AT THE PRISON GATE.
Months had passed since Lettice had written a page of her story. The
arrival of the Daltons at Florence had interrupted her at a critical
point. She had not yet acquired the mechanic art of stopping and going
on again as at the turn of a handle, in obedience to a law of demand and
supply; and she would probably have been unable to gather up her threads
and continue the old woof, even if she had made the effort. But she had
not made the effort, and now that she was back in London again it seemed
less possible than ever that she should sit down and make it.
This was a serious matter, for the book was to have been done to order.
She had undertaken to furnish the whole of the manuscript by the middle
of November, and now the time had come when she was obliged to admit
that this was quite impracticable. She had hoped to put such a
constraint upon herself at Birchmead as would have enabled her to fulfil
her promise in the spirit, and to ask a fortnight's grace for the
completion of the manuscript. But circumstances had prevented her from
writing a single line, and she gave up the idea as hopeless.
So when she came up to London, three days before the end of October, she
called upon the publisher with whom she had made her agreement, and
confessed her inability to keep her word. Mr. MacAlpine was polite, but
at the same time evidently vexed. If Miss Campion had been ill he was
very sorry to hear it, but he liked to be able to rely on the
engagements which he made.
"Pray don't let it trouble you," he said, seeing that her face had begun
to fall. "When do you think you can be ready? I must have your next
story, at any rate. Take another three months."
"That is very good of you," said Lettice. "I think I can promise it
before the end of January."
So it was settled, and Lettice went away contented.
The discovery which she had made in regard to Sydney and Emily
Harrington had destroyed her former scruples as to the displeasure which
Sydney might feel if he were to hear what she now contemplated. She had
no wish to punish her brother. She thought he had been cruel, and
indifferent to the suffering which he had caused; but she was not moved
by anything like a vindictive feeling towards him. She had simply lost
the scruples which had beset her, and there was no longer a desire in
her mind to avoid a mere semblance of unconventionality for his sake.
She had chosen three rooms on the ground-floor of a house in a long and
dreary terrace, the windows of which looked across an intervening waste
to the walls of Alan's prison; and here she watched and waited.
The time hung heavy on her hands. She could do nothing, read nothing,
think of nothing--except of the unhappy man within those walls, who had
been brought to death's door, and who must have known a living death for
the past six months. To her, merely looking at the walls and thinking of
their victim, every minute seemed an hour, and every hour a day of blank
despair. What must the minutes and hours have seemed to him, buried
alive in that hideous pile of bricks, and in the yet more hideous pile
of false accusations and unmerited disgrace?
She had found out the date of the trial, and procured the papers in
which it was reported. The whole wretched story was before her now. She
saw how the web had been weaved round him; she understood the pains
which had been taken to keep her own name from being mentioned, and she
noted with burning indignation the persistency with which Sydney had
labored, apparently, to secure a conviction.
She was on the point of seeking out Mr. Larmer, in order to learn from
him the assurance of innocence which Alan must have given to his
solicitor; but she refrained. It would look as though she wanted
evidence of what she believed so absolutely without any evidence; and
besides, was it not one of the pleasures which she had promised herself,
to hear from Alan's own lips all that he cared for her to hear?
She stood by her window in the evening, and saw the lights spring up one
by one about the frowning gates of the prison. She was quite alone,
Milly having gone out with her baby to buy her some clothes. Lettice was
miserable and depressed, in spite of her good intentions; and as she
stood, half leaning against the shutter in unconscious weariness of
body, yet intent with all her mind upon the one subject that engrossed
her, she heard the distant stroke of a tolling bell.
Dong!--dong!--dong! it sounded, with long intervals between the notes.
Straight across the vacant ground, from the shrouded walls of Alan's
dungeon, and into the contracting fibres of her own tortured heart; it
smote with sudden terror, turning her blood to ice and her cheeks to
livid whiteness.
Great heaven, it was a death-knell. Could it be Alan who was dead!
For a moment she felt as if she must needs rush into the street and
break open those prison gates, must ascertain at once that Alan was
still alive. She went out into the hall and stood for a moment
hesitating. Should she go? and would they tell her at the gates if Alan
was alive or dead?
The landlady heard her moving, and came out of a little apartment at the
back of the house, to see what was going on.
"Were you going out, ma'am?" she asked, curiously.
"I? no; at least," said Lettice, with somewhat difficult utterance, "I
was only wondering what that bell was, and----"
"Oh, that's a bell from the church close by. Sounds exactly like a
passing-bell, don't it, ma'am? And appropriate too. For my son, who is
one of the warders, as I think I've mentioned to you, was here this
afternoon, and tells me that one of the prisoners is dead. A gentleman,
too: the one that there was so much talk about a little while ago."
Lettice leaned against the passage wall, glad that in the gathering
darkness her face could not be seen.
"Was his name--Walcott?" she asked.
"Yes, that was it. At least I think so. I know it was Wal--something. He
was in for assault, I believe, and a nicer, quieter-spoken gentleman, my
son says he never saw. But he died this afternoon, I understand, between
five and six o'clock--just as his time was nearly out, too, poor man."
Lettice made no answer. She stole back into her sitting-room and shut
the door.
