ONE evening by the last post John received a letter bearing the prison
stamp and addressed to him under the care of the firm of solicitors who
had defended his wife. It ran:
_I am coming out on Wednesday, the thirteenth. I suppose I shall have
somewhere to go to and not be expected to walk the streets. Louisa Anne
Risca._
That was all--neither _ave_ nor _vale_. It was the only letter she had
written. She knew well enough that the house in Smith Street was being
maintained and that her allowance would be resumed as soon as she
regained her freedom, having been so informed by the solicitors, on
John's instructions; but a reference to this explicit statement would
have discounted the snarl. Prison had not chastened her.
John sat back in his writing-chair, the ignoble letter in front of him.
He made a rapid calculation of dates. It was two years and three months
since the trial. She had worked out three fourths of her sentence,
the remaining fourth evidently having been remitted on account of good
conduct, in the ordinary course. Two years and three months! He had
scarcely realized the swift flight of time. Of late his life had been
easier. Distracted London had forgotten the past. He had sought and
found, at his club, the society of his fellow-men. His printed name no
longer struck horror into a reader's soul. At times he himself almost
forgot. The woman had faded into a shadow in some land beyond the tomb.
But now, a new and grim Alcestis, she had come back to upper earth.
There was nothing trans-Stygian about the two or three cutting lines.
She was alive, luridly alive, and on Wednesday, the thirteenth, she
would be free, a force let loose, for good or evil, in the pleasant
places of the world. At the prospect of the prison doors closing behind
her, however, he felt great relief. At any rate, that horror would soon
be over and done with. The future must take care of itself.
Presently he wrote:
_Dear Louisa:_
_I am unfeignedly thankful to hear your news. I shall be waiting for you
at the gate on the morning of the thirteenth and shall take you to Smith
Street, which you will find quite ready to receive you._
_Yours,_
_John Risca._
Then he went out and posted the letter.
“I 'm glad you 're going to meet her yourself instead of sending a
solicitor's clerk,” said Herold, when they discussed the matter next
day.
“I'm not one to shirk disagreeable things,” replied John.
“It may touch some human chord in her.”
“I never thought of that,” said John.
“Well, think of it. Think of it as much as you can.”
“'You may as well use question with the wolf,'” growled John.
“I don't believe it,” said Herold. “Anyhow, try kindness.”
“Of course I 'm going to do so,” said John, with the impatience he
usually manifested when accepting a new point of view from Herold. “You
don't suppose I'm going to stand outside with a club!”
On the appointed day he waited, with a four-wheeled cab, by the prison
gate. The early morning sunshine of midsummer flooded the world with
pale glory, its magic even softening the grim, forbidding walls. A light
southwest wind brought the pure scents of the down from many a sleeping
garden and woodland far away. The quiet earth sang its innocence, for
wickedness was not yet abroad to scream down the song. Even John Risca,
anti-sentimentalist, was stirred. What sweeter welcome, what gladder
message of hope, could greet one issuing into the upper air from the
gloomy depths of Hades? How could such a one help catching at her breath
for joy?
The gate swung open, casting a shadow in the small yard beyond, and in
the middle of the shadow a black, unjoyous figure stood for a moment
irresolute. Then she slowly came out into sunshine and freedom. She was
ashen-coloured, thin-lipped, and not a gleam of pleasure lit her eyes
as they rested with hard remorselessness on the man who advanced with
outstretched hand to meet her. Of the hand she took no notice.
“Is this my cab?”
“Yes,” said John.
She entered. He followed, giving the address to the driver. She sat
looking neither to left nor right, staring stubbornly in front of her.
The sunshine and the scent of summer gardens far away failed to bring
their message. Though it was high summer, she wore the heavy coat which
she had worn in the wintry weather at the time of her trial.
“I am very glad indeed to see you, Louisa,” said John. “'Unfeignedly
thankful!'” She chewed the literary phrase and spat it out venomously.
“You--liar!”
John winced at the abominable word; but he spoke softly.
“You can't suppose it has been happiness for me to think of you in
there.”
“What does it matter to me? What the hell are you to me, anyhow?”
