BERNARD A PRISONER
The arrest and committal of Bernard Maddison on a charge of murder
created the most profound sensation in every circle of English society.
His work, abstruse and scholarly though some of it was, had appealed to
a great reading public, and had made his name like a household word.
That long deep cry for a larger and sweeter culture which had been
amongst the signs of this troubled generation, had found its most
perfect and adequate expression in his works. He had been at once its
interpreter and its guide. There were thoughtful men and women, a great
mixed class, who, in their own minds, reckoned themselves as his
apostles, and acknowledged no other intellectual master. Some were of
the highest rank of society, others of the very lowest. It was a
literary republic of which he had been the unacknowledged dictator,
containing all those whose eyes had been in any way opened, who had felt
stirring even faintly within them that instinct of mind-development and
expansion to which his work seemed peculiarly fitted to minister. And
so, although his career as an apostle of culture had been but a short
one, he was already the leader of a school whose tenets it would have
been a heresy to modern taste to doubt or question.
The news of this tragical event, therefore, fell like a thunderbolt
upon society, eclipsing every other topic in the newspapers, in
conversation, and general interest. The first instinct of every one
appeared to be to look upon the whole affair as a ludicrous piece of
mismanagement on the part of the police, and Scotland Yard came in for a
good deal of scathing criticism, as is usual in such cases. But when the
evidence before the magistrates was carefully read, and sundry other
little matters discussed, men's tongues began to run less glibly. Of
course it was impossible that it could be true; and yet the evidence was
certainly strong. In the country generally the first impulse of generous
disbelief was followed by a period of pained and reserved expectancy. In
clubdom, where neither fear of the devil nor love of God had yet been
able to keep the modern man of the world from discussing freely any
subject interesting to him, a gradual but sure reaction against the
possibilities of his innocence set in.
There were plenty of men about still who remembered Sir Geoffrey
Kynaston, and the peculiar manner of his life. During his long absence
from England there had been many rumors about, concerning its reason,
and now these were all suddenly revived. The breach of a certain
commandment, a duel at Boulogne, and many other similar adventures were
freely spoken of. After all, this story, improbable though it sounded,
was far from impossible. It had always been reckoned a little mysterious
that nothing whatever had been known of Bernard Maddison's antecedents,
great though had been his fame, and assiduous his interviewers. As all
these things began slowly to fit themselves together, men commenced to
look grave, and to avoid the subject in the presence of their
woman-kind, who were one and all unswerving in their loyalty to that
dear, delightful Bernard Maddison, who had written those exquisite
books. But in the smoking-room and among themselves views were gradually
adopted which it would have been heresy to avow in the drawing-room.
No man appeared to take less interest in the event and the discussion
of it than Sir Allan Beaumerville. Known generally amongst his
acquaintances as a cynic and pessimist, men were pretty sure what his
opinion would be. But he never expressed it. Whenever he strolled up to
any group in the smoking-room or library of the club, and found them
discussing the Maddison murder case, he turned on his heel and walked
another way. If it were broached in his presence it was the signal for
his retirement, and any question concerning it he refused point-blank to
answer. Gradually the idea sprang up, and began to circulate, that Sir
Allan Beaumerville had formed an idea of his own concerning the Maddison
murder, and that it was one which he intended to keep to himself. Every
one was curious about it, but in the face of his reticence, no one cared
to ask him what it was.
* * * * *
A plain whitewashed cell, with high bare walls and tiny window, through
which the sunlight could only struggle faintly. Only one article of
furniture which could justly be called such, a rude wooden bedstead, and
seated on its end with folded arms and bent head, like a man in some
sort of stupor, sat Bernard Maddison.
He was in that most pitiable of all states, when merciless realization
had driven before it all apathy, all lingering hope, all save that
deadly cold sea of absolute, unutterable despair. There had been moments
on his first arrival here, when he had fallen into a dozing sleep, and
had leaped up from his hard bed, and had stretched up his hands above
his head, and had called out in agony that it must be a dream, a hideous
nightmare from which he would awaken only to look back upon it with
horror. And then his glazed, fearful eyes had slowly taken in his
surroundings--the stone walls, the cold floor, the barred window--and
pitiless memory had dragged back his thoughts amongst the vivid horrors
of the last forty-eight hours. It was all there, written in letters of
fire. He shrunk back upon his mattress and buried his face in his hands,
whilst every instinct of manliness fought against the sobs which seemed
as though they would rend to pieces his very frame.