So this was the end. The prisoner was released, indeed; but no mortal
voice had told him he was free, no earthly friend had met him at the
door.
She fell on her knees, and prayed that the soul which had been
persecuted might have rest. Then, when the last stroke of the bell had
died away, she sat down in mute despair, and felt that she had lost the
best thing life had to give her.
Outside upon the pavement men and women were passing to and fro. There
was no forecourt to the house; passers-by walked close to the windows;
they could look in if they tried. Lettice had not lighted a candle, and
had not drawn her blinds, but a gas-lamp standing just in front threw a
feeble glimmer into the room, which fell upon her where she sat. As the
shadows deepened the light grew stronger, and falling direct upon her
eyes, roused her at last from the lethargy into which she had sunk.
She got up and walked to the window, intending to close the shutters.
Listlessly for a moment she looked out into the street, where the
gas-light flickered upon the meeting streams of humanity--old folk and
young, busy and idle, hopeful and despairing, all bent on their own
designs, heedless like herself of the jostling world around them.
She had the shutter in her hand, and was turning it upon its hinges,
when a face in the crowd suddenly arrested her. She had seen it once,
that ghastly painted face, and it had haunted her in her dreams for
weeks and months afterwards. It had tyrannized over her in her sickness,
and only left her in peace when she began to recover her strength under
the bright Italian skies. And now she saw her again, the wife who had
wrecked her husband's happiness, for whom he had lingered in a cruel
prison, who flaunted herself in the streets whilst Alan's brave and
generous heart was stilled for ever.
Cora turned her face as she passed the window, and looked in. She might
not in that uncertain light have recognized the woman whose form stood
out from the darkness behind her, but an impulse moved Lettice which she
could not resist. At the moment when the other turned her head she
beckoned to her with her hand, and quickly threw up the sash of the
window.
"Mon Dieu!" said Cora, coming up close to her, "is it really you? What
do you want with me?"
"Come in! I must speak to you."
"I love you not, Lettice Campion, and you love not me. What would you?"
"I have a message for you--come inside."
"A message! Sapristi! Then I must know it. Open your door."
Lettice closed the window and the shutters, and brought her visitor
inside.
The woman of the study and the woman of the pavement looked at each
other, standing face to face for some minutes without speaking a word.
They were a contrast of civilization, whom nature had not intended to
contrast, and it would have been difficult to find a stronger antagonism
between two women who under identical training and circumstances might
have been expected to develop similar tastes, and character, and
bearing. Both had strong and well-turned figures, above the middle
height, erect and striking, both had noble features, natural grace and
vivacity, constitutions which fitted them for keen enjoyment and zest in
life. But from their infancy onward they had been subjected to
influences as different as it is possible to imagine. To one duty had
been the ideal and the guide of existence; the other had been taught to
aim at pleasure as the supreme good. One had ripened into a
self-sacrificing woman, to whom a spontaneous feeling of duty was more
imperative than the rules and laws in which she had been trained; the
other had degenerated into a wretched slave of her instincts, for whom
the pursuit of pleasure had become a hateful yet inevitable servitude.
Perhaps, as they stood side by side, the immeasurable distance which
divided them mind from mind and body from body was apparent to both.
Perhaps each thought at that moment of the man whose life they had so
deeply affected--perhaps each realized what Alan Walcott must have
thought and felt about the other.
"Why have you brought me here?" said Cora at last in a defiant voice.
"It was a sudden thought. I saw you, and I wanted to speak to you."
"Then you have no message as you pretended? You are very polite,
mademoiselle. You are pleased to amuse yourself at my expense?"
"No, I am not amusing myself," said Lettice. There was a ring of sadness
in her tones, which did not escape Cora's attention. She argued weakness
from it, and grew more bold.
"Are you not afraid?" she said, menacingly. "Do you not think that I
have the power to hurt--as I have hurt you before--the power, and, still
more, the will?"
"I am not afraid."
"Not afraid! You are hatefully quiet and impassive, just like--ah, like
all your race! Are you always so cold and still? Have you no blood in
your veins?"
"If you will sit down," said Lettice steadily, "I will tell you
something that you ought to know. It is useless trying to frighten me
with your threats. Sit down and rest if you will; I will get you food or
coffee, if you care for either. But there is something that I want to
say."
Cora stared at her scornfully. "Food! Coffee! Do you think I am
starving?" she asked, with a savage little laugh. "I have as much money
as I want--more than you are ever likely to have, mademoiselle. You are
very naive, mon enfant. You invite me into your room--Lettice Campion
invites Cora Walcott into her room!--where nobody knows us, nobody could
trace us--and you quietly ask me to eat and drink! Eat and drink in this
house? It is so likely! How am I to tell, for example, if your coffee is
not poisoned? You would not be very sorry if I were to die! Parbleu, if
you want to poison me, you should tempt me with brandy or champagne.
Have you neither of those to offer me?"
Lettice had drawn back at the first hint of this insinuation, with a
look of irrepressible disgust. She answered coldly, "I have neither
brandy nor champagne to give you."
