"You are not undergoing a sentence for murder, are you?" I asked.
She looked at me for a moment, and then said:
"The desperate creature who escaped from gaol three days ago, and who
was in for life for the murder of the man she lived with, and whose
convict clothes I am wearing--whose clothes, I mean, are at this moment
drying before your kitchen fire--is not the same woman who is now
drinking your excellent coffee."
"Do you mean to tell me you have never been in prison?"
"Yes, for a year; but I served my time and finished it four years ago."
I wrung my hands. I was deeply disappointed in her. Her transparent
duplicity, which could impose on no one, not even so unsuspicious a
nature as mine, hurt me to the quick.
"Oh! you poor soul," I said, "don't lie to me. Indeed it isn't
necessary. I will do all I can for you. I will help you to get away. I
will give you other clothes, and money, and we will bury these--these
garments of shame. But don't, for God's sake, don't lie to me."
She looked gravely at me, as if she were measuring me, and seeing, no
doubt, that I was not deceived, a dusky red rose for a moment to her
face and brow.
"It is not easy to speak the truth to some people," she said, her eyes
dropping once more to the fire, "even when they are as compassionate and
kind as you are."
"Truthfulness is a habit that may be regained," I said earnestly. "I
myself, without half your temptations, was untruthful once."
To associate oneself with the sins of others, to show one's own scar,
is not this sometimes the only way to comfort those overborne in the
battle of life? Had I not chronicled my own failing in the matter of
truthfulness when I foolishly and wickedly took blame on myself for the
fault of one dear to me, in my first book, "With Broken Wing"? But I saw
as I spoke that she had not read it, and did not realise to what I was
alluding. I have so steadily refused to be interviewed that possibly
also she had not even yet guessed who I was.
"I am sure--I am quite sure," I went on after a moment, "that there is a
great deal of good in you, that you are by nature truthful."
"Am I? I wonder. Perhaps I was so once, in the early, untroubled days.
But I have told many lies since then."
She drank her coffee slowly, looking steadfastly into the fire, as if
she saw in the wavering flame some reflection of another fire on another
hearthstone.
"How good it is!" she said at last, putting her cup down. "How
dreadfully good it is--the coffee and the fire, and the quiet room, and
to be dry and warm and clean! How good it all is! And how little I
thought of them when I had all these things!"
She got up and looked at a water-colour over the low mantelpiece.
"Madeira, isn't it?" she said. "I seem to remember that peculiar effect
of the vivid purple of the Bougainvillea against the dim, cloudy purple
of the hills behind."
"It is Madeira," I said. "I was there ten years ago. Perhaps you have
read my little book, 'Beside the Bougainvillea'?"
"My husband died there," she said, looking fixedly at the drawing. "He
died just before sunrise, and when it was over I remember looking out
across the sea, past the great English man-of-war in the harbour, to
those three little islands--I forget their names--and as the first level
rays touched them, the islands and the ship all seemed to melt into
half-transparent amethyst in a sea of glass, beneath a sky of glass. How
calm the sea was--hardly a ripple! I felt that even he, weak as he was,
could walk upon it. It was like daybreak in heaven, not on earth. And
his long martyrdom was over. It seemed as if we were both safe home at
last."
"Had he been ill long?"
"A long time. He suffered terribly. And I gave him morphia under the
doctor's directions. And then, when he was gone--not at first, but after
a little bit--I took morphia myself, to numb my own anguish and to get a
little sleep. I thought I should go mad if I could not get any sleep. I
had better have gone mad. But I took morphia instead, and sealed my own
doom. But how can you tell whether I am speaking the truth? Well, it
doesn't matter if you don't believe me. I am accustomed to it. I am
never believed now. And I don't care if I'm not. I don't deserve to be.
But I suppose you can see that I was not always a tramp on the highway.
And, at any rate, that is what I am now, and what I shall remain, unless
I drift into prison again, which God forbid, for I should suffocate in a
cell after the life in the open air which I am accustomed to."
She shivered a little, as if she who seemed devoid of fear quailed at
the remembrance of her cell.
