I suppose the feelings of a human being awaiting extinction on a near
date fixed by the law must vary according to temperament. In this, as
in most things, ignorance has its advantages. A chaplain working on a
mind incapable of the intellectual effort of scepticism might send a
criminal to the scaffold with a distinct feeling that in spite of its
other disadvantages, murder plus hanging plus repentance was a short
cut to eternal bliss—a view of the question which would no doubt shock
the reverend gentleman who had inadvertently been a most effective
advocate of murder.
Capital punishment is, of course, a profoundly unphilosophical thing.
Only a very ill-informed person would uphold it as a deterrent, and if
not a deterrent its only excuse is the selfish one of putting someone
out of the way whom it cannot control without expense and trouble.
This principle, however, is a very awkward one, and would, stated in
its crudest form, astonish some people who mechanically support it.
As soon as I was back—I cannot say comfortably back—in prison, and in
the condemned cell, I made up my mind to concentrate myself on a human
document which should be a record of my career—a document to be
written with as little display of feeling as possible, a statement of
facts with well-bred calm and restraint.
I knew, of course, that it must be incomplete. No one has ever told
the truth about himself. I, for one, dislike the yawning gaps in the
confessions of Rousseau. Either a man’s confessions should have
something in them which Rousseau’s have not, or they are not very much
worth confessing. A few obvious sexual trivialities are not of very
great interest when all human beings guess what has been kept back.
Dr. Johnson, when told that the unfortunate Dr. Dodd was devoting his
last days to literary work, said: ‘Depend upon it, when a man knows he
is going to be hanged in a few days, it concentrates his mind
wonderfully.’ I found this to be true. The learned doctor’s point is
subtle, and he no doubt was surprised that the concentration was not
entirely on that unpleasant event daily coming nearer. Such was my
difficulty. I had my human document to finish before a certain date,
and that date interfered very largely with my concentration of mind.
It had a way of dancing on to the page while I was writing, and of
floating, detached and apparent, before my eyes in the growing dusk.
My life began to grow more and more ghostly. My nerves suffered
considerably, although I endeavoured as far as possible to conceal the
fact from the two sordid figures who kept watch over me. I could not
help thinking of what a torture this fortnight or three weeks would
have been to anyone afflicted with a terror of death. Personally, I
felt the situation more as an offence against good taste than as an
offence against humanity. Let anyone reflect what it must mean to be
watched morning, noon, and night till the end comes, never to have one
moment for solitary reflection or sorrow, not to be able to render to
the soul the relief of despairing abandonment; to have the slightest
weakness witnessed by careful official eyes, staring with a weird
fascination through the long day which is all too short; to feel, in
addition, the horror of being caged and held like a wild beast in a
trap till the time comes to be led out to die. As I say, I am a
singular character, and these things were rather an irritation than an
agony. But I wonder that it does not drive the ordinary criminal mad.
The man who has slain his wife in a moment of insane jealousy—which
is, after all, viewed logically, an evidence of his love, a quality
which might still have been turned to good account—is tortured and
killed. It is a proceeding which reason condemns as mere barbaric
vengeance. Not, as I was saying, that I suffered these horrors. My
view of life was too objective for that. True, I had been given a body
with which to express myself, and I had done my best for that body,
but when that body was condemned to extinction I was able, as it were,
to remove myself from it, and view men and their ways from a distance.
The chaplain called on me, sometimes three times a day, and I enjoyed
his conversation very much. I led him from the crude vulgarities of
attempted conversion to discussions on minute questions of Christian
culture. I also dissected my sensations for his benefit. I told him
that the reality that the end was so near now and then flashed upon me
like an electric shock, and that this sensation was exceedingly
uncomfortable, which he said he could well believe. I was not, I told
him, afflicted with any very great terror of the mere function itself.
This he thought extraordinary, as I was an agnostic. I told him that I
thought it highly probable there was a hereafter, but that it was
quite possible that it might be so different from anything we could
imagine as to confuse our view of ethics, and that I might awake to
find myself greeted as a saint. He was a little shocked, and took the
joke as an admission of guilt, a point in which I was obliged to
correct him.
