Part 4 (1/2)
”Truthfulness is a habit that may be regained,” I said earnestly. ”I myself, without half your temptations, was untruthful once.”
To a.s.sociate oneself with the sins of others, to show one's own scar, is not this sometimes the only way to comfort those overborne in the battle of life? Had I not chronicled my own failing in the matter of truthfulness when I foolishly and wickedly took blame on myself for the fault of one dear to me, in my first book, ”With Broken Wing”? But I saw as I spoke that she had not read it, and did not realise to what I was alluding. I have so steadily refused to be interviewed that possibly also she had not even yet guessed who I was.
”I am sure--I am quite sure,” I went on after a moment, ”that there is a great deal of good in you, that you are by nature truthful.”
”Am I? I wonder. Perhaps I was so once, in the early, untroubled days.
But I have told many lies since then.”
She drank her coffee slowly, looking steadfastly into the fire, as if she saw in the wavering flame some reflection of another fire on another hearthstone.
”How good it is!” she said at last, putting her cup down. ”How dreadfully good it is--the coffee and the fire, and the quiet room, and to be dry and warm and clean! How good it all is! And how little I thought of them when I had all these things!”
She got up and looked at a water-colour over the low mantelpiece.
”Madeira, isn't it?” she said. ”I seem to remember that peculiar effect of the vivid purple of the Bougainvillea against the dim, cloudy purple of the hills behind.”
”It is Madeira,” I said. ”I was there ten years ago. Perhaps you have read my little book, 'Beside the Bougainvillea'?”
”My husband died there,” she said, looking fixedly at the drawing. ”He died just before sunrise, and when it was over I remember looking out across the sea, past the great English man-of-war in the harbour, to those three little islands--I forget their names--and as the first level rays touched them, the islands and the s.h.i.+p all seemed to melt into half-transparent amethyst in a sea of gla.s.s, beneath a sky of gla.s.s. How calm the sea was--hardly a ripple! I felt that even he, weak as he was, could walk upon it. It was like daybreak in heaven, not on earth. And his long martyrdom was over. It seemed as if we were both safe home at last.”
”Had he been ill long?”
”A long time. He suffered terribly. And I gave him morphia under the doctor's directions. And then, when he was gone--not at first, but after a little bit--I took morphia myself, to numb my own anguish and to get a little sleep. I thought I should go mad if I could not get any sleep. I had better have gone mad. But I took morphia instead, and sealed my own doom. But how can you tell whether I am speaking the truth? Well, it doesn't matter if you don't believe me. I am accustomed to it. I am never believed now. And I don't care if I'm not. I don't deserve to be.
But I suppose you can see that I was not always a tramp on the highway.
And, at any rate, that is what I am now, and what I shall remain, unless I drift into prison again, which G.o.d forbid, for I should suffocate in a cell after the life in the open air which I am accustomed to.”
She s.h.i.+vered a little, as if she who seemed devoid of fear quailed at the remembrance of her cell.
”You are wondering how I have fallen so low,” she said. ”Do you remember Kipling's lines--
”We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung?
”Well, I have known what it is to drop down the ladder of life, clinging convulsively to each rung in turn, losing hold of it, and being caught back by compa.s.sionate hands, only to let go of it again; fighting desperately to hold on to the next rung when I was thrust from the one above it; having my hands beaten from each rung, one after another, one after another, sinking lower and lower yet, cling as I would, pray as I would, repent as I would.”
”Who beat your hands from the rungs?” I said.
”Morphia,” she replied.
There was a long silence.
