfettered; to speak, laugh, move, breathe once again; to look his fellows in the face.

His thoughts stopped there abruptly. His head drooped again. The iron weight of misery rolled back upon his soul and crushed out the delusive visions hope had begun to weave.

No, never again would he look in men's faces as four years ago he had looked. The prison taint was in his soul, the prison stamp upon his brow. Four years of shame and degradation had bowed his form and embittered his spirit. The crime for which he had suffered seemed light in comparison with the punishment inflicted. He told himself it was a fault of impulse—of youth misled and ill-considered. But even as he told it, he seemed to hear the rattle of dice, the shuffle of cards, the taunt of voices, urging a last venture with Fortune. Even as he thrust away self-reproach he seemed to see the hot flush of shame dyeing a woman's face, and the unutterable rebuke of her gentle eyes.

He stood quite still, his eyes upraised, the air stirred by his labored breath. Quite still and conscious of nothing save that once again life offered him a place in the world beyond—that he was free.

A form, shadowy as the mist stepped suddenly forward and a voice spoke his name—a woman's form, a woman's voice.

"Lawrence?" it said. And once again, as if afraid of his recognition, "Lawrence, husband, it is you? I waited. I knew the day. I counted the hours. I had not courage to go there, to that dreadful place, but I waited here; so that you might feel you were not alone, not forgotten. Oh, my dear, my dear. Say you are glad to see me."

Her hands clasped his. She was sobbing wildly. The sight of the little bundle he carried, of his close-cut hair, of his thin, furrowed face, were all as shocks to her, seen by the light of a memory that had only shown him handsome, young, beloved.

With the touch of her hands and the sound of her sobs a great change swept over him.

"You here! You! You came to meet me? Oh, Nell! What can I say to you?"

"Oh, hush!" she cried. "Who should forgive if not I, your wife, for whom you sinned, for whom you have suffered? But it is all over now. We will not speak of it. All over, all suffered, all atoned for! Oh! let us think only of that. Let all the rest be forgotten."

"You are—alone?" he questioned hoarsely.

"I have a carriage waiting for you close by. We will drive to Moortown to-night. To-morrow we will leave England for a time. Then, when we return, I have a home for you, Lawrence. God has been good to me, and I have prospered. We shall have happy years yet, dear, you and I, and our child. You have never asked about her, Lawrence. But, of course, you have never seen her. Oh! how you will love her. A mischievous sprite, but tender for all that. But how I run on! And it so cold; and you—you are shivering, dear. Oh, come, we are wasting precious time. The carriage is close by, at the corner of the road. Come! Yet stay one moment. Lawrence, do you know you have never kissed me yet?"

He thrust aside her clinging arms and a hoarse cry escaped his lips. "With prison gates in sight," he said. "With the taint upon me? Kiss you! No, Nell, I could not! Wait till we are away from here, out of sight and reach and the atmosphere of this cursed place. Then—and yet not even then. I have forfeited all right to your love. It is pity that brings you here, pity for a felon—an outcast—a man not worth a thought of yours."

"A man," she said, "whom I love, and pity, and forgive with all my heart."

"God for ever bless you!" he cried brokenly. "Your love makes me ashamed. I never deserved it, even at my best; and now——"

"Say no more, dear," she pleaded. "Only come away. And oh, if you would try to forget, as I shall, for life is all before us still, and many happy years and prosperous, God willing. Come."

She linked her arm in his and drew him gently away. The evening shadows fell behind them. The mist seemed to part as the last red spear of sunlight pierced it through and through, and so parting, left a track for them over the stony road. Across this track gleamed the red light of carriage lamps; the breath of the waiting horses mingled with the wreathing mist. The figure of the driver standing at their heads looked ghostly and indistinct. He turned his head at the sound of approaching footsteps. A natural curiosity was in his eyes. When a carriage was brought to this lonely spot a good guess might be made at the reason. The woman hurried forward; she laid her hand on the carriage door and swung it open. Her companion entered. The driver closed the door, mounted the box, and whipped up the tired horses.

Wave upon wave the mist rolled back, blotting out the road behind them, the high stone walls, the gleaming lights of the huge building raised by convict hands for convict prisoners.

The carriage followed the coach road across the dreary moor. Dreary at all times, but unspeakably so in this grey haze that, slowly gliding over vale and hill, left all it touched a deep and shrouded mystery. The horses strained their heads or started as weird shapes loomed suddenly out of darkness into the red halo of the carriage lamps. Steadily they pursued their journey, the driver keeping them at one even trot. Sometimes they dipped into spectral hollows, only to emerge and push their way defiantly against misty crests well-known as obstacles through years of dogged surmounting, sometimes plodded warily over the wide moor, windswept from every quarter, bending patient heads to meet the blast that even in summer holds its revels there.