"You are wondering how I have fallen so low," she said. "Do you remember
Kipling's lines--
"We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung?
"Well, I have known what it is to drop down the ladder of life,
clinging convulsively to each rung in turn, losing hold of it, and being
caught back by compassionate hands, only to let go of it again; fighting
desperately to hold on to the next rung when I was thrust from the one
above it; having my hands beaten from each rung, one after another, one
after another, sinking lower and lower yet, cling as I would, pray as I
would, repent as I would."
"Who beat your hands from the rungs?" I said.
"Morphia," she replied.
There was a long silence.
"Morphia, that was the beginning and the middle and the end of my
misfortunes," she said. "What did I do that gradually lost me my
friends?--and I had such good friends, even after my best friend my
sister died. What did I do that ruined me by inches? In Australia I have
heard of evil men taken red-handed being left in the bush with food and
water by them, bound to a fallen tree which has been set on fire at one
end. And the fire smoulders and smoulders, and travels inch by inch
along the trunk, and they watch their slow, inevitable death coming
towards them day by day, until it at last destroys them also inch by
inch. What had I done that I should find myself bound like those poor
wretches? I cannot tell you. Morphia wipes out the memory as surely as
drink. I only know that I was in torment. Faces, familiar and strange
faces, some compassionate, some indignant, some horror-struck, come back
to me sometimes, blurred as by smoke, but I see nothing clearly. I dimly
remember fragments of appeals that were made to me, fragments of divine
music in cathedrals where I sobbed my heart out. Broken, splintered,
devastating memories of promises made in bitter tears, and endless lies
and subterfuges to conceal what I could not conceal. For morphia looks
out of the eyes of its victim. I knew that, but I thought no one could
see it in mine, that I could hide it. And I have one vivid recollection
of a quiet room with flowers in it, and latticed windows, but I don't
know where it was or how I came there, or who were the people in it who
spoke to me. There was a tall woman with grey parted hair in a lilac
gown. I can see her now. And I swore before God that I had left off the
drug. And some one standing behind me took the little infernal machine
out of my pocket, and I was confronted with it. And the tall woman wrung
her hands and groaned. How I hated her! And in my madness I accused her
of putting it there to ruin me. And some one (a man) said slowly, 'She
is impossible!--quite impossible!' That one memory stands out like a
little oasis in a desert of mirage and shifting sand, and thirst. I
should know the room again if I saw it. There was a window opening into
a little paved courtyard with a fountain in it, and doves drinking. But
I shall never see it again. And the drug became alive like a fiend, and
pushed me lower and lower, down, always down, until I did something
dreadful, I don't know now exactly what it was, though the prison
chaplain explained it to me. But it was about a cheque, and I was
convicted and sent to prison."
"Then you have been in prison _twice_?" I said, anxious to make it easy
for her to be entirely truthful, for I could not doubt the truth of much
of this earlier history.
She did not seem to hear me.
"There is no crime," she went on, "however black, that I did not expiate
then. If suffering can wash out sins, I washed out mine. I, who thought
I had so many enemies, have no enemy. No one has ever injured me. But if
I had the cruellest in the world, I would not condemn him, if he were a
morphia maniac, to sudden enforced abstinence and prison life. And I
could not die. I am very strong by nature. I could neither die nor live.