”Morphia, that was the beginning and the middle and the end of my misfortunes,” she said. ”What did I do that gradually lost me my friends?--and I had such good friends, even after my best friend my sister died. What did I do that ruined me by inches? In Australia I have heard of evil men taken red-handed being left in the bush with food and water by them, bound to a fallen tree which has been set on fire at one end. And the fire smoulders and smoulders, and travels inch by inch along the trunk, and they watch their slow, inevitable death coming towards them day by day, until it at last destroys them also inch by inch. What had I done that I should find myself bound like those poor wretches? I cannot tell you. Morphia wipes out the memory as surely as drink. I only know that I was in torment. Faces, familiar and strange faces, some compa.s.sionate, some indignant, some horror-struck, come back to me sometimes, blurred as by smoke, but I see nothing clearly. I dimly remember fragments of appeals that were made to me, fragments of divine music in cathedrals where I sobbed my heart out. Broken, splintered, devastating memories of promises made in bitter tears, and endless lies and subterfuges to conceal what I could not conceal. For morphia looks out of the eyes of its victim. I knew that, but I thought no one could see it in mine, that I could hide it. And I have one vivid recollection of a quiet room with flowers in it, and latticed windows, but I don't know where it was or how I came there, or who were the people in it who spoke to me. There was a tall woman with grey parted hair in a lilac gown. I can see her now. And I swore before G.o.d that I had left off the drug. And some one standing behind me took the little infernal machine out of my pocket, and I was confronted with it. And the tall woman wrung her hands and groaned. How I hated her! And in my madness I accused her of putting it there to ruin me. And some one (a man) said slowly, 'She is impossible!--quite impossible!' That one memory stands out like a little oasis in a desert of mirage and s.h.i.+fting sand, and thirst. I should know the room again if I saw it. There was a window opening into a little paved courtyard with a fountain in it, and doves drinking. But I shall never see it again. And the drug became alive like a fiend, and pushed me lower and lower, down, always down, until I did something dreadful, I don't know now exactly what it was, though the prison chaplain explained it to me. But it was about a cheque, and I was convicted and sent to prison.”
”Then you have been in prison _twice_?” I said, anxious to make it easy for her to be entirely truthful, for I could not doubt the truth of much of this earlier history.
She did not seem to hear me.
”There is no crime,” she went on, ”however black, that I did not expiate then. If suffering can wash out sins, I washed out mine. I, who thought I had so many enemies, have no enemy. No one has ever injured me. But if I had the cruellest in the world, I would not condemn him, if he were a morphia maniac, to sudden enforced abstinence and prison life. And I could not die. I am very strong by nature. I could neither die nor live.
It was months before I saw light, months of h.e.l.l, consumed in the flame of h.e.l.l which is thirst. And slowly the power to live came back to me. I was saved in spite of myself. And slowly the power of thought returned to me. I had time to think. My mind drifted and drifted, but I got control of it now and again, and then for longer intervals, as my poor body rea.s.serted itself from the slavery of the drug. And I thought--I thought--I thought. And at last I made up my mind, my fierce, embittered mind. And when I came out of prison, I took to the road. Even then there were those who would have helped me, but I steeled my heart against them. There was a strange woman with a sweet face waiting at the prison door, who spoke kindly to me. But I distrusted her. I distrusted every one. And I did not mean to be helped any more. I had been helped time and time again. To be helped was to be put where I could get morphia, where I had something, if it was only my clothes, which I could sell to get it, where I could _steal_ things to sell to get it. If I had any possessions, I knew that some day--not for a time perhaps, but some day--I should sell it and get morphia somehow. They say you can't buy it, but you can. I always could in the past, and I knew I always should in the future. But on the road, in rags, a tramp, down in the dust, in the safe refuge of the dust--there it was not possible. There I was out of temptation. There I could not be burned in that flame again. That was all I thought of, to creep away where the fire could not reach me. And I felt sure I should not live long. In my ignorance I thought the exposure to all weathers, and privation, and the first frost of winter would bring me my release quickly. But they did not. They gave me new life instead. I came out in spring, and I begged my way to Abinger Forest, and nearly starved there; but I did not mind. Have you ever been in Abinger Forest in the spring when the wortleberry is out? Can the Elysian fields of Asphodel be more beautiful? Perhaps to others they might seem so; but not to me. My first glimpse of hope came to me in the woods at Abinger in a windless, sunny week at Easter. The gipsies gave me food once or twice. And I ate the sc.r.a.ps that the trippers left after their picnics at the top of Leith Hill where the tower is. And I lay in the sun by day and I slept in a stack of bracken by night, and my strained life relaxed. And I, who had become so hard and bitter, saw at last what endless love and compa.s.sion had been vainly lavished on me, and I was humbled. I had somehow got it rooted into my warped mind that I had been cruelly treated, betrayed, abandoned by my friends, by every one. I had tried hard to forgive them, but I could not. I saw at last that it was I who had been cruel, I who had betrayed, I who needed forgiveness; and I asked it of the only Friend I had left, the only Friend Who never forsakes us. And peace came back and the deep wound in my life healed. It seemed as if Nature, who had forgotten me for so long, had pity on me, and took me again to her heart. For I had loved her years ago, before my husband died.
”When the weather broke, I took to the road, and the road has given me back my health, and much more than health. I can see beauty again now.
And there is always beauty in the hedgerow; and wherever the road runs there is beauty. In the open down, beside the tidal rivers with their brown sails creeping among the b.u.t.tercups, everywhere there is beauty.