When Oliver left his rooms on that terrible night, it could scarcely be
said that he was a sane man. The strange, confused tinkling and pealing
of the bell had seemed to him a supernatural call. When he had come to
himself a little, out of the strange, wild fit of ridicule of himself
and his pitiful intention of escaping from fate, which had overcome him,
he had risen mechanically and gone to the door. When he found no one,
the impulse of half-mad derision seized him again. It was as if he had
gone through every possibility of the anguish and misery that were real,
and had come out on the other side where all is distorted and
fantastic, and nothing true; where there were voices without persons,
calls, and jarring summonses that meant nothing, a chaos of delusion and
self-deceit, in which fever and shattered nerves and reverberations out
of a diseased brain were the only elements, and every impression was
fictitious, ridiculous, mad and false. He went out without knowing what
he was doing, the echoes of the pistol-shot circling through his head,
and moving him again and again to wild laughter: to think that he should
have found himself out so! that he was such a poor creature after all,
capable of running away, not good enough to stand and be executed, which
was his just due. Was it to be executed that he feared, or to be
banished, or put in prison, tied, yes, that was it--tied to a dead body,
as other men had been before him? Whatever it was, he had not been man
enough to bear his punishment, but had tried to run away. And then he
had been frightened, and failed.
By this time he had forgotten altogether what expedient he had intended
to adopt to make his escape by, and the report, which still echoed
through his head, seemed to him rather the punishment he was attempting
to escape from than the means of escape. But anyhow he was running away,
and was afraid to do it. He was running away and could not do it. He was
somehow caught by the foot, so that all his running and walking were
vain, and he was only making circles about the fatal spot in which the
executioner was waiting for him--steadily, patiently waiting--until the
meshes should be drawn tighter and he should be brought back. The bell
continued to peal in his brain, a mocking summons, and the report of the
pistol to break in at intervals, sharp, like a refrain, bringing back
more or less the first effect of re-awakening, but not to reality, only
to that ever-renewed derision of his own efforts to get away. The fool
that he was! How could he escape with the bands ever tightening,
tightening about his feet, as he kept on in his vain round, back and
back in circles that lessened, every round leading nearer and nearer to
the spot where Fate awaited him, grimly looking on at his vain
struggles, laughing in that fierce ridicule which he re-echoed though he
carried on those sickening efforts still?
He must have carried out in reality the miserable confusion in his
brain, for it seemed afterwards that he had done nothing but go round
and round a circle of streets and lanes, surrounding the point where his
chambers were, and where he was seen by various people, appearing and
reappearing, always at a very rapid pace, through the lingering darkness
of the night. After a while, in all probability, recollection failed
him, for his horrible sensations seemed to fade into a dull, fatigued
consciousness of circling and winding, of always the band on his ankles
tightening, drawing him nearer; but no longer any clear idea of what
was the impending doom, from which only this perpetual movement, this
effort to keep on, saved him for a time. Finally, when daylight had
come, surprising and alarming him back into some effort of intelligence,
he found himself at the door of his club, where the servants were but
beginning to open the shutters, to sweep and clean out, in preparation
for the day. He crept in there somehow as a dog might creep into a barn,
or take refuge in an empty kennel, and threw himself shivering into an
easy-chair, and had a cup of coffee brought him by a compassionate
waiter, who saw that he had been up all night. The same kind hands
covered him up when he began in his exhaustion to doze. And there he lay
and slept through all the early morning hours, while still there was
nobody to comment upon his appearance or to disturb him. The servants of
the club chattered indeed among themselves; they shook their heads, and
said he had been up to something or other as he hadn’t ought to. They
suggested to each other that he had been in bad company, that he had
been drugged, which was the most likely thing to account for his dazed
appearance. But he lay and slept through it all, unconscious in the
profound sleep of entire exhaustion. Most likely it was that exhaustion
and the constant physical movement and keen air of the night which saved
his brain after all.
He woke at about eleven o’clock, having slept four or five hours,
shivering with a nervous chill, and in all the bodily misery of a man
who has slept in his clothes on a chair, cramped and wretched; but yet
in full possession of his senses, and knowing everything that had
happened. It all came back to him slowly, the standing trouble first,
the horror of those circumstances in which he was involved, the awful
question what he was to do: how live and endure his existence since he
could not abandon it? He asked himself the question almost before he
remembered that he had intended to abandon it. And then the scene of
last evening slowly rolled back upon him like a scene in a tragedy, the
crack of the pistol, the violent jarring and jingling of the bell. He
could not have dreamt or imagined the bell: it must have meant some
messenger or other, someone bringing him news. What news could any
messenger be bringing? Nothing but one piece of news. Nothing else was
worth sending now, worth the trouble of sending--his release, perhaps.
Oh, Heaven! if that might be!
Oliver got up quickly in the sudden gleam of possibility thus presented
to him. It aroused him from the torpor of sleep and wretchedness and
exhaustion. But afterwards he dropped heavily into his chair again,
shaking his head, saying to himself that it was impossible, that release
did not come to a man so placed as he was, that he had no right to
release. And then it occurred to him that the messenger might return and
find the door open and go in, and that his letter lay on the table, the
letter addressed to his brother-in-law with its confession. By this
time, then, it would be in their hands and all would be known. When that
thought entered his mind, he rose from his chair, not impetuously, but
in the calm of despair: ah, that was best! that everything should be
known. It was all over then. Whatever might happen, Grace was lost to
him for ever. Whatever might happen, his own life and its hopes were
over, without any possibility of redemption. ‘So be it,’ he said to
himself, bowing his head almost solemnly: ‘so be it.’ What else was
possible? He would at least have discharged the dreadful duty of cutting
himself off, and leaving her free.