It was months before I saw light, months of hell, consumed in the flame
of hell which is thirst. And slowly the power to live came back to me. I
was saved in spite of myself. And slowly the power of thought returned
to me. I had time to think. My mind drifted and drifted, but I got
control of it now and again, and then for longer intervals, as my poor
body reasserted itself from the slavery of the drug. And I thought--I
thought--I thought. And at last I made up my mind, my fierce, embittered
mind. And when I came out of prison, I took to the road. Even then there
were those who would have helped me, but I steeled my heart against
them. There was a strange woman with a sweet face waiting at the prison
door, who spoke kindly to me. But I distrusted her. I distrusted every
one. And I did not mean to be helped any more. I had been helped time
and time again. To be helped was to be put where I could get morphia,
where I had something, if it was only my clothes, which I could sell to
get it, where I could _steal_ things to sell to get it. If I had any
possessions, I knew that some day--not for a time perhaps, but some
day--I should sell it and get morphia somehow. They say you can't buy
it, but you can. I always could in the past, and I knew I always should
in the future. But on the road, in rags, a tramp, down in the dust, in
the safe refuge of the dust--there it was not possible. There I was out
of temptation. There I could not be burned in that flame again. That was
all I thought of, to creep away where the fire could not reach me. And I
felt sure I should not live long. In my ignorance I thought the exposure
to all weathers, and privation, and the first frost of winter would
bring me my release quickly. But they did not. They gave me new life
instead. I came out in spring, and I begged my way to Abinger Forest,
and nearly starved there; but I did not mind. Have you ever been in
Abinger Forest in the spring when the wortleberry is out? Can the
Elysian fields of Asphodel be more beautiful? Perhaps to others they
might seem so; but not to me. My first glimpse of hope came to me in the
woods at Abinger in a windless, sunny week at Easter. The gipsies gave
me food once or twice. And I ate the scraps that the trippers left after
their picnics at the top of Leith Hill where the tower is. And I lay in
the sun by day and I slept in a stack of bracken by night, and my
strained life relaxed. And I, who had become so hard and bitter, saw at
last what endless love and compassion had been vainly lavished on me,
and I was humbled. I had somehow got it rooted into my warped mind that
I had been cruelly treated, betrayed, abandoned by my friends, by every
one. I had tried hard to forgive them, but I could not. I saw at last
that it was I who had been cruel, I who had betrayed, I who needed
forgiveness; and I asked it of the only Friend I had left, the only
Friend Who never forsakes us. And peace came back and the deep wound in
my life healed. It seemed as if Nature, who had forgotten me for so
long, had pity on me, and took me again to her heart. For I had loved
her years ago, before my husband died.
"When the weather broke, I took to the road, and the road has given me
back my health, and much more than health. I can see beauty again now.
And there is always beauty in the hedgerow; and wherever the road runs
there is beauty. In the open down, beside the tidal rivers with their
brown sails creeping among the buttercups, everywhere there is beauty.
And I can sleep again now. I learnt how to sleep at Abinger. I had
forgotten how it was done without morphia. O God! I can sleep, every
night, anywhere. It's worth being a tramp for that alone, to be able to
sleep naturally, to know in the daytime that you will have it at night,
and then to lie down and feel it stealing over you like the blessing of
God. I used to wake myself at first for sheer joy when it was coming.
And then to nestle down, and sink into it, down, down into it, till one
reaches the great peace. And no more wakings in torment as the drug
passes off, waking as in some iron grave, unable to stir hand or foot,
unable to beat back the suffocating horror and terror which lies cheek
to cheek with us. No more wakings in hell. No more mornings like that.
But instead, the cool, sweet waking in the crystal light in the open
air. And to see the sun come up, and to lie still against the clean,
fragrant haystack and let it warm you! And to watch the quiet, friendly
beasts rise up in the long meadows! And to wake hungry, instead of that
dreadful, maddening thirst! And to _like_ to eat--how good that is, even
if you go fasting half the day! But I never do. The poor will always
give you enough to eat. It hurts them to see any one hungry. Yes, I have
dropped down the ladder rung by rung, and now I have reached the lowest
rung. And it is a good place, the only safe place for wastrels such as
I, the only refuge from my enemy. There is peace on the lowest rung. I
can do no more harm there, and I have done so much. I was ambitious
once, I was admired and clever once; but I found no abiding city
anywhere. Temptation lurked everywhere. I was driven like chaff before
the wind.... But now I have the road. No one will take the road from me
while I live, or the ditch beside it to die in when my time comes. I am
provided for at last. I lead a clean life at last."
She sat silent, her dreamy eyes fixed, her thin hands folded one over
the other. I looked at her with an aching heart. What strange mixture
of truth and lies was all this! But I said nothing. What was the use?
