There existed in the House of Preventive Detention a system of
communication between the luckless prisoners carried on by means of
tapping on the wall. Sigismund, being a clever fellow, had become a
great adept at this telegraphic system, and had struck up a friendship
with a young student in the next cell; this poor fellow had been
imprisoned three years, his sole offence being that he had in his
possession a book of which the Government did not approve, and that he
was first cousin to a well-known Nihilist.
The two became as devoted to each other as Silvio Pellico and Count
Oroboni; but it soon became evident to Valerian Vasilowitch that, unless
Zaluski was released, he would soon succumb to the terrible restrictions
of prison life.
"Keep up your heart, my friend," he used to say. "I have borne it three
years, and am still alive to tell the tale."
"But you are stronger both in mind and body," said Sigismund; "and you
are not madly in love as I am."
And then he would pour forth a rhapsody about Gertrude, and about English
life, and about his hopes and fears for the future; to all of which
Valerian, like the brave fellow he was, replied with words of
encouragement.
But at length there came a day when his friend made no answer to his
usual morning greeting.
"Are you ill?" he asked.
For some time there was no reply, but after a while Sigismund rapped
faintly the despairing words:--
"Dead beat!"
Valerian felt the tears start to his eyes. It was what he had all along
expected, and for a time grief and indignation and his miserable
helplessness made him almost beside himself. At last he remembered that
there was at least one thing in his power. Each day he was escorted by a
warder to a tiny square, walled off in the exercising ground, and was
allowed to walk for a few minutes; he would take this opportunity of
begging the warder to get the doctor for his friend.
But unfortunately the doctor did not think very seriously of Zaluski's
case. In that dreary prison he had patients in the last stages of all
kinds of disease, and Sigismund, who had been in confinement too short a
time to look as ill as the others, did not receive much attention.
Certainly, the doctor admitted, his lungs were affected; probably the
sudden change of climate and the lack of good food and fresh air had been
too much for him; so the solemn farce ended, and he was left to his fate.
"If I were indeed a Nihilist, and suffered for a cause which I had at
heart," he telegraphed to Valerian, "I could bear it better. But to be
kept here for an imaginary offence, to bear cold and hunger and illness
all to no purpose--that beats me. There can't be a God, or such things
would not be allowed."
"To me it seems," said Valerian, "that we are the victims of violated
law. Others have shown tyranny, or injustice, or cruelty, and we are the
victims of their sin. Don't say there is no God. There must be a God to
avenge such hideous wrong."
So they spoke to each other through their prison wall as men in the free
outer world seldom care to speak; and I, who knew no barriers, looked now
on Valerian's gaunt figure, and brave but prematurely old face, now on
poor Zaluski, who, in his weary imprisonment, had wasted away till one
could scarcely believe that he was indeed the same lithe, active fellow
who had played tennis at Mrs. Courtenay's garden-party.
Day and night Valerian listened to the terrible cough which came from the
adjoining cell. It became perfectly apparent to him that his friend was
dying; he knew it as well as if he had seen the burning hectic flush on
his hollow cheeks, and heard the panting, hurried breaths, and watched
the unnatural brilliancy of his dark eyes.
At length he thought the time had come for another sort of comfort.
"My friend," he said one day, "it is too plain to me now that you are
dying. Write to the procurator and tell him so. In some cases men have
been allowed to go home to die."
A wild hope seized on poor Sigismund; he sat down to the little table in
his cell and wrote a letter to the procurator--a letter which might
almost have drawn tears from a flint. Again and again he passionately
asserted his innocence, and begged to know on what evidence he was
imprisoned. He began to think that he could die content if he might
leave this terrible cell, might be a free agent once more, if only for a
few days. At least he might in that case clear his character, and
convince Gertrude that his imprisonment had been all a hideous mistake;
nay, he fancied that he might live through a journey to England and see
her once again.
But the procurator would not let him be set free, and refused to believe
that his case was really a serious one.
Sigismund's last hope left him.
The days and weeks dragged slowly on, and when, according to English
reckoning, New Year's Eve arrived, he could scarcely believe that only
seventeen weeks ago he had actually been with Gertrude, and that disgrace
and imprisonment had seemed things that could never come near him, and
death had been a far-away possibility, and life had been full of bliss.
As I watched him a strong desire seized me to revisit the scenes of which
he was thinking, and I winged my way back to England, and soon found
myself in the drowsy, respectable streets of Muddleton.
It was New Year's Eve, and I saw Mrs. O'Reilly preparing presents for her
grandchildren, and talking, as she tied them up, of that dreadful
Nihilist who had deceived them in the summer. I saw Lena Houghton, and
Mr. Blackthorne, and Mrs. Milton-Cleave, kneeling in church on that
Friday morning, praying that pity might be shown "upon all prisoners and
captives, and all that are desolate or oppressed."
It never occurred to them that they were responsible for the sufferings
of one weary prisoner, or that his death would be laid at their door.
I flew to Dulminster, and saw Mrs. Selldon kneeling in the cathedral at
the late evening service and rigorously examining herself as to the
shortcomings of the dying year. She confessed many things in a vague,
untroubled way; but had any one told her that she had cruelly wronged her
neighbour, and helped to bring an innocent man to shame, and prison, and
death, she would not have believed the accusation.
I sought out Mark Shrewsbury. He was at his chambers in Pump Court
working away with his type-writer; he had a fancy for working the old
year out and the new year in, and now he was in the full swing of that
novel which had suggested itself to his mind when Mrs. Selldon described
the rich and mysterious foreigner who had settled down at Ivy Cottage.