"Allons, donc! Why do I stay here then?" said Cora jumping up from the
chair where she had seated herself. "This is very wearisome. Your idea
was not very clever, Mademoiselle Lettice; you should lay your plans
better if you want to trick a woman like me."
"Why should I wish to trick you?" said Lettice, with grave, quiet scorn.
"What object could I have in killing you?"
"Ma foi, what object should you not have? Revenge, of course. Have I not
injured you? have I not taken away your good name already? All who know
you have heard my story, and many who do not know you; and nearly every
one of them believes it to be true. You robbed me of my husband,
mademoiselle, you know it; and you have but too good reason to wish me
dead, in order that you may take a wife's place at the convict's side."
"You are mad. Listen to me----"
"I will listen to nothing. I will speak now. I will give you a last
warning. Do you know what this is?"
She took a bottle from her pocket, a bottle of fluted, dark-colored
glass, and held it in her hand.
"Look! This is vitriol, the friend of the injured and the defenceless. I
have carried it with me ever since I followed my husband to your house
at Brook Green, and saw you making signals to him at midnight. I came
once after that, and knocked at your door, intending then to avenge my
wrongs; but you had gone away, and I was brutally treated by your
police. But if I could not punish you I could punish _him_, for he
belonged to me and not to you, and I had a right to make him suffer. I
have made him suffer a little, it seems to me. Wait--I have more to say.
Shall I make him suffer more? I have punished you through him; shall I
punish him through you? For he would not like you to be maimed and
disfigured through life: his sensitive soul would writhe, would it not?
to know that you were suffering pain. Do you know what this magic water
is? It stings and bites and eats away the flesh--it will blind you so
that you can never see him again; and it will mar your white face so
that he will never want to look at you. This is what I carry about for
you."
Lettice watched the hand that held the bottle; but in truth she thought
very little of the threat. Death had done for her already what this
woman was talking about. Alan was past the love or vengeance of either
of them, and all her pleasure in life was gone for ever.
"I thought I should find you here," Cora went on, "waiting at the
prison for your lover! But I am waiting for him, too. I am his wife
still. I have the right to wait for him, and you have not. And if you
are there when he comes out, I shall stay my hand no longer. I warn you;
so be prepared. But perhaps"--and she lifted the bottle, while her eyes
flamed with dangerous light, and her voice sank to a sharp
whisper--"perhaps it would be better to settle the question now!"
"The question," said Lettice, with almost unnatural calm of manner, "is
settled for us. Alan has left his prison. Your husband is dead."
The woman gazed at her in stupefaction. Her hand fell to her side, and
the light died out of her bold black eyes.
"Alan dead!' What is it you say? How do you know?"
"He had a fever in the jail to which you sent him. He has been at
death's door for many weeks. Not an hour ago a warder came here and said
that he was dead. Are you satisfied with your work?"
"My work?" said Cora, drawing back. "I have not killed him!"
"Yes," said Lettice, a surge of bitter anger rising in her heart, "yes,
you have killed him, as surely as you tried to kill him with your pistol
at Aix-les-Bains, and with his own dagger in Surrey Street. You are a
murderess, and you know it well. But for you, Alan Walcott would still
be living an honorable, happy life. You have stabbed him to the heart,
and he is dead. That is the message I have to give you--to tell you that
you have killed him, and that he is gone to a land where your unnatural
hate can no longer follow him!"
Lettice stood over the cowering woman, strong and unpitying in her stern
indignation, lifted out of all thought of herself by the intensity of
her woe. Cora shrank away from her, slipping the bottle into her pocket,
and even covertly making the sign of the cross as Lettice's last words
fell upon her ear--words that sounded to her untutored imagination like
a curse. But she could not be subdued for long. She stood silent for a
few moments when Lettice ceased to speak, but finally a forced laugh
issued from the lips that had grown pale beneath her paint.
"Tiens!" she said. "You will do the mourning for us both, it seems.
Well, as I never loved him, you cannot expect me to cry at his death.
And I shall get his money, I suppose; the money that he grudged me in
his lifetime: it will be mine now, and I can spend it as I choose. I
thank you for your information, mademoiselle, and I pardon you the
insults which you have heaped upon my head to-night. If I have my
regrets, I do not exhibit them in your fashion. Good-night,
mademoiselle: il me faut absolument de l'eau de vie--I can wait for it
no longer. Bon soir!"
She turned and left the house as rapidly as she had come. Lettice sank
down upon a couch, and hid her face in the cushion. She could not shed a
tear, but she was trembling from head to foot, and felt sick and faint.
As Cora sauntered along the pavement, turning her head restlessly from
side to side, her attention was caught by a young woman carrying a
child, who went in at Lettice's door. Mrs. Walcott stopped short, and
put her finger to her forehead with a bewildered air. "Now where have I
seen that face?" she muttered to herself.
After a moment's reflection, she burst into a short, harsh laugh, and
snapped her fingers at the blind of Lettice's room. "I know now," she
said. "Oh yes, I know where I have seen that face before. This will
justify me in the eyes of the world as nothing else has done. Bon soir,
Madame Lettice. Oh, I have a new weapon against you now."
And then she went upon her way, leaving behind her the echo of her
wicked laugh upon the still night air.