The trial then was over. And it seemed indeed that before very long
Philip Meadowes’ life too would be over. He who had laughed at
imprisonment and laughed at trial could laugh no longer; he was forced
to believe at last that the world held him to be a murderer, and that as
such he must die. But even sitting in his cell, a man under sentence of
death, Philip could not realise it. This the end of him? this, this,
this? It was frankly impossible that this could be the end of Philip
Meadowes and all his ambitions! of the beautiful life he and Carrie had
meant to live together, of that passion clean and hot as flame that
burned between them! Impossible! impossible!
And then, even above this cry of the heart, rose that keener note of
anguish, that supreme utterance of the soul, the terror of unfulfilment.
It lurks in every man, this protest of vitality against encompassing and
ever encroaching mortality, and has its roots in life itself. With most
men the feeling is quite unformulated and vague. ‘They would not like to
be altogether forgotten’ is about all that it amounts to, and the fear,
such as it is, finds ready cure in the laws of their being; having given
hostages to Fortune they have no further dread that their memory will
perish—the next generation will carry it on. But with another type of
man the case is very different; for though the child of his body may be
dearer to him than his own flesh, the child of the soul will be dearer
yet.
It is this law of aspiration, effort, what you will, that moves on our
world at all; for though it is not written that one man in a thousand
shall influence the race, or one in a million leave an undying memory,
yet it is written that every man, though half of them unknowingly, shall
strive after some star, and some even shall succeed. And these myriads
of agonising atoms form a great aggregate of achievement out of all
proportion to their puny individual efforts, and slowly push the world
on in its destined course.
Something of all this came over Philip now; above all his memories of
this dear, warm, wooing world, that had so loved and courted him, came
the agonising thought, ‘I am virtually dead; I must depart, _leaving
nothing behind_.’ With extraordinary vividness of sensation he had
lived; life had appeared to him as a long feast of rich and varied good
things to which he had sat him down gaily. Some day he had thought to
rise from it, gird on his armour, and go forth to some stirring and
valorous enterprise; he had never decided what the enterprise would be,
but trusted that the kind and bountiful Giver of life’s banquet would
provide his children with work when they had feasted long enough. Now
all these vague dreams of the future came down like a house of cards: he
stood face to face with death, his work undone.
This was the thought which eclipsed every other as these strange days
rolled on, each of them it seemed an eternity for length, each of them
bringing Phil nearer and nearer to the gallows. The very gaolers pitied
Philip for his youth and beauty; but they pitied Carrie more that day
she obtained entrance to Newgate and a half-hour’s interview with her
husband.
Phil sat, as he always sat then, his eyes fixed on the floor, his chin
resting on his hands. He did not even look up as the door was unlocked,
but said merely, ‘Lay it down, gaoler; I have little appetite these
days,’ thinking his food had been brought in. Then with a cry,
inarticulate, between joy and agony, Carrie ran towards him. Phil did
not stir nor speak, and Carrie knelt down beside him, and buried her
face against his shoulder, sobbing. He passed his arm round her, but
still he did not speak.
‘O Phil! my darling, my joy, why can you not speak to me?’ cried Carrie.
She took his hand in hers, and held it to her heart, kissing it and
crying over it; but Phil was silent.
When he raised his eyes from the ground at last and looked at her,
Carrie started, such a grave new look there was in them, and all the
shine seemed to have gone from them.
‘What will you do, Carrie?’ he said suddenly. They were the first words
he uttered. ‘Do you think your father will forgive you when you are left
alone? will take you back to his home and care for you?’
‘Don’t! don’t!’ cried Carrie; but Phil went on—
‘I shall be hanged on the 12th of next month, Carrie; there’s no chance
of a reprieve, they’ve tried for it in vain, the facts are too strong
against me. I wish ’twere sooner, even for your sake, my poor darling.
You’ll dream of me being hanged each night twice over ere then.’