And as we sat silent beside the dying fire the great inequality between
us pressed hard upon me: I, by no special virtue of my own, God knows!
on one of the uppermost rungs of life. She poor soul--poor soul--on the
lowest.
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed eleven.
She started slightly, looked at it, and then at me, as if uncertain of
her surroundings, and the shrewd, sardonic look came back to her face.
"I am keeping you up," she said, rising. "I think your strong coffee has
gone to my head. This outburst of autobiography is a poor return for all
your kindness. I had no idea it was so late or that I could be so
garrulous, and I must make a very early start to-morrow. Shall I go into
the kitchen and put on my own clothes again? They must be quite dry by
now."
"Oh! let me help you," I said impulsively. "Let me get you into a Home,
or help you to emigrate. Don't go back to this wandering, aimless life.
Work for others, interest in others, that is what _you_ need, what _I_
need, what we _all_ need to take us out of ourselves, to make us forget
our own misery."
"I have half forgotten mine already," she said. "To-night I remembered
it again. But I have long since put it from my mind. I think the moment
for a change of clothing in the kitchen has arrived."
She spoke quietly, but as if her last word were final. I found it
impossible to continue the subject.
"You will never escape in those clothes," I said. "You haven't the ghost
of a chance. If you will come into my room, I will see what I can find
for you."
I had been willing to do much more than give her clothes, but I
instinctively felt that my appeal to her better feelings had fallen on
deaf ears.
She followed me to my bedroom, and I got out all my oldest clothes and
spread them before her. But she would have none of them.
"The worst look like an ultra-respectable district visitor," she said,
tossing aside one garment after another. It was the more curious that
she should say that because my brother-in-law had always said I looked
like one, and that my books even had a parochial flavour about them. But
then he had never really studied them, or he would have seen their
lighter side.
"I had no idea pockets were worn in a little slit in the front seam,"
said my visitor. "It shows how long it is since I have been 'in the
know.' No doubt front pockets came in with the bicycles. No. It is very
kind of you. But, except for that old dyed moreen petticoat, the things
won't do. I always was particular about dress, and I never was more so
than I am at this moment. You don't happen to have an old black ulster
with all the buttons off, and a bit of mangy fur dropping off the neck?
That's more my style. But of course you haven't."
"I had one once of that kind; it was so bad that I could not even give
it away. So I put it in the dog's basket. Lindo used to sleep on it. He
loved it, poor dear! It may be there still."
We went downstairs again, and I pulled Lindo's basket out from under the
stairs.
The old black wrap was still in it, but it was mildewy and stuck to the
basket. It tore as I released it. It reminded me painfully of my lost
darling.
"The very thing!" she said, with enthusiasm, as the dilapidated travesty
of a coat shook itself free. "Quiet and unobtrusive to the last degree.
Parisian in colour and simplicity. And mole colour is so becoming. Can
you really spare it? Then with the moreen petticoat I am provided,
equipped."
We went back to the kitchen again.
"What will you do with them?" I said, pointing to her convict clothes
which had dried perfectly stiff, owing to the amount of mud on them. How
such quantities of mud could have got on to them was a mystery to me.
"It certainly does not improve one's clothes, to hide in a wet ditch in
a ploughed field," she said meditatively. "I will dispose of them early
to-morrow morning. I picked a place as I found my way here."
"Not on _my_ premises?" I said anxiously.
"Of course not. Do you take me for a monster of ingratitude? I'll manage
that all right."
I suddenly remembered that she must have food to take with her. I went
to the larder, and when I came back I looked at her with renewed
amazement.
My dressing-gown and slippers were laid carefully on a chair. The
astonishing woman was a tramp once more, squatting on the brick floor,
drawing on to her bare feet the shapeless excuses for boots which had
been toasting before the fire.
Then she leaned over the hearth, rubbed her hands in the ashes, and
passed them gently over her face, her neck, her wrists and ankles. She
drew forward and tangled her hair before the kitchen glass. Then she
rolled up her convict clothes into a compact bundle, wiped her right
hand carefully on the kitchen towel, and held it out to me.