The inmates of the carriage were very silent. Strong emotions do not readily lend themselves to speech, and both their hearts were full to breaking point, with thoughts that the one dared not utter, the other dared not betray.

Their hands were clasped in a close embrace, palm touching palm, an occasional tremor thrilling them, but otherwise they remained seated side by side, saying not a word, only gazing out of the windows at the rolling mist, the straining horses, the weird and spectral shadows on which the red lamps threw their glow.

On one side that silence was eloquent of suffering, of memory, of pride smarting at every touch, of dead hopes lifting faces wan and pale from their shroud of vanished years.

It lasted so long that the moorland and the mist were things of the past, and the road had lost its dreary outlines and allowed itself bordered by trees rich in autumnal coloring, arched by a sky in which a host of stars had gathered and gleamed to light the path of night. So long that at last, half-frightened, the woman turned and spoke.

"We shall soon be in the town, Lawrence. Our train leaves at midnight. You can dine and rest——"

She felt him shrink back, and guessed his unspoken thought.

"I have a private room, dear," she urged. "No one need see you, and in my box are clothes—those you left behind."

His white face hardened.

"You seem to have thought of everything," he said.

"I tried to—spare you," she said gently. "I knew it would seem strange at first."

"And where does the money come from?" he asked. "There was little enough left when——"

"I know. Do not say it. But remember I told you I had prospects. I have money, plenty of money. Enough for both—for all. You need not ever work again, unless you choose. It is a long story; I cannot tell you now. I only want you to rest and—forget."

"As if I ever could!" he said bitterly.

"Time heals all sorrows and their memories, dear."

"Not such memories as mine. Disgrace—punishment, chains, bondage. A wild beast's life for manhood! God above! How can one forget such things as these?"

She uttered no reproach. She did not tell him that his punishment, severe as it had been, was a punishment his own reckless actions had challenged; that his sufferings sharpened with physical agony had yet been matched by those her own heart had known, and well nigh broken under. She kept silence; but the hot tears welled in her eyes and rolled one by one down her pale cheeks.

He went on, unheeding as unseeing her agony.

"Life is only an ugly tangle for me hence forward. Things like this are never forgotten. Never till one is dead, and even then some evil tongue finds a time to lash one's memory. Those we leave behind have to suffer also."

She thought, "If he had remembered this four years sooner!" But still she was silent, fearing to reproach by seeming to agree.

"I cannot judge you," she faltered at last.

"You never will," he said. "You are one of those women of whom life makes martyrs; loving, suffering, enduring; dwelling in the inner darkness of silence—for fear of hurting what you love. It was seeing your patience, gauging your powers of endurance, feeling that I, by my selfishness, had robbed you of all that was your right, that drove me——"

Her hand tightened on his arm.

"Don't, Lawrence," she cried involuntarily. "Don't say it was my fault. Spare me that, at least!"

He looked at her then and a pang of self-reproach shot through his selfish heart.

"No," he said moodily, "it was not your fault. You were easily content; but poverty is a harsh taskmaster." His tone was sullen and his eyes left her face again and turned to the window with relief. The smallness of his own nature, measured by the greatness of hers, filled him with a grudging self-pity. He was ashamed—and yet the consciousness of shame annoyed him. The news she had brought of prosperity was less welcome because it was her gift—not his. Had Fortune befriended him, had he been able to play at princeliness it would have gratified his pride and seemed a deed of atonement; but to receive benefits from the hand of the woman whom he had loaded with humiliation was inexpressibly galling, even in this hour of liberty.

His thoughts had all been of restitution—of amendment—of righting himself in her eyes—winning some share of the world's prizes to throw at her feet. Now she was playing the part he had set himself, and her very magnanimity shamed him.

The carriage stopped at an old-fashioned hotel in the little town she had named; the lights flashed upon his face and recalled something of long-forfeited liberty.

The coachman held open the door and the woman entered the wide-open passage. The man followed her and she led the way up the shallow stairs and into a room on the first floor. To his dazzled eyes it seemed almost luxurious; yet it was simple enough. The fire threw out a welcome blaze, the lamp on the white cloth lit up the bright autumn flowers, and glass and silver laid ready for a meal.

She opened another door leading from this room and bade him enter.

"You will find all you need there," she said gently. "And dinner can be served as soon as you are ready."