Carrie put her fingers in her ears. ‘Stop, Phil! for Heaven’s sake do
not say these things,’ she cried; ‘they cannot kill you. Have you
stopped speaking now? May I take my fingers from my ears?’
‘Yes,’ laughed Philip. ‘Come, Carrie, tell me, have you no doubt of your
husband these days when all the world calls him a murderer?’
‘Phil!’
‘Well, what do you make of it all—all this evidence?’
‘How did it happen?’ asked innocent Carrie.
‘I fear you know as much as I do. Prior did it, I fancy; took off his
shoes and followed my father and killed him—that’s all I can think, but
there’s not a ghost of fact to go to prove this. They had not even
quarrelled, to my knowledge at least.’
‘O Phil! don’t look like that! Oh, you are not a boy any longer,’ said
Carrie, for she had caught the strange new expression of his eyes again
as he spoke.
‘I have been a boy too long,’ said Philip; he shook his head and smiled
at Carrie as if she were a child; ‘and now I have grown old in a
night—like Jack’s bean-stalk. Come and let me speak all my discontent
to my love, and years after this she will remember, and will credit me
with all I wished to do rather than all I left undone.’
Carrie looked up wonderingly, and Philip spoke on—
‘Oh, that’s the bitterness, Carrie; it’s not a shameful death, or
leaving the happy world even—and hasn’t it been happy! No; I’d stand
that if I left anything behind. But just to go out like a
candle—phew!’—he blew into the air as if at a flame,—‘bright one
minute, snuffed out the next. ’Tis ghastly. I cannot realise, it,
Carrie; I won’t—I won’t, ’tis miserable injustice.’
Phil rose and paced about the cell for a moment, then he came and sat
down beside Carrie again, and took her hand in his.
‘You don’t understand, you know, my heart,’ he said with something of
his old lightness for a moment; ‘for I scarce think you ever felt thus.
You now, if you were to die along with me, would not feel a pang, I
believe.’
‘No, indeed, Phil; I should die gladly with you,’ said Carrie,
mystified.
‘Ah, there’s the rub. I cannot die, Carrie; my personality cries out so
loud against extinction ere it hath fulfilled itself. Foolish, vain
talk; but I’ve thought of no other thing night and day since they passed
sentence on me, except of you.’
Carrie, you know, was of another clay; she sat and looked at Phil with
such a puzzled air that he fairly laughed aloud, and his ringing laugh
struck strangely on the walls of Newgate. The poor old walls had heard
many a groan, but so few laughs that the sound was scarcely recognised!
‘Did I puzzle her dear brains with nonsense?’ he said, taking Carrie’s
face between his hands and kissing her. ‘Carrie, our jesting days are
over, and sweet, sweet they’ve been for all their shortness.’
‘O Phil, they cannot be over,’ said Carrie; she was only twenty, poor
child, an age that has little realisation.
‘Carrie, you must believe this,’ said her husband—he looked into her
eyes as he spoke, and let his words fall slowly,—‘I shall be both dead
and buried this day next month—dead and buried, Carrie, and you will be
a widow. You must face this, must talk with me of what you are to do
afterwards.’ But Carrie would only shudder and hide her face in her
hands. Phil spoke on—a curious task to set his eloquence this—telling
her unflinchingly all that would be, explaining, describing, till Carrie
whitened and clutched his hand more tightly than ever.
‘Stop, Phil,’ she said, in a little choked whisper, ‘I believe it now.’
Then with a rattle of the bolts the door fell open, and the gaoler
silently signed to Carrie that she must say her farewells.
‘I shall be allowed to see you once again, Phil,’ she whispered, before
she turned away.
Carrie’s coach had been waiting for her at the prison gate all this
time. And when she came out, Peter stepped forward to assist her. Carrie
got in, and then sat staring before her in a bewildered fashion.
‘Shall we drive home, madam?’ asks Peter, his voice very husky.
‘To——. Yes—to my father’s,’ said Carrie.