“I 'm your husband in the eyes of the law,” said John, “and I once cared
for you.”
“Oh, stow that!”
“I will. But I want you to believe that I am utterly thankful that
this--this unhappy chapter is closed--”
She interrupted him with a swift and vicious glance.
“'Unhappy chapter!' Get off it! You make me sick. Talk English, if you
must talk.”
“Very well,” said he. “I 'm glad my legal wife is not in gaol. I want
her to believe that I 'll do my best to forget it; also, that, as far as
my means allow, she will have comfort and opportunity to try to forget
it, too.”
Not a muscle of her drawn face relaxed.
“I'm not going to have you or any one else fooling round where I live,”
she said. “I'm not going to be preached to or converted. I 've had
enough of it where I've come from. As for you, I hate you. I've always
hated you, and if you have any decency, you 'll never let me see your
face again.”
“I won't,” said John, shortly, and with this the edifying conversation
came to an end.
The cab lumbered through the sunny thoroughfares of the great city,
now busy with folks afoot, in trams and omnibuses, going forth to their
labour; and John, looking out of the window, fancied they were all
touched by the glamour of the summer morning. Every human soul save
the woman beside him seemed glad to be alive. She sat rigid, apart from
him--as physically apart as the seat would allow, and apart from the
whole smiling world. She had her being in terrible isolation, hate
incarnate. When by any chance their eyes happened to meet, he turned his
aside swiftly and shivered with unconquerable repulsion.
When the cab drew up at the house in Smith Street, the door was opened,
and a pleasant-faced woman and a man stood smiling in the passage. Mrs.
Risca brushed past them into the dining-room, bright with daintily
laid breakfast table and many flowers. The latter, John, at Herold's
suggestion, had sent in the evening before.
“You see,” said John, entering, “we 've tried to prepare for you.”
She deigned no glance, but slammed the door.
“Who are those people?”
“A married couple whom I have engaged to live here. The woman, Mrs.
Bence, will do for you. The man goes out to his work during the day.”
“Warder and wardress, eh? They can jolly well clear out. I'm not going
to have 'em.”
Then John's patience broke. He brought his fist down on the table with a
crash.
“By heavens,” he cried, “you shall have whomever I put here. You 've
behaved yourself for two years, and you 're going on behaving yourself.”
He flung open the door. “Mrs. Bence, help Mrs. Risca off with her coat
and bring in her breakfast.”
Cowed, she submitted with malevolent meekness. Prison discipline does
not foster the heroic qualities. Mrs. Bence took hat and coat and
disappeared.
“Sit down at the table.”
She obeyed. He laid some money beside her.
“This is your allowance. On the thirteenth of every month you will
receive the same amount from my bankers. If you prefer, after a time, to
live in the country, we may be able to arrange it. In the meanwhile you
must stay here.”
She neither touched the coins nor thanked him. There was a silence hard
and deadly. John stood in the sunshine of the window, bending on her
his heavy brows. Now and then she glanced at him furtively from beneath
lowered eyelids, like a beast subdued, but not tamed. A dominant will
was all that could control her now. He thanked an unusually helpful
Providence that had sent him the Bences in the very nick of his
emergency. Before marriage, Mrs. Bence had been under-attendant at a
county lunatic asylum, and John had heard of her through Wybrow, the
medical superintendent, a club friend, who had helped him before when
the defense had set up the plea of insanity, and whom, with an idea of
trained service in his head, he had again consulted. No more torturing
of Unitys, if he could help it. Wybrow spoke highly of Mrs. Bence and
deplored the ruin of a great career as a controller of she-devils; but
as a cat will after kind, so must she after an honest but impecunious
plumber. John had sought her and come to terms at once. For once in
their courses, he thought grimly, the stars were not fighting against
him. He had not told Herold of this arrangement. Herold had counselled
kindness. The flowers, for instance, would be sure to make their
innocent appeal. Tears could not fail to fill her eyes. Tears of
sentiment in those eyes! Little Herold knew of the world of realities
with which he was at death-grips.