Once more the morning light had come, and the burning agony of the hours
of darkness was exchanged for the cold, crushing despair of the weary
day. They had brought his breakfast, which he had loathed and left
untasted. And then, as he sat there, so worn out with physical and
mental exhaustion, something of a dull miserable apathy acted like opium
on his wearied nerves and brain. He sat there thinking.
The great passions of the world are either our sweetest happiness or
our most utter misery. Not unfrequently the one becomes the other.
Circumstances may change, but the force remains, sometimes, after
yielding us the most exquisite pleasure, to lash us with scorpion-like
whips. The love of Bernard Maddison had thrilled through heart and
soul--it had become not a thing of his life, but his whole life. Every
impulse and passion of his being had yielded itself up to it. Ambition,
intellectual visions, imaginative fancies, all these had been not indeed
driven out by this passion, but more fatal still, they had opened their
arms to receive it, they had bidden it welcome, and heart and brain and
imagination had glowed with a new significance and a new-born power. A
lesser love would have had a lesser effect; it would have made rivals of
these other parts of himself. Not so the love of Bernard Maddison. Every
fiber of his deep, strong nature was strengthened and beautified by this
new-kindled fire. At that moment, had he been free to write, he would
have been conscious of a capacity beyond any which he had ever before
possessed. For a great nature is perfected by a great love, as the
blossoms of spring by the April showers and May sun. The dry dust of
scholarship sometimes chokes up the well of fancy. The perfect humanity
of love acts like a sweet, quickening impulse upon it, breathing sweet
soft life into dry images, and rich coloring into pallid visions. Such
love, which is at once spiritual and passionate, of heaven and of the
earth, absorbing and concentrative, widening and narrowing, is to a
man's nature, if he be strong enough to conceive and appreciate it, the
very food, the essence of sublimated life.
To Bernard Maddison it had been so. To its very depths he realized it as
he sat in his prison cell with something of the deep passive resignation
of the man who stands with one foot in the grave. The latter part of his
life--nay, the whole of it--had been full of noble dreams and pure
thoughts. His genius had never run riot over the whole face of nature,
to yield its fruits in a sickly sweet realism with only faint flashes of
his deeper power. Always subordinated by the innate and cultured
healthiness of his mind, he had sent it forth a living power for good.
Great joy had been his as he had watched his message to the world
listened to, and understood, and appreciated. Another age might witness
its fruits, it was sufficient for him that the seed was rightly planted.
Oh, the horror of it--the burning, unspeakable horror! In his ears there
seemed to come ringing from the world without the great hum of gossip
and lies which were dragging his name down into hell. A murderer! The
time might come when she too would think thus of him, when the tragedy
of her first love might fade away, and the lovelight might flash again
in her eyes, but not for him. He shook his head wildly, stretched out
his hands as though to hide something from his quivering face, and
barely suppressed the groan of deep agony which trembled on his lips.
God in His mercy keep him from such thoughts! Death, disgrace,
surpassing humiliation, let them float in their ghostly garments before
his shuddering gaze, but keep that thought from him, for with it madness
moved hand in hand. As Michael Angelo had stifled his grief at Vittoria
Colonna's death, in the sweet hope of rejoining her as soon as the last
lingering breath should leave his mortal body, and as Dante had hoped
for his Beatrice, so let him think of the woman without whom no human
life was possible for him, almost, he cried out in his agony, no
spiritual hope or longing.
The sound of the key in the lock of his door, and the tramp of footsteps
on the stone floor outside, awoke him with a start from his
half-dreaming state. The thought of visitors being permitted to come had
never occurred to him, nor did it even then. The footsteps had paused
outside his door, but he felt no interest in them, nor ever the vaguest
stirrings of curiosity. Then the harsh lock was turned with a grating
sound, and two figures, followed by the prison warder, entered the
room.