Most happily he laboured on, never dreaming that his careless words had
doomed a fellow-man to a painful and lingering death; never dreaming that
while his fingers flew to and fro over his dainty little keyboard,
describing the clever doings of the unscrupulous foreigner, another man,
the victim of his idle gossip, tapped dying messages on a dreary prison
wall.
For the end had come.
Through the evening Sigismund rested wearily on his truckle-bed. He
could not lie down because of his cough, and, since there were no extra
pillows to prop him up, he had to rest his head and shoulders against the
wall. There was a gas-burner in the tiny cell, and by its light he
looked round the bare walls of his prison with a blank, hopeless, yet
wistful gaze; there was the stool, there was the table, there were the
clothes he should never wear again, there was the door through which his
lifeless body would soon be carried. He looked at everything
lingeringly, for he knew that this desolate prison was the last bit of
the world he should ever see.
Presently the gas was turned out.
He sighed as he felt the darkness close in upon him, for he knew that his
eyes would never again see light--knew that in this dark lonely cell he
must lie and wait for death. And he was young and wished to live, and he
was in love and longed most terribly for the presence of the woman he
loved.
The awful desolateness of the cell was more than he could endure; he
tried to think of his past life, he tried to live once again through
those happy weeks with Gertrude; but always he came back to the aching
misery of the present--the cold and the pain, and the darkness and the
terrible solitude.
His nerveless fingers felt their way to the wall and faintly rapped a
summons.
"Valerian!" he said, "I shall not live through the night. Watch with
me."
The faint raps sounded clearly in the stillness of the great building,
and Valerian dreaded lest the warders should hear them, and deal out
punishment for an offence which by day they were forced to wink at.
But he would not for the world have deserted his friend. He drew his
stool close to the wall, wrapped himself round in all the clothes he
could muster, and, shivering with cold, kept watch through the long
winter night.
"I am near you," he telegraphed. "I will watch with you till morning."
From time to time Sigismund rapped faint messages, and Valerian replied
with comfort and sympathy. Once he thought to himself, "My friend is
better; there is more power in his hand." And indeed he trembled,
fearing that the sharp, emphatic raps must certainly attract notice and
put an end to their communion.
"Tell my love that the accusation was false--false!" the word was
vehemently repeated. "Tell her I died broken-hearted, loving her to the
end."
"I will tell her all when I am free," said poor Valerian, wondering with
a sigh when his unjust imprisonment would end. "Do you suffer much?" he
asked.
There was a brief interval. Sigismund hesitated to tell a falsehood in
his last extremity.
"It will soon be over. Do not be troubled for me," he replied. And
after that there was a long, long silence.
Poor fellow! he died hard; and I wished that those comfortable English
people could have been dragged from their warm beds and brought into the
cold dreary cell where their victim lay, fighting for breath, suffering
cruelly both in mind and body. Valerian, listening in sad suspense,
heard one more faint word rapped by the dying man.
"Farewell!"
"God be with you!" he replied, unable to check the tears which rained
down as he thought of the life so sadly ended, and of his own
bereavement.
He heard no more. Sigismund's strength failed him, and I, to whom the
darkness made no difference, watched him through the last dread struggle;
there was no one to raise him, or hold him, no one to comfort him. Alone
in the cold and darkness of that first morning of the year 1887, he died.
Valerian did not hear through the wall his last faint gasping cry, but I
heard it, and its exceeding bitterness would have made mortals weep.
"Gertrude!" he sobbed. "Gertrude!"
And with that his head sank on his breast, and the life, which but for me
might have been so happy and prosperous, was ended.
* * * * *
Prompted by curiosity, I instantly returned to Muddleton and sought out
Gertrude Morley. I stole into her room. She lay asleep, but her dreams
were troubled, and her face, once so fresh and bright, was worn with pain
and anxiety.
Scarcely had I entered the room when, to my amazement, I saw the spirit
of Sigismund Zaluski.
I saw him bend down and kiss the sleeping girl, and for a moment her sad
face lighted up with a radiant smile.
I looked again; he was gone. Then Gertrude threw up both her arms and
with a bitter cry awoke from her dream.
"Sigismund!" she cried. "Oh, Sigismund! Now I know that you are dead
indeed."
For a long, long time she lay in a sort of trance of misery. It seemed
as if the life had been almost crushed out of her, and it was not until
the bells began to ring for the six o'clock service, merrily pealing out
their welcome of the new year morning, that full consciousness returned
to her again. But, as she clearly realised what had happened, she broke
into such a passion of tears as I had never before witnessed, while still
in the darkness the new year bells rang gaily, and she knew that they
heralded for her the beginning of a lonely life.
And so my work ended; my part in this world was played out. Nevertheless
I still live; and there will come a day when Sigismund and Gertrude shall
be comforted and the slanderers punished.
For poor Valerian was right, and there is an Avenger, in whom even my
progenitor believes, and before whom he trembles.
There will come a time when those self-satisfied ones, whose hands are
all the time steeped in blood, shall be confronted with me, and shall
realise to the full all that their idle words have brought about.
For that day I wait; and though afterwards I shall be finally destroyed
in the general destruction of all that is unmitigatedly evil, I promise
myself a certain satisfaction and pleasure (a feeling I doubtless inherit
from my progenitor), when I watch the shame, and horror, and remorse of
Mrs. O'Reilly and the rest of the people to whom I owe my existence and
rapid growth.