I think he was surprised when I involved him in a long discussion on
the moral aspect of capital punishment. Perhaps he went away and said
I was callous. This is the orthodox designation of a man who has
strength of mind or courage enough to meet a humanly-devised
punishment with indifference. The same quality used in a different
field will earn a reputation for valour. The dear chaplain was true to
his cloth, and evidently viewed the crime of an English peer with
something more of indulgence than he would have felt for the guilt of
a member of the lower classes. Indeed, his reiterations of ‘my lord’
in his religious discussions were so constant as to confuse me with
regard to the particular individual he was addressing.
I received a letter from Esther Lane in cryptic language which I could
not understand at the time, but which was to be fully revealed
afterwards.
I do not care to dwell upon the farewell interviews with my wife. They
were curiously and unexpectedly unpleasant. The Dowager Lady
Gascoyne—I allude, of course, to the widow of my benefactor—who,
strangely enough, had never had the least doubt of my innocence, also
came to see me. I think that in a sense the farewell that cost me most
was that from Grahame Hallward, the unobtrusive and consistent friend.
I do not think that the hopeless agony in his face could have been
more terrible had he been related to me by the nearest of blood ties.
He assured me that he would devote the rest of his life to proving my
innocence. Thus is the tragic often unconsciously allied to the
ridiculous.
My mind was fully occupied. The chaplain’s visits and those of people
who wished to say farewell, in addition to a great deal of time spent
with my lawyer, with whom I had to make many arrangements, took up all
the spare moments I did not devote to these memoirs. I should have
liked to know whether my child was a boy, although in either case it
would make no difference to the succession.
I was astonished to learn that there had been an extraordinary
revulsion of feeling in my favour. I thought that the facts were
really too plain to admit of an outburst of sentimentalism. I suppose
the idea of a peer dying a sordid death shocked the British public as
much as the idea of slaying a woman gently born had done some short
time before. Hanging was good enough for the ignorant and
poverty-stricken. The snobbery of the public is easier appealed to
than its humanity.
The usual petition which my lawyer had prepared was signed by all
sorts of unexpected people, even by some of those who had voted for my
guilt.
The Home Secretary could not, however, find any loophole for
interfering, and the Governor informed me of the date fixed, in a
curious phraseology which was no doubt meant to modify facts.
I was getting a little feverish, as was only natural. I found it
necessary to use some effort to brace myself up for the final ordeal.
Thoughts of Sibella haunted me, and played upon my memory like the
love motive on the lover’s brain in Berlioz’s Scarlet Symphony. She
was the allure beckoning my thoughts back to life, and it was a
strange confirmation of what I had always felt—viz., that she was my
strongest human magnet. I had not heard from her since the day of my
arrest, but two days before the end I received a letter. It gave me
infinite pleasure, and I knew it was the one thing I had been waiting
for. She did not know, she wrote, how she had managed in her agony to
conceal the truth from Lionel, but so far he had suspected nothing;
indeed, he was working night and day for me.
I became quite sentimental over this letter. My thoughts wandered back
to the schoolroom in the Hallwards’ house on Clapham Common. I saw
Sibella as a little school-girl with a host of boy admirers. I
remembered her as she was that afternoon we came home from football
and all had tea together. I remembered the kisses, beautiful and
perfumed as roses, which we had exchanged as children, and I
remembered the burning kiss, unexpected by both of us, exchanged that
Sunday evening when Grahame left us alone. These things returned to me
with the dull pain of melodies, associated with wild moments of joy,
heard again in moments of desolation, phantoms of music wailing past
in the haunted air.
Apart from the ineradicable desire to live, which is the chief vice of
human beings, I was not very anxious for my friends to obtain a
reprieve. In default of an absolute pardon, my reason taught me that
it would be better for them to fail. I did not relish the idea of
wearing out my life in chains. Thus, when the eve of the fatal day
arrived, I experienced a certain relief.