Presently Mrs. Bence came in with coffee, hot rolls, a dish of bacon
and eggs. The fragrant smell awakened the animal instinct of the woman
at the table. She raised her head and followed the descent of dish and
plate. Then a queer noise broke from her throat, and she fell upon the
food. John left her.
Mrs. Bence followed him into the passage and opened the front door.
“I've been used to it, sir.”
“She must never guess that,” said he.
He walked homeward through the parks, breathing in great gulps of the
sweet morning air. He felt that he had been in contact with something
unclean. Not only his soul, but his very body, craved purification.
In the woman he had left he had found no remorse, no repentance, no
sensibility to any human touch. Prison had broken her courage; but in
its sunless atmosphere of the underground, all the fungoid growths of
her nature had flourished in mildewed exuberance. He shuddered at the
thought of her, a poisonous thing, loathsome in its abnormality. As some
women dwell in an aura of sweet graciousness, so dwelt she in mephitic
fumes of devildom. Implacable hatred, deadly venom, relentless
vengeance, were the constituents of her soul. Relentless vengeance--He
sat for a moment on a bench in Hyde Park, feeling chilled to the bone,
although the perspiration beaded on his forehead. She would not strike
him, of that he was oddly assured. Her way would be to strike at
him through those near and dear to him. In the full sunshine of gay
midsummer, with the trees waving their green and lusty bravery over
his head, and the flower-beds rioting in the joy of the morning, he was
shaken by an unreasoning nightmare terror. He saw the woman creep with
snaky movements into the sea-chamber at Southcliff, and a pair of starry
eyes become wells of awful horror as the murderous thing approached the
bed. And he was held rigid by dream paralysis.
After a second or two--it had seemed many minutes of agony--he sprang to
his feet with what he thought was a great cry, and looked dazedly about
him. A nurse-maid, undistracted from her novelette, and wheeling a
perambulator in which reposed an indifferent infant, passed him by. He
shook himself like a great, rough dog, and went his way, ashamed of his
fears. It was a practical world, he told himself, and he was a match for
any mad-woman.
Unity was watering flowers in the tiny patch of front garden where he
swung through the iron gate. She had grown a little during the last two
years, but still was undeveloped; a healthier colour had come into her
cheeks and a more confident expression into her common, snub-nosed face.
Her movements were less awkward, and as she was eighteen, she wore her
hair done up with a comb and the long skirts appropriate to her age.
She set down her watering-pot and stood at a kind of absurd attention,
her usual attitude in the presence of John.
“Please, guardian,” she said,--she could never rid herself of the
school-child's exordium,--“have you had your breakfast?”
“No,” said John, realizing for the first time that emptiness of stomach
may have had something to do with his momentary faintness in the park.
“Aunt Gladys has been in such a state,” said Unity. “She has made Phoebe
cook three breakfasts already, and each has been spoiled by being kept
in the oven, and I think now she is cooking the fourth.”
In this announcement rang none of the mischievous mirth of eighteen over
an elder's harmless foibles. Humour, which had undoubtedly presided at
her birth, for like many another glory-trailing babe, she had crowed
with glee at the haphazard coupling of which she was the result, had
fled for good from her environment ever since the day when, at a very
tender age, she had seen her mother knocked insensible by a drunken
husband and had screamed single-mindedly for unobtainable nourishment.
She had no sense of glorious futility, of the incongruous relativity
of facts. Each fact was absolute. Three breakfasts had been cooked and
spoiled. The fourth was in the cooking. She narrated simply what had
taken place.
“Run and tell Phoebe I'm hungry enough to eat all four,” said John.