"Remember," I said gravely, taking it in both of mine and pressing it,
"if ever you are in need of a friend, you know to whom to apply. Marion
Dalrymple, Rufford, will always find me."
I thought I ought not to let her go away without letting her know who I
was. But my name seemed to have no especial meaning for her. Perhaps she
had lived beyond the pale too long.
"You have indeed been a friend to me," she said. "God bless you, you
good Samaritan! May the world go well with you! Good-night, and thank
you, and good-bye. If you'll give me the stable key, I'll let myself in.
It's a pity you should come out; its raining again. And I'll leave the
stable locked when I go. And the key will be in the lavender bush at the
door. Good-bye again."
* * * * *
I did not sleep that night, and in the morning I was so tired that I
made no attempt to work. I had, of course, stolen out before six to
retrieve the stable key from the lavender bush, and hang it on its
accustomed nail. I looked into the stable first. My guest had departed.
I spent an idle morning musing on the events of the previous evening, if
time thus spent can be called idling. It may seem so to others, but in
my own experience these apparently profitless hours are often more
fruitful than those spent in belabouring the brain to a forced activity.
But then I have always preferred to remain, as the great Molinos
advises, a learner rather than a teacher in the school of life. Early in
the afternoon, as I was on my way to the post-office, my landlord, Mr.
Ledbury, met me. He looked excited, an open telegram in his hand.
"Have you heard about the escaped convict?" he said. "She has been
taken. She was traced to Bronsal Heath yesterday, and run to earth this
morning at Framlingham."
He turned and walked with me. He was too much taken up with the news to
notice how I started and how my colour changed. But indeed I flush and
turn pale at nothing. All my life it has been a vexation to me that a
chance word or allusion should bring the colour to my cheek.
"Poor soul!" he said. "I could almost wish she had made good her escape.
She got out, Heaven alone knows how, to see her child, which she had
heard was ill. But the ground she must have covered in the time! She was
absolutely dead beat when she was taken. And she was not in her prison
clothes. That is so inexplicable. How she got others she alone knows.
Some one must have befriended her, and given them to her--some one very
poor, for she was miserably clad, and the extraordinary thing is that
though she was traced to the deserted cottage on the heath yesterday,
and taken at Framlingham to-day, her prison clothes were found hidden in
my wood-yard, _here_ in my wood-yard, by Zack when he went to his work.
And this place is not on the way to Framlingham. How in the name of
fortune could she have hidden her clothes _here_?"
"She must have wandered here in the dark," I suggested.
"I don't understand it," he said, turning in at his own gate. "But
anyhow, the poor thing has been caught."
* * * * *
My story should end here. Indeed, to my mind it does end here. And if I
have been persuaded by my family to add a few more lines on the subject,
it is sorely against the grain and against my artistic sense. And I am
conscious that I have been unwise in allowing myself to be over-ruled by
those who have not given their lives to literature as I have done, and
who therefore cannot judge as I can when a story should be brought to a
close.
I need hardly say that I often thought of my unhappy visitant, often
wondered how she was getting on. A year later I was staying with a
friend in Ipswich who was a visitor at the prison there, and I
remembered how it was to Ipswich she had been brought back, and I asked
to see her. My friend knew her, and told me that she had made no further
attempt to escape, and that she believed the child was dead. It had been
an old promise that she would one day take me over the prison. I claimed
it, and begged that I might be allowed to have a few words with that
particular inmate. It was not according to the regulations, but my
friend was a privileged person. That afternoon I passed with her under
that dreary portal, and after walking along interminable white-washed
passages, and past how many locked and numbered doors, my friend
whispered to a warder, who motioned me to a cell.
A woman was sitting on her bed with her head in her hands.
"You have not forgotten me, I hope," I said gently. It may be weak, but
I have never been able to speak ungently to any one in trouble, whatever
the cause may be. I have known too much trouble myself.
She raised her head slowly, pushed back her hair, and looked at me.