This was his real awakening--which was, though the May morning was so
bright, an awakening into the blackness and darkness, into the quiet of
despair--no possibility now, no hope, all over and ended for ever and
ever. He took his hat and walked out without a word, without a thought
of his appearance, in the fresh daylight, in the open street, unshaven,
unkempt, miserable, with a misery which no one could mistake. How he
appeared was no longer anything to him. He saw nobody, took notice of
nothing. He might have been walking through a desert as he made his way
through some of the busiest streets of London, full of traffic and
commotion, and never saw one of the people who stared at the man who
seemed a gentleman, and yet had such an air of haggard misery, a
wanderer who had been out all night; nothing of this did Oliver see. He
went doggedly to give himself up to justice--no, that was the part of
the last night’s dream: but, at least, to meet at last whatever might be
coming to him, to ascertain that his letter had been sent away and that
all was over. Everything was over, in any case; but it would all be more
evident, more certain, if the letter had been sent away.
He went up his own staircase and came to his own door with nothing but
this in his mind. The recollection of the bell, of the possible
messenger who could not get admission, of the news of his release which
might have come, all faded out of his mind. If that letter had been
sent, it did not matter whether he was released or not: now or
hereafter, what could it matter? so long as that letter had been sent.
Then indeed his tale would be told, his shrift over, his fate sealed. He
heard voices vaguely as he approached the room, but took no notice. What
did it matter who was there so long as the letter had been sent? He
stalked in like a ghost, his eyes fixed upon the table which seemed to
him as he had left it--all but one thing.--Yes, redemption had become
impossible and hope was over. The letter had gone.
‘Oliver!’ said a voice, whether in a dream, whether in fact, whether out
of the skies, whether only sounding in the depths of his miserable
heart, how could he tell? He turned round towards it slowly, pale,
trembling, a man for whom hope was no more. And there she stood before
him, she who had been to him as an angel, whom he had seemed to abandon,
insult and betray. It seemed so; and never, perhaps, never would it be
known how different--how different! He could not bear the sight of the
brightness of her face. There was light in it that seemed to kill him;
he put up his hands to cover his eyes, and shrank back, back, until, his
limbs tottering under him, his heart failing him, he had sunk unawares
upon his knees. Oh, the brightness of the presence of outraged love,
more terrible than wrath! Is it not from that, that at the last the
sinner, self-convicted, will flee?
‘Do not speak to me,’ he said, his voice sounding like some stranger’s
voice in his own ears. ‘I know all you would say. And there is no
excuse, no excuse.’
‘Oliver! you have no excuse for not trusting me. I was worthy of your
trust. Should I not have chosen for you to do first what was right?’
It seemed to him that once more his brain was giving way; he felt a
horrible impulse to laugh out again at the mockery of this speech.
Right! there was nothing right! What had it to do with him, a man all
wrong, wrong, out of life, out of hope--that there should still be some
one left in the world to whom that word meant something? He uncovered
his face, however, and looked up at her from out the humiliation of
despair. And then he began to see that there were other people in the
room, his sister, his brother-in-law, looking on at the spectacle of his
downfall. He rose up slowly to his feet, supporting himself against the
wall.
‘I am in great distress,’ he said; ‘I am not able to speak. Ford, will
you take them away?’
Ford, who was only a man, nobody in particular, gave him a certain
sense of protection in the poignancy of the presence of the others,
before whom he could not stand or speak.
‘Oliver, old fellow, you needn’t look so miserable; they wouldn’t go,
they know everything, they’ve got--news for you. I say they’ve got news
for you.’
‘Oh, Tom, God bless you! you have a feeling heart after all. Oliver, it
is all over--’
‘Oliver,’ Grace put out her warm hands and took his, which were
trembling with an almost palsy of cold; ‘I should have understood, for
you told me long ago--you told me there were things I would not
understand. But now I do understand. And all that you have done I
approve. I do not forgive you--I approve.’
He drew back ever further, shrinking against the wall. ‘I was mad last
night,’ he said, ‘and it was horrible: and now I must be going mad
again--and this is horrible too, but it is sweet--’
‘Oh, it is horrible,’ cried Grace, with tears; ‘for it comes out of
misery and mourning. Oliver, that poor girl--that poor girl, she is
dead.’
He fell down once more at her feet, with a great and terrible cry, and
fainted like a woman--out of misery, and remorse, and relief, and
anguish, and joy, and by reason too, since the body and the soul are so
linked together--of his sleepless nights and miserable days.
He told her all afterwards, in those subdued and troubled days when
happiness was still struggling to come back. But Grace would never see
it as he did. To her it was an atonement, an almost martyrdom. She could
not understand those deeper depths of evil in which sin is taken
lightly, and called pleasure, and is but for a day. She could understand
passion and the deadly harm it wrought, and how life itself might be
laid down in the desire to atone. He held his peace at last, bewildered
by the dulness of that innocence which could not so much as imagine what
he knew. And happiness did struggle back through depths of humiliation
and shame to him, with which she was never acquainted. She did not
suffer, not having sinned; and he was still young. And after awhile the
hideous dream through which he passed faded away, and even Oliver
remembered it no more.
THE END.