I retired to rest with an indifference which I saw impressed the only
audience I had left. I slept peacefully for several hours, but towards
morning I experienced a curious sensation of semi-giddiness, as if I
were being rocked in mid-air. The sensation grew more and more rapid,
till, suddenly, it seemed as if I were hurtling through space at a
terrific speed, as if worlds, stars, and atmosphere were revolving
round me at a rate indescribable to human intelligence.
It was as if I were in the engine-room of the universe, and as if the
ceaseless terror of its secrets whirled me hither and thither, like a
grain of sand. I was in the unlimited, unable to grasp time or space.
Then, by degrees, there came a calm; I lay still: and, almost
unconscious of having passed out of the sleeping state, I was awake,
with my eyes fixed on the Governor.
The cell was warm with sunlight, and it struck me at the time that
this was most unsuitable. As, half awake, I looked at the Governor, a
somewhat humorous idea struck me. I thought I was late for the
ceremony, and that he had come to bid me make haste. I sprang up with
a start, and I may have turned a little pale. It was excusable, I
think. I then saw that the room was full of people, and not the people
whom I had expected to see. The Governor seized my hand, and Grahame
Hallward sprang forward and grasped the other.
“Lord Gascoyne, your innocence has been established beyond question.
The real culprit has confessed.”
It sounded like a speech out of a melodrama. Luckily, I retained my
self-possession sufficiently to say something expressive of my thanks
to Providence. I think it met the occasion.
Who the real culprit could be I failed to understand.
“I have given instructions,” said the Governor, “for you to be taken
to a comfortable room till the actual order for your release arrives.”
Then I recollected my manuscript on the table. No one had seen it but
myself, but if it were noticed it would be awkward.
It was a terrible moment. I expected the Governor as I picked it up to
say: “Anything written in a prison becomes the property of the Crown,”
but I was allowed to walk off with it.
Escorted by a congratulatory group, I was taken to a room which was
quite luxurious. Grahame Hallward and myself breakfasted together.
Then he told me all about it.
“You remember the governess at Hammerton Castle?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Well, it is very sad for Lady Gascoyne, but it appears that Lord
Gascoyne had made love to her, that she was about to become a mother,
and that she poisoned his tea that evening as she had already poisoned
the wine. The servants remember now that she had been in the
dining-room. She intended at the time to kill herself as well, but she
had not the courage. Last night, however, she did so, having written
to your wife and to the Home Secretary, your lawyer, and others, so as
to make sure of the news arriving in time.”
I looked at him, striving to hide the sheer horror which I felt for
the first time in my life.
I was not surprised at the sacrifice, for it was the sort of gigantic
thing that a nature like Esther’s would have conceived and carried
out. Nevertheless, the news filled me with a profound gloom.
It was better, however, to be sitting there finishing my coffee and
smoking a cigarette than meandering out on to the unknown.
“Sibella has been awfully ill, Israel.”
“Did people think me guilty?” I asked.
He avoided my question, and said:
“The revulsion of feeling has been tremendous. Everybody will be
delighted.”
And so it turned out. People had not at all liked the idea of a real,
live lord becoming an unreal, dead lord by such means. The Home
Secretary sent the order for my release the same afternoon. The dead
Lord Gascoyne became a monster of iniquity, and I was congratulated by
everyone on the _dénouement_.
But to this day, there is a sadness in my wife’s manner, and although
she tries to hide a shuddering aversion for me when we are alone, it
shows itself unexpectedly in trifles. In some way she has grasped the
truth. Indeed, she must have done, for there can be no other
explanation of her conduct. We have two children, and perhaps there is
something pathetic in the amount of moral training she gives them. I
am sure there is no need for Hammerton to turn out other than well. I
have done the work. He has only to reap the benefit and the reward.
The second boy is a gentle little creature, Oriental in his nature,
and most devoted to his father, as they both are, but the second boy
especially so.
Sibella is still—Sibella.
The End
Transcriber’s Note
This transcription follows the text of the Chatto & Windus edition
published in 1907. Three unambiguous misspellings have been corrected
(namely, “Halward,” “memorist,” and “possiblity”), but any other
seeming errors have been left unchanged.