He understood her meaning and her reticence. Words would have seemed indelicate to a mind keenly sensitive to the feelings of others, as was hers. He closed the door and approaching the black leather trunk on the hearthrug opened it and took out the clothes she had brought for his use.

He slipped off those he wore and which had been given back to him on his day of release. They, too, seemed to have the prison taint and were hateful. A can of hot water stood beside the washstand, and with almost feverish eagerness he laved face and arms and chest, as if he sought to cleanse himself from all the hateful stains and memories and indignities of the past four years.

When he stood again in clean linen, in a gentleman's dress, surrounded by the comforts and luxuries so long forfeited, a wild sense of exhilaration rioted in his veins. He drew his slender figure up with some of the old pride and the old satisfaction. He looked at his face, about which the hair and moustache had been allowed to grow a short time before his term of imprisonment ended.

It was a handsome face still, though lined and furrowed, and hardened, too, by reason of trials undergone, of honor forfeited, of shame bitter and self-wrought. A handsome face, and yet marred by an underlying weakness; a certain furtive, half-rebellious defiance, that spoke of a nature coerced not conquered into penitence. For at heart Lawrence Latimer was not penitent, though he told himself he was. He was bitterly ashamed, but he was also bitterly resentful. He blamed circumstances—Fate—life—everything that could be called blamable for his own folly and his own sin.

Temptation had overtaken him in a weak moment; he had swerved from the path of duty—also in a weak moment. Repentance had followed quickly, but not successfully. Awkward results, discovery, trial, condemnation, all these had been as sharp-dealt blows of a Nemesis too swiftly on his track. But he had paid the debt, he told himself. Paid, atoned, suffered. Man can do no more.

Surely he had wiped his sum of offence off the slate of life by those four years of humiliation. Surely he was at liberty now to forget, and make others forget, if their memories threatened inconvenience. As the thought crossed his mind he heard the entry of dinner and its attendant service in the room beyond. He caught sight of his own face, as it had been used to look, his own figure as it had been used to bear itself.

He turned softly to the opening door and the flush that dyed his cheek was less shamed than exultant now. He stretched his arms out to the little patient figure standing there, the light shining upon her uncovered head and in the tender pity of her eyes.

"Come to me, Nell," he said softly. "Come! I can kiss you now."

She closed the door behind her and crept into his outstretched arms, and with a little sob her head fell upon his breast. For a moment he let her rest there—a moment that repaid four empty, torturing years. Then he drew himself away and holding her hands in both his own looked sternly at her troubled face.

"Nell," he said, in a hard, repressed voice, "we take up life again to-night where we laid it down. We go out to face the world and defy it. These four years lie in a grave whose headstone is to be for ever marked by silence. From this hour your lips must never mention them any more than my own. Promise this, and swear you will never break that promise so long as we both shall live."

Startled and white as death, she looked up at his face. It was not the face she had known and loved in her girlish innocence; not the face that had haunted her memory for four despairing years. It was the face of a man into whose soul the iron of suffering had entered, whose heart had been seared, not purified, in the furnace of sorrow. It takes a great nature to bear deserved punishment, and Lawrence Latimer's nature was not great.

"Do you mean," she said slowly, "that you will tell me nothing?—that I am to ask——"

"You are to ask—nothing," he said. "The pages are torn out and burnt. If they may not be rewritten, at least they can be destroyed."

Her labored breath came slowly through her parted lips.

"Four years lie between us," she faltered. "Four years of penance—of atonement. You will tell me nothing of those years?"

"Nothing," he said. "Let them be as if they had had no existence. From this hour they shall have none."

"Others," she said, "will remember, Lawrence, the shadow of committed sin never ceases to dog our footsteps. If I read your secret in other eyes, if its whispers haunt me in the life to which we go, am I still to keep silent? Must all confidence be closed?"

"On this one point," he said doggedly. "To speak of it—even this once—taxes all my powers of endurance. I cannot suffer again—I will not. If you have wealth, as you say, it must purchase peace for me. Peace and silence—buy them how you may. Promise!"

He laid his hands upon her shoulders, pressing the slight frame with unconscious force in the earnestness of his own desire.

Her lips moved, but her eyes sought his no longer. The pity of their gaze was quenched by sudden fear.

"I promise," she said, "but a day may come when it would be better for us both to speak and to trust, as now—we cannot."

His hands released her then. He lifted his head defiantly and the mirror gave him back some momentary flash of his old youth and his old spirit.

But he said nothing, only stretched out his hand and led her into the room where dinner was awaiting them.