Prisoners Part 19

"Fay," he whispered over and over again through the endless burning nights of summer. "Dear one, come soon."

There was neither speech nor language, only the lying bells in the dawn.

The shadow deepened.

A frightful suspense laid its cold, creeping hold on Michael.

What could have happened?

Was she ill?

Was she dead?

He waited, and waited, and waited. Time stood still.

Let no one say that he has found life difficult till he has known what it is to wait; till he has waited through the endless days that turn into weeks more slowly than an acorn turns into a sapling; through the unmoving weeks that turn into months more slowly than a sapling turns into a forest tree,--for a word which does not come.

Late in the autumn, six months and five days after the death of the duke--Michael marked each day with a scratch on the wall--he received a letter from Wentworth. He was allowed to receive two letters a year.

He dreaded to open it. He should hear she was dead. He had known all the time that she was dead. That flowerlike face was dust.

With half blind eyes, that made the words flicker and run into each other, he sought through Wentworth's long letter for her name. Bess, the retriever, had had puppies. The Bishop of Lostford's daughter had married his chaplain--a dull marriage, and the Bishop had not been able to resist appointing his son-in-law to a large living. The partridges had done well. He had got more the second time over than last year. But he did not care to shoot without Michael.

He found her name at last on the third sheet, just a casual sentence.

"Your cousin, the d.u.c.h.ess of Colle Alto, has come to live at Priesthope for good. She has been there nearly six months. I see her occasionally.

At first she appeared quite stunned by grief, but she is becoming rather more cheerful as time pa.s.ses on."

The letter fell out of Michael's hand.

"_Rather more cheerful as time pa.s.ses on._"

Someone close at hand laughed, a loud, fierce laugh.

Michael looked up startled. He was alone. He never knew that it was he who had laughed.

"_Rather more cheerful as time pa.s.ses on._"

He looked back and saw the months of waiting that lay behind him,--during which the time had pa.s.sed on. He saw them pieced together into a kind of map; an endless desert of stones and thorns, and in the midst a little figure in the far distance, coming toiling towards him, under a blinding sun.

That figure was himself. And this was what he had reached at last. He had touched the goal.

She had left Italy for good. She had gone back to her own people; not lately, but long ago, months ago. When he had first heard of the duke's death, even while he was counting daily, hourly, on her coming as the sick man counts on the dawn; even then she was arranging to leave Italy for good. Even then, when he was expecting her day by day, she must have made up her mind not to speak. She would not face anything for his sake.

She had decided to leave him to his fate.

She who looked so gentle, was hard; she who wept at a bird's grief over its rifled nest, was callous of suffering. She, who had seemed to love him--he felt still her hands holding his hands against her breast--had never loved him. She did not know what love was.

She was inhuman, a monster. He saw it at last.

There is in love a spiritual repulsion to which physical repulsion at its worst is but a pale shadow. Those who give love to one who cannot love may not escape the stroke of that poisoned fang. Sooner or later that shudder has to come.

Only while we are young do we believe that the reverse of love is hate.

We learn later, and that lesson we never forget, for love alone can teach it, that the reverse of love is egotism. The egoist cannot love.

Can we endure that knowledge and go on loving? Can we be faithful, tender, selfless to one who exacts all and gives nothing, who forgets us and grieves us, even as day by day we forget and grieve our unforsaking and faithful G.o.d?

Can we endure for love of man what G.o.d endures for love of us?

The duke's words came back to Michael.

"Why do you deceive yourself, my friend? There is only one person for whom she has a permanent and deep affection--for her very charming self."

He had thought of her as his wife for six months and four days.

Michael beat his manacled hands against the wall till they bled. He broke his teeth against his chains.

If Fay had come in then he would have killed her, done her to death with the chains he had worn so patiently for her sake.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "IF FAY HAD COME IN THEN HE WOULD HAVE KILLED HER, DONE HER TO DEATH WITH THE CHAINS HE HAD WORN SO PATIENTLY FOR HER SAKE"]

And that night the convict in the next cell, who had at times such wild outbursts of impotent rage when the boats went by, heard as he lay awake a low sound of strangled anguish, that ever stifled itself into silence, and ever broke forth anew, from dark to dawn.

CHAPTER XV

Qui sait ce qui peut advenir de la fragilite des femmes? Qui sait jusq'ou peut aller l'inconstance de ce sable mouvant?--ALFRED DE MUSSET.

The Italian winter was closing in. The nights were bitter cold.

Had Michael reached at last the death of love? Was its strait gate too narrow for him?

After that one night he held his peace, even with himself, even with the walls of his cell. He did not sleep nor eat. He had no time to sleep or eat. He was absorbed in one idea.

Michael was not a thinker. He was a man of action, whose action, sharp, rapier-like, and instantaneous, was unsheathed only by instinctive feeling, by chivalry, honour, indignation, compa.s.sion, never by reflection, judgment, experience. He could not really think. What he learned had to reach him some other way. His mind only bungled up against ideas, hustled them, so to speak, till they turned savage.

He sat idly in his cell when his work was done. There was a kind of pressure on him, as if the walls were closing in on him. Sometimes he got up, and pushed them back with his hands.

The sun had s.h.i.+fted his setting as the winter drew in, and for a few minutes every afternoon laid a thong of red light upon his wall. He looked at it sternly while it burned. It looked back sternly at him.

He had no wish to be free now, no wish for anything.

The doctor came to see him, and looked closely at him, and spoke kindly to him. He was interested in the young Englishman, and, like several of the warders, was convinced of his innocence.

Michael took no notice of him, barely answered his questions. He was impatient of any interruption.