Part 4 (2/2)
And I can sleep again now. I learnt how to sleep at Abinger. I had forgotten how it was done without morphia. O G.o.d! I can sleep, every night, anywhere. It's worth being a tramp for that alone, to be able to sleep naturally, to know in the daytime that you will have it at night, and then to lie down and feel it stealing over you like the blessing of G.o.d. I used to wake myself at first for sheer joy when it was coming.
And then to nestle down, and sink into it, down, down into it, till one reaches the great peace. And no more wakings in torment as the drug pa.s.ses off, waking as in some iron grave, unable to stir hand or foot, unable to beat back the suffocating horror and terror which lies cheek to cheek with us. No more wakings in h.e.l.l. No more mornings like that.
But instead, the cool, sweet waking in the crystal light in the open air. And to see the sun come up, and to lie still against the clean, fragrant haystack and let it warm you! And to watch the quiet, friendly beasts rise up in the long meadows! And to wake hungry, instead of that dreadful, maddening thirst! And to _like_ to eat--how good that is, even if you go fasting half the day! But I never do. The poor will always give you enough to eat. It hurts them to see any one hungry. Yes, I have dropped down the ladder rung by rung, and now I have reached the lowest rung. And it is a good place, the only safe place for wastrels such as I, the only refuge from my enemy. There is peace on the lowest rung. I can do no more harm there, and I have done so much. I was ambitious once, I was admired and clever once; but I found no abiding city anywhere. Temptation lurked everywhere. I was driven like chaff before the wind.... But now I have the road. No one will take the road from me while I live, or the ditch beside it to die in when my time comes. I am provided for at last. I lead a clean life at last.”
She sat silent, her dreamy eyes fixed, her thin hands folded one over the other. I looked at her with an aching heart. What strange mixture of truth and lies was all this! But I said nothing. What was the use?
And as we sat silent beside the dying fire the great inequality between us pressed hard upon me: I, by no special virtue of my own, G.o.d knows!
on one of the uppermost rungs of life. She poor soul--poor soul--on the lowest.
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed eleven.
She started slightly, looked at it, and then at me, as if uncertain of her surroundings, and the shrewd, sardonic look came back to her face.
”I am keeping you up,” she said, rising. ”I think your strong coffee has gone to my head. This outburst of autobiography is a poor return for all your kindness. I had no idea it was so late or that I could be so garrulous, and I must make a very early start to-morrow. Shall I go into the kitchen and put on my own clothes again? They must be quite dry by now.”
”Oh! let me help you,” I said impulsively. ”Let me get you into a Home, or help you to emigrate. Don't go back to this wandering, aimless life.
Work for others, interest in others, that is what _you_ need, what _I_ need, what we _all_ need to take us out of ourselves, to make us forget our own misery.”
”I have half forgotten mine already,” she said. ”To-night I remembered it again. But I have long since put it from my mind. I think the moment for a change of clothing in the kitchen has arrived.”
She spoke quietly, but as if her last word were final. I found it impossible to continue the subject.
”You will never escape in those clothes,” I said. ”You haven't the ghost of a chance. If you will come into my room, I will see what I can find for you.”
I had been willing to do much more than give her clothes, but I instinctively felt that my appeal to her better feelings had fallen on deaf ears.
She followed me to my bedroom, and I got out all my oldest clothes and spread them before her. But she would have none of them.
”The worst look like an ultra-respectable district visitor,” she said, tossing aside one garment after another. It was the more curious that she should say that because my brother-in-law had always said I looked like one, and that my books even had a parochial flavour about them. But then he had never really studied them, or he would have seen their lighter side.
”I had no idea pockets were worn in a little slit in the front seam,”
said my visitor. ”It shows how long it is since I have been 'in the know.' No doubt front pockets came in with the bicycles. No. It is very kind of you. But, except for that old dyed moreen petticoat, the things won't do. I always was particular about dress, and I never was more so than I am at this moment. You don't happen to have an old black ulster with all the b.u.t.tons off, and a bit of mangy fur dropping off the neck?
That's more my style. But of course you haven't.”
”I had one once of that kind; it was so bad that I could not even give it away. So I put it in the dog's basket. Lindo used to sleep on it. He loved it, poor dear! It may be there still.”
We went downstairs again, and I pulled Lindo's basket out from under the stairs.
The old black wrap was still in it, but it was mildewy and stuck to the basket. It tore as I released it. It reminded me painfully of my lost darling.
”The very thing!” she said, with enthusiasm, as the dilapidated travesty of a coat shook itself free. ”Quiet and un.o.btrusive to the last degree.
Parisian in colour and simplicity. And mole colour is so becoming. Can you really spare it? Then with the moreen petticoat I am provided, equipped.”
We went back to the kitchen again.
”What will you do with them?” I said, pointing to her convict clothes which had dried perfectly stiff, owing to the amount of mud on them. How such quant.i.ties of mud could have got on to them was a mystery to me.
”It certainly does not improve one's clothes, to hide in a wet ditch in a ploughed field,” she said meditatively. ”I will dispose of them early to-morrow morning. I picked a place as I found my way here.”
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