They entered the house. Unity hurried off on her errand. The meal was
soon served. Miss Lindon, with many inquiries as to the reason for his
early start, which he answered with gruff evasiveness, hovered about
him as he ate, watching him in loving wonder. His big frame needed
much nourishment, and now sheer hunger was being satisfied. To her
acquaintance she spoke of his appetite with as much pride as of his
literary achievements. It was Unity, however, who took charge of the
practical service, removed his plates and poured out his tea, silent,
submissive, and yet with a subtle air of protection. There were certain
offices she would not allow Aunt Gladys or even Phoebe to perform for her
guardian. She was jealous, for instance, like a dog, of any one touching
the master's clothes. This morning, when Miss Lindon absent-mindedly
grasped the handle of the teapot, the faintest gleam of anger appeared
in her eyes, and her lips grew instinctively tense, and with a quick,
authoritative gesture she unloosed the fat, helpless fingers and took
possession of the sacred vessel. John liked her to wait upon him. She
was deft and noiseless; she anticipated his wants in an odd, instinctive
way and seldom made suggestions. Now, of suggestions his aunt was
a living fount. They poured from her all day long. He had a vague
consciousness that Unity, by tactful interposition, dammed the flood,
so that he could go on his way undrenched. For this he felt grateful,
especially this morning when his nerves were on edge. Yet this morning
he felt grateful also to Miss Lindon, and suffered her disconnected
ministrations kindly. To-day the queer home that he had made assumed a
new significance.
When Miss Lindon fluttered out of the room, bound on a suddenly
remembered duty--fresh groundsel for Dickie--John looked up from the
newspaper which Unity had silently folded and laid beside him.
“Come here, my child,” he said, after a few moments' thought.
She approached and stood dutifully by his chair.
“Unity, I don't think it right for you to remain in ignorance of
something that has happened. I don't see how it can really affect you,
but it 's better that you should learn it from me than from anybody
else. Do you remember--” he paused--“that woman?”
It was the first reference he had ever made to her. Unity drew a quick,
sharp breath.
“Yes, guardian.”
“She was let out of prison this morning.”
She kept her eyes full on him, and for a while neither spoke.
“I don't care,” she said at last.
“I thought it might cause you some anxiety.”
“What have I to be afraid of when I've got you?” she asked simply.
John twisted round in his chair and reached out his hand--a rare
demonstration of affection--and took hers.
“It's to assure you, my dear, that you've nothing to fear that I 've
told you.”
“She can't hurt _me_,” said Unity.
“By heaven, she sha'n't!” he cried, unconsciously wrenching her arm so
that he caused her considerable pain, which she bore without the flicker
of an eyelid. “You 're a fine, brave girl, Unity, and I'm proud of you.
And you 're a good girl, too. I hope you 're happy here; are you?”
“Happy?” Her voice quavered on the word. Her mouth twitched, and the
tears started from her eyes. He smiled on her, one of his rare smiles,
known to few besides Stellamaris, which lit up his heavy features, and
revealed a guardian far different from the inaccessible Olympian.
“Yes, my dear, I hope so. I want you to be happy all your life long.”
She uttered a little sobbing laugh and fell crouching to his feet, still
clinging to his hand, which she rubbed against her cheek. How could she
tell him otherwise?
“I think you are,” said John.
“I 've just remembered I put the groundsel--” began Miss Lindon, coming
into the room. Then she stopped, petrified at the unusual spectacle.
John laughed rather foolishly, and Unity, flushing scarlet, rushed out.
“I was only asking her whether we were treating her nicely,” said John,
rising and stretching his loose limbs.
“What a question to ask the child!”
“Well, she answered it like that, you see,” said John.
“But what a way to answer a simple question! She forgets sometimes that
she is a young lady of eighteen, an age when manners ought to be formed.
But manners,” she continued, hunting about the room, “are not what they
were when I was young. I declare, I sometimes see young women in the
streets with woollen caps and hockey-sticks--”
John took a salad-bowl from the mantelpiece. “Is that Dickie's
groundsel?”
“Oh, how clever of you! Where did you find it? Dickie has been so angry.
He's just like a man when his dinner's late. I don't mean you. You 're a
perfect saint, dear.”
“Which reminds me,” said John, with a laugh, “that I've mislaid my halo
and I must go and find it.”
With an exultant sense of comfort he went into his library. The
women-folk of his household had never before seemed so near to him, so
dependent on him, such organic factors of his life. He stood for a long
time on his hearth-rug, scowling terribly, with the air of a wild beast
standing at the entrance to its lair in defiant defence of the female